Peter Johnson

“Dispatches from Terra Incognita”

1.

Saturday, cold as a witch’s you know what. I’m at the Lab to give a urine sample.

No one here but a muscular woman, about forty-five, with long black hair tastefully streaked with a touch of grey. Not a beauty parlor job, but an idiosyncrasy gifted to her by the Author of All Things Cool.

She leads me to a room with 1960s hard rock music playing loudly. She examines me as if she’s going to remove my appendix instead of draw blood. She seems happy, probably one of those glass-half-full people I’ve always hated.

“You don’t look like you’re 73,” she says.

“I take care of myself,” I say.

“Is the music too loud?”

“No, I grew up with it. Saw Zeppelin and the James Gang in 1969 at a place called Kleinhan’s Music Hall in Buffalo, NY.  The acoustics were amazing.”

“Who else did you see?”

I offer the obligatory old-guy litany of concerts, then say, “What does it matter? I was too wasted to appreciate them.”

“You’re kidding right? If you told me I could see Zeppelin’s first tour if I killed my husband, he’d be six feet underground tomorrow.”

She laughs hard, then notices my surprise. “Relax, sweetie. I’m just kidding.” She hands me my plastic cup, and on the way to the toilet I imagine her husband.  He’s buried in the woods somewhere in New Hampshire, the tips and buckles of his black engineer boots poking out from a hastily dug grave. Meanwhile his wife is in Buffalo, wearing bellbottoms and a tight white halter top, listening to “Dazed and Confused,” genuflecting before the whine of Jimmy Paige’s 1959 Fender Telecaster.

****

The atheist and misanthropist E. M. Cioran, wrote books with upbeat titles like, The Trouble with Being Born, A Short History of Decay, Drawn and Quartered, and On the Heights of Despair. He also championed some controversial arguments for and against suicide. His reward for delving into such difficult topics? God, and I’m talking about the God who happens to have a sense of humor and an affection for dark irony, condemned Cioran to live until he was 84.

****

Look for comedy among the ruins, or vice versa.

****

People can’t accept that life is messy. And who can blame them? In a messy universe, your Truth can’t always be the “right” Truth, because acceptance of messiness means that other people have Truths, too. Which would mean that Real Life, which is of course messy, would involve everyone bringing their respective Truths to the table and, through mutual cooperation and respect, discovering a “truer” and more authentic Truth.

Unfortunately, this takes time, and there is so much to do: binging Netflix series, for example, or constantly toying with your cell phone, so that, while sitting in a venue like a packed movie theater or lecture hall, you appear to be playing with yourself.

In a similar vein, the poet Charles Simic writes of people’s love of the absolute as follows: “First you simplify whatever is complex, you reduce reality to a single concept, and then you start a church of some kind. What surprises me endlessly is how every new absolutism, every one-sided world view is instantly attractive to seemingly so many intelligent people.”

****

One reason why I don’t trust the Old Testament: No way would a woman ever be tricked by a snake to eat a forbidden apple. Only a man could do something that narcissistic and dumb.

****

The sand dollar! One of the only sea creatures with no predators. One could write a history about its labyrinthine complexities if one had the time. One legend suggests that the five slits on the surface of the sand dollar represent the five wounds of Christ. Another legend argues that sand dollars are really coins that have been lost by mermaids, or, even better, currency used by the people of Atlantis. If I were a sand dollar, I’d prefer the mermaid story, or to be left alone until my insides dried up on some quiet Maine beach, after which I’d discover myself in a glass vase owned by some nice old Yankee lady, surrounded by other sand dollars who, if I would listen carefully, would recount the history of their complex lives.

****

Yesterday I fell in love with a naked mannikin in a storefront window. God had placed her there, knowing my penchant for athletic builds and small breasts. It didn’t take long to feel her shame or invent a history for her: a straight-A student with a strong belief in medieval symbolism and in how disjointed narratives can transform a vibrant culture into a terra incognita of idiots.

Nothing to do but smash the window and take her home, where she stands now waiting for my imagination to put her into motion.

****

When the Saint finally appeared, he said, “Think of me as phantom pain”—a declaration still being studied by hemorrhoidal theologians. (I use the word hemorrhoidal in the broadest sense of the word with deference to its many etymologies and permutations).

****

I know a woman who thinks she invented Impressionism because she can make heads turn when she walks into a room. I want to say to her, “Oh, darling of my heart, my little alley cat,” but instead, “Every book should be a danger”—my attempt to appeal to her good breeding and love of the Word.

****

Anything I need to know about philosophy or human nature I can find at the zoo.

I really believe that.

 

2.

In 1971 I was twenty and working as a copy boy at the Buffalo Evening News, where I ended up befriending a typesetter named Hank. He was a six-foot-six biker who was part of a “Motorcycle Club,” modeled after Hell’s Angel’s. He always wore blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a leather jacket, and broken-in engineer boots. He liked me, and whenever I bumped into him at Mulligan’s Brick Bar, he’d buy me shots of tequila. He had huge hands, and it was clear he could hurt someone if he needed to, but I never saw that side of him.

One night he told me to follow him to a party in a tough neighborhood on the East Side of Buffalo. Upon arriving, I discovered a smorgasbord of drugs, alcohol, and the kind of women I had only seen in those ’60s Drive-In biker movies like The Mini-Skirt Mob. I would like to romanticize this experience, as we boomer males are wont to, recounting the debauched erotic evening I experienced, but, quite frankly, these women scared me.

Still, I decided to stay, finding myself, at the end of the night, sitting on a beat-up leather recliner, staring at other people half-comatose on couches arranged to form a circle.  Everyone was shooting up, and it was moving my way. As I watched things transpire, I noticed Hank staring curiously at me from across the room. Not angry. Not disappointed. “Amused” would best describe his countenance.

At that point, I looked closely at my companions, suddenly wondering how this old Catholic boy had gotten himself into such a situation. At that moment, a visceral breath-taking chill came over me, and I said softly to myself, “What the fuck, Peter?” After which, I left the house, stumbling toward my 1959 Rambler American.

I’d like to say my sensible decision stemmed from the way I was raised—that is, my good breeding and the kindness and decency taught to me by my parents, especially my mother. Or maybe I was too smart to do something that dumb.

But here’s the real reason I bolted:

I was lucky. Maybe if I had been more drunk, or had smoked a bit more hashish, or if my girlfriend of two years had just dumped me for some Adonis in his second year of law school, I could have easily made a different decision.

A few days after the party, Hank asked me, “Why didn’t you shoot up?”

I told him that I wasn’t quite sure.

“I wouldn’t have let you do it anyway,” he said, punching me hard in the arm.

****

I knew a guy who spent his whole life analyzing everyone’s imperfections, surprised when, on his deathbed, he discovered that those imperfections were, in fact, his own.

****

It’s infuriating,” I tell my friend the way guys compare women to cars, talking about their ‘sleek lines’ and ‘strong chassis,’ not to mention what a ‘great ride’ certain ladies can give a man.”

“Agreed,” my friend says. “Which is why I think, especially in terms of the ride metaphor, a comparison to a horse is far more exact.”

“I think you missed my point,” I say.

****

“The first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”

This from Franz Kafka. I love the guy but sometimes wish he didn’t sound like my Uncle Lenny, who sucked the life out of every family reunion by getting drunk, talking about his ex-wife’s infidelity, and then crying.

****

I’m sitting in a coffee shop awaiting the return of the dinosaurs, longing for the simplicity of tooth and claw. But today all I see are birds, who, by all accounts, are the last remaining lineage of dinosaurs. You could argue that this diminishes one’s fantasies about the prehistoric age, and yet this knowledge has given me more respect for this cardinal, happily perched on my birdfeeder, not to mention the fat drab robin, who arrives each morning to torment my pug outside our sliding glass doors.

****

A philosophical theorem in the shape of a dream where a very holy man in a straw hat appears at my bedside to calmly explain that evil people are composed from the snot of the Devil (who really does exist, by the way). You will of course dispute this on the same grounds you won’t accept, despite considerable evidence, that the skunk is a metaphor for the human heart. What I’m arguing here is that, at the current time, our overriding problem is the existence of a surplus of reality. Gone are the figments of the imagination—the hard-earned symbolism and hocus pocus that defines who we really are. What to do when a rat is merely a rat? The next thing you know the unimaginative will make suffering commonplace, instead of just pointing to the mark of the Serpent’s bite illustrated in a holy book that no one reads anymore.

****

This from Eduardo Galeano’s The Book of Embraces:

On his deathbed, a man of the Vineyard’s spoke into Marcela’s ear. Before dying, he revealed his secret.

“The grape,” he whispered, “is made of wine.”

Marcela Perez-Silva told me this, and I thought: If the grape is made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell who we are.

****

She says, “I’m dying. Right now,” which naturally attracts the attention of other patients in the waiting room. “I can see Jesus,” she says. “He’s floating towards me.” “What does he look like?” I ask. “He’s beautiful with long shiny blond hair, just like in the paintings. “Pray for my son, Peter!” she says—an exclamation accompanied by a death rattle that sends other patients scurrying.

An hour later, we’re sitting at Ted’s Texas Red Hots eating footlongs with all the trimmings, knowing Jesus will have to wait until another day.

****

Today an ex-president called migrants “animals,” a black prosecutor a “racist,” and warned of an inevitable “bloodbath” if he weren’t elected president—all in one speech. A kind of a Trifecta of Insanity. And still half the country will vote for him, believing they are significant characters in a limited series, instead of smug atheists, who after dying, will become terrified as they come face-to-face with a very pissed-off God.

Meanwhile on a quiet spring day bursting with joy, I contemplate a lifetime of stubbles I have shaved off my face, not to mention all the diapers I have changed.

****

Autocracy: Repetition waiting in a dark alley with its heavy blackjack, poised to bludgeon the marvelous into submission.