 |
| Photo By Carolina Lindsay Photography |
Jim continues to open, read, mentally catalogue, and destroy the garbage that encompasses his desk. As he works and drinks, the vehemence of his thoughts gives way to a dull, numb, gnawing desire to be done for the night. Still, he reads on, and as time drains and presses, he finds he has only one letter left for the night. He never reads the return addresses on the envelopes, and this one is no exception. He merely notes that it is addressed to Dr. James Bentley and rips open the top, (it having progressed far too late in the evening, and he having progressed far too deep into his open can to continue bothering with the letter-opener.) and reads:
Dr. Bentley:
You may be surprised upon opening this letter to find that I, an old Chemistry student of yours, should spend time writing you a letter, especially one that has very little to do with the subject of Chemistry, or any other scientific pursuit. I never would have pinned you down as a man of the arts, and so when I heard that you would be carrying out Rob's project in its entirety, I was surprised. Pleasantly, of course, but surprised nonetheless. Please excuse me if I address the remainder of my letter to Rob. I know it seems strange, a boy I passed in the coffee shop a few times, and stranger that he is no longer with us. I'm not sure why, but I think I would feel better if I told him how he changed me. Please excuse this little indulgence.
Rob:
People always talk about how they wish that they could talk to and thank those who have passed on. I decided not to waste any time on wishes, and just talk to you. Your project will be open to the public in a few days, but I have a confession to make: I have seen it! Alone, not with one of the touring groups. I snuck over the gate last night and wandered amidst the rocks, metal, mirrors, and the colors for four or five hours before coming back to and sneaking out unnoticed. I'm not sure how many others have done the same, but I would assume others have wanted to. I'm sure you can understand that we are all dying to "see what we've been missing."
I will admit that, at first, I felt nothing but disappointment. I just stood there in the middle of the field, looking at all of the foreign objects, the numbers, the formulas, all so carefully placed and measured, and I thought, "wonderful! Just like every other piece of art I've ever seen! It is worthless and makes no sense." I will admit that the only thing that kept me there was having known you. I told myself, "You knew the artist. Give him more of a chance than you've given everyone else!" So I sat, and I waited, and waited, and waited. It got cold, and I zipped my jacket tighter and waited some more. I wish that I could say it was right at sunrise, when the first morning rays hit my eyes that some great illumination came to me, or in the witching hour when some fairy ring appeared, and revealed all that I had been lacking. Honestly, I'm not sure what time it was when I realized what you had been getting at. Or, I guess what I see in it. If someone were to ask me right now what it "means" I would tell them: it means that it means. There is meaning everywhere, if we want to look for it. When we look hard, we are rewarded, and we come away better people. If we dismiss, we are the ones who suffer. Your work is a celebration of meaning, and of man's search for it, and his conquering of the unknown. The unknown will always become known with enough determination--perhaps a lot of patience, and a good wind-breaker. Shoot, it's probably a bit of faith as well. To escape finding meaning is to deny our nature.
Thank you for showing me that, I had definitely been missing it.
-Sylvia (from the coffee shop)
The only outward indication that Jim hesitates over finishing this last letter the way that he has finished the others is a slight deviance in his normally impeccable timing. He takes one long sip from his can before folding the letter again and inserting it back in its destroyed envelope. He may also let it fall just a bit more slowly over the scorching heat. The flame that follows, lying on top of the ashtray, has become a perfect lighter for one more piece of paper. Jim snatches The Professor in his Ideal and drops it on top of the burning mess. He knows he should have done it long ago. There is no reason to hold on to yesterday, or to think about tomorrow. All the days are the same, aren’t they? He stares blankly on, not registering the irony that the paper, writhing and twisting over the smoke-stained metal, has become the perfect visual to accompany the sound of an ambulance, several streets away, rushing off to some new emergency.
Almost done! Here are parts Five and Six. Just one more part after this!
It is interesting that the two of them had become friends at all. No. “Friends” isn’t even the appropriate word; more like colleagues. Though Jim was nearly thirty-five years Rob's senior, the young artist had been convinced that he could change the old professor's views. Jim, likewise, wanted to change Rob's views. Not for Rob's sake, for his own.
"If I could just convince one more wide-eyed dreamer that the only 'reason' or 'meaning' in things are chemical processes, I could retire a happy man." He had once said to his housekeeper, whose name may or may not have been Nancy. He had started calling her that on the first day she had begun working for him, and had never bothered to ask if her name was, in fact, Nancy.
“Nancy” never seems to mind. She never asks questions, or responds to his tirades. She simply looks at her employer when he talks, as though out of some vocational obligation, and then she turns around when he finishes talking and continues on with her duties. He loves her for it, and never asks her to respond, somehow sensing that he will be severely disappointed if she were ever to answer.
Jim knows that he never made any progress with the boy just as well as Rob knew that he never made a dent in the belief system of his elder. During their almost weekly meetings in Jim's office, the two of them would take turns speaking. One week Jim would talk at Rob who would nod over and over without responding. When Jim was through discussing chemical processes, natural selection, and the chaos of the world, Rob would nod more solemnly. After Jim had been through talking for thirty seconds or more, Rob would rise from his chair, shake Jim's hand, and exit the room, always turning back when Jim asked, "where are you going?" to reply with something like, "out there, to see if anyone needs anything."
The first time he had said it, Jim had scoffed, and asked, "Out where? And who needs anything?" Rob had just replied, "I don't know. I guess I might just end up over at the library going over some notes. I just want to feel like I made a difference somewhere today, you know?" The chemist had shrugged. He didn’t know. And then, the artist had walked out.
On the other weeks, it was unofficially Rob's turn to talk, and his speeches were (to Jim) endless. Rob talked about how things were "meant to be" and how the world was infused with meaning just waiting to be discovered by an inquisitive mind.
"What is it that you want, Rob" he had asked one such afternoon. It wasn't like him to ask questions after Rob took his informal turn. He would usually say something along the lines of, “you'd better run along kid, I've got exams to grade.” And if Rob was lucky he would add, "Good luck to you this week." But on this particular occasion, for no particular reason, he could not help asking it.
The response was annoyingly familiar. "I want to show people what they have been missing."
"That's what he would always say!" Jim roars aloud to the hungry flame of the candle.
"He wanted to show people what they had been missing. I'll be hanged if I ever knew exactly how he was hoping to accomplish this task." Jim closes his lips in thought, and switches his audible, yet one-sided conversation to the inside of his head. He had known about Rob's project from the moment it was conceived. He had occasionally patted himself on the back for having been the first to hear about it.
Rob had come practically running into Jim's office, had sat down in his usual chair, opened his notebook and shoved it under the other man's nose. In black ballpoint ink, Rob had amassed a million chicken-scratches, and above them scrawled the words "MY MAGNUM OPUS!" From the look on his face, he must have been expecting a reaction out of his older mentor. But Jim remained unmoved.
"What does it mean, Rob? I'm not an artist."
"This is it. This is what people have been missing. I have finally got all of my plans made."
"What plans? Where are these plans?"
Rob signaled his forehead. "Where they belong. I will work strictly from my head."
"It's pretty convenient that he worked straight from his head. His head was the only thing that didn't survive the crash." Jim spits, now back to voicing his recollections.
"Funny, when planes crash in movies, they always burn. Not Rob's. It almost looked as though nothing had gone awry, like the plane didn't fall far."
He never can remember, this late at night, what it was that the authorities had said about the accident. Malfunction of something or other. Wasn't a malfunction of some piece of equipment the problem behind all failures? Why do authorities need to make statements about such things? Arbitrary, pointless, mundane, ordinary. Exactly like the letters he spends his Sunday evenings reading. He has heard it all by now. As the press photos had begun to leak, the letters had started to come in by the dozens. As special pre-release guided tours had sent hundreds into the prairies, the letters had come in by the bag-load. They all vary in their opinions of the work, but it is all the same drivel to Jim.
He now reviews some of the best ones in his mind, the center where he has stored quotes from these letters, like some catalogue of all that is ridiculous.
"It is almost as if Smith was foretelling his own tragic death in this work." Or, “It is such a stark metaphor for his difficult childhood, illustrating the early death of his absentee father, and the humiliation at being put through school by his elderly mother.” Or, “It is clearly a commentary on current political unrest, calling for new unification between differing political parties.”
He knows others would scorn his entertainment, but it is not possible to suppress laughter when one regularly reads such tomfoolery as,
I have seen pictures online of the project that is about to launch. The juxtaposition of all of the red and blue in the rocks at the west end of the exhibit gives such a startling insight on what it means to be an American. I was so inspired by the pictures; I hope to take my wife and kids to see it when it opens in a few weeks. Thank you.
Jim has a keen mind, and it doesn’t take him long to memorize the gist of these letters before he sets them to burn. It is all so delicious. It is all so close to what he had expected would happen. It is justification, and he is angry that Rob no longer exists to see himself proved so utterly and entirely wrong. If, when Rob was alive, Jim had ever worried that his belief system was being rocked by the stubborn enthusiasm of some snot-nosed 23-year-old kid, all of the worry is now eaten up as the flames climb to claim each sheet of worthless propaganda. All of it goes up in smoke. All of the "I am profoundly inspired" "I am moved beyond expression" "I have begun looking at the world in a new way" "I went home and hugged my kids a little tighter" "It gave me the courage to go back to school" "The exhibit inspired me to start drafting a letter to a child who ran away from home twenty years ago, one I vowed to cut myself off from."—these all had burnt beautifully, even if the plane hadn't.
Jim has hoarded Rob's notebooks. Nobody must ever see those, those alleged blueprints. No one must ever know that Jim works from no blueprint. Guided instead by a twisted sense of vindication. It is so easy to make a pretense at being a genius, especially with such a story.
Jim is sorry that Rob is gone, isn’t he? There are plenty of things he misses, of course. He'd grown quite accustomed to their talks. He had almost even become accustomed to never getting through. Yes, Jim is sorry that Rob is gone; but it had happened. It had worked out perfectly to allow for this little experiment.
Jim catches his thought.
“No, it didn't ‘work out perfectly’ it wasn't fated. It just happened. He died, and I took advantage of that. 'Show people what they're missing.' I'll show them what they're missing! No, no I won't. They'll never know that there were no blueprints. They will never know that I worked, just as Rob did, from my head, and that I never put a thought into the placement of the boulders, the direction of the lines, the reflection of the mirrors. They will never know that what they are missing is that there is nothing to miss! The spectacle is in their heads, and they had better stick to the hard sciences; because, at the end of the day, if you crash a plane and hit your head hard enough, that is that. That is what really matters."
Jim ends this recollection, letting the remembrance of his epithets serve as the triumphant cadence to this little memory. Yet, he still finds himself unable to progress further in his routine. His memory has made him intent on finding something—something that he put away several years ago, and has not seen since. Standing, he draws near a grey metal filing cabinet in the corner of his home office. He forces open the top drawer without deploying the release lever and riffles through the dog-earned folders until his fingers meet the one he has been looking for. In opening it, a thin sheet of sketchbook paper slides noiselessly onto the thread-worn rug below. Jim doesn't bother picking it up, he just looks at it from above. It is another sketch, drawn by the same boy and of the same subject. In the sketch, Jim stands at the front of a crowded classroom, one hand raised to the blackboard, indicating an equation, the other hand outstretched to the students, as if beckoning them to understand the relevance of the formula to the everyday. Jim had merely laughed when Rob handed it to him three weeks after the coffee shop incident; laughed, and then filed it with other documents of mild interest.
The art student had begun to attend the lectures on Thursday afternoons, as well as several others during the week. At first Jim had been annoyed, and had approached him about it. But Rob had merely said,
"Sylvia, the girl in the coffee shop, she really helped me see that day what I had been missing out on. There is this whole other realm of knowledge, another level to the complexities and the interconnectedness of everything, just passing me by. I don’t understand everything you're saying now, but I think it’s interesting, and important, and I want to learn it."
It wasn’t like Jim to consent to something of that nature, not only that it was against University policy to allow any student to regularly attend a lecture that he or she was not properly registered for, but it seemed an annoyance to have a smart-aleck art kid hovering over all of his lectures, sketching at random, and pretending to be interested in the material. Perhaps Rob had decided that Sylvia was a girl he wouldn't mind buying a latte for more often, and was hoping to impress. Why else would a busy art student be interested in learning Chemistry? Jim didn’t have the answers. He did not even know why he had nodded in consent to Rob's eager question, or why he had smiled to himself once he had turned away.
Though at the time he had not known his motivations, now, standing in his office, looking down at the sketch, he instinctively knows why he had not been bothered by Rob's presence in the class. One did not need to observe the boy for long, sitting in the back of the room, with a wide smile, and a ready pen, to realize that this art student was more interested in assigning Oxidation Numbers than many of the pre-med students were.
What professor wouldn't be enthusiastic about an avid learner? Besides, the good Dr. had had many years of experience in showing idealists how the world truly worked. He lived for those moments when students came into him at the end of a semester and said, "I used to be religious until I took this class, and then I learned how things REALLY work. Thanks, Dr!"
Now, back to that drawing. Jim picks up the sketch and turns it over. For: Dr. James Bentley, October 15 19-- The Professor at his ideal. From: A (not so) Damned Idealist. Jim does not bother to suppress a smile when he reads it. It is the first smile he has allowed himself over the incident in all the eight months. Yet, the reader need not hope that Jim's smile is a sign of his acceptance of the tragedy. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing to accept. The news of the plane crash had come just as the news of rising gasoline prices, or the start of another construction project outside of the apartment window. It wasn't good news, but it was nothing that could be helped, and one had to deal with it as one dealt with other annoyances.
No, the smile is not acceptance; it is more of an outward indication that Jim has realized just how right he had been in his diagnosis of Rob. He had been damned, from the very beginning, because he was always out looking for some meaning, some ideal that could not be found, because it was not there. He'd died for it, and no one had been the wiser. Men may die in battle, Jim reasons, but if the war is lost, the people simply adapt to a new way of life, and the dead soldiers are forgotten. As soon as he thinks it, he feels proud of some alleged literary ability.
A lost battle—interesting metaphor. Art like this is good.
Jim shoves the sketch back in the envelope and tosses it onto the desk. He then picks up the letter once again, and finishes scanning it without comprehension of its meaning. Upon completion, he folds it, places it back and in the envelope, and holds it steadily over the raw, open flame of a candle set in the center of the cluttered desk. The edge of the paper resists momentarily, as if asserting its right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And then, it gives way—wretches, folds, blackens, smokes, and crumbles. He tosses it onto the ashtray and watches the flame shrivel and die on the scorched metal surface.
One down, hundreds to go.
Jim opens the next letter.
Dear Robert: It feels strange to pen those words, I never met you, but I feel like I had. The day I saw the interview on the television of the hikers who found your plane out in the desert, I cried for an hour. I don't understand why I felt so sad that you were gone, but I feel the world was a better place because of your project, and I think it's delightful that you asked Dr. Bentley to continue it for you.
Jim is smart. He knows that what is truly "delightful" is that so many of Rob's admirer's believe that he, James Bentley, had actually been asked to continue the project. Even Rob's own ailing mother seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world. It wasn't any great task to convince everyone that this was the way it was supposed to be. Conveniently, Rob had mailed several notebooks back to the University, in the care of James Bentley, just two days before his accident. It was almost too easy to pretend that the notebooks had been filled with notes, and sketches meant only for the eyes of the man who could finish the project, in the sad event that it became necessary for a successor. In reality, the notebooks were little more than nomadic sketches of people Rob had met along his travels, flying about the United States, scouting out sites for his accursed project. The boy had thought the notebooks cumbersome in his backpack, and had shipped them to the University in order to lighten his load.
A professor with such a long-standing tenure had experienced little opposition to his sudden artistic tyranny, and had not had a moment’s trouble in getting the press to zero in on his story: a heartbroken mentor struggling to finish the project started by his protégée in the very flower of his youth, and so on and so forth. Any sob story to make the people's hearts go pitter-patter and the donations for the project began pouring in by the hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it wasn't hard to hire men to go into the prairies of the mid-west for days at a time, laden with measuring tapes and clipboards making rounds, taking notes, talking in hushed tones while thousands gathered to watch the historic process. People would stand back and cry, and talk about how “beautiful” it all was. In his days serving the marines, Jim had learned that if you punch someone in the nose, it makes their eyes water. These people thought that tears meant something deep, that they were an outer-manifestation of some inner secret that they all shared, that this 'project' would help everyone to see what they had never before seen. Jim knew that they were just reacting to the punch.
Part two of the story I started posting here.
"Art is the vehicle of truth that allows us to transcend the mundane of the everyday, and yet realize the beauty of the everyday all in the same moment."
Jim had turned instinctively when, three years before, he’d first heard the young voice unapologetically announcing its bold definition. Even though it is now a worn memory, the opening line of the speech always makes Jim turn, and look. Keep in mind the scene that the professor sets on the stage of his imagination changes slightly each time it is conjured again. Today it is a dimly lit room, flooded with the garishly blue hues of a colorless sunrise. The smell of last night's cigarette smoke lacks the fresh, artistic waft it had inherently possessed the previous evening and is, as morning breaks, reduced to a stale, perverse stench. There are not many persons present, as it is too early an hour for the morning rush.
On turning, Jim finds the source of the declaration in the form of two wide black eyes, staring confidently at a certain listener—a young girl of about eighteen—with unwavering determination. The mass of short black curls that accompanies the eyes could neither be comfortably described as collected, or as unkempt, and so their description is, according Jim's inexpert perception, left at 'skillfully unruly'.
Apparently unaware of the new and intent set of listening ears, the young man speaks again.
"It would not be necessary to have art at all if we knew everything, so I like to think of it as a classroom, or a lens through which the world is revealed to us. Revealed safely. Think of it! A world where you can explore a range of possibilities, and all without really changing a thing.”
Acting on an impulse, one closely related to not wanting to be outdone, the girl responds.
"Well. I am studying with the hope of attending medical school. Take Biology, for instance, there are a million processes that go on in you and me everyday. When I learn about them, I think, it's life changing! The world should be different because of this process! But then I realize that it was going on long before I knew about it. Nothing has changed, but it seems it should have. That's a cliché, I guess. But it does make the everyday much more interesting. Science is like art then. Only more useful. I am going to go to medical school, and save lives."
As he listens, Jim finds his principles aligning with the young woman's, so he wonders why he feels she is getting in over her head; and why, if it is indeed an argument he is observing, he feels that the young man is winning.
The boy, being of an obvious better nature than Jim, simply laughs. No reserve, no guile, no pretense—taking unfiltered joy in the conversation alone. He doesn't seem to care that what he has said would have, under most other circumstances, paled in comparison to her trump card. Sadly for the lover of sport, the lad lacks a certain sense of pride that makes one doggedly determined to be right, and Jim can see his mind mulling over what the girl has said. In that moment, Jim knows why the girl is losing the argument. She isn't listening to her opponent, but her opponent is listening to her.
"You misunderstand me!" The boy says with a grin, as soon as his laughter has finished pouncing through the mostly-empty building. "I do not think that art is the only means of finding meaning in the everyday. Finding meaning, anywhere, is valid. I would never discourage anyone from looking for that, no matter how he chose to carry on that search."
His clarification seems passable to her. Still watching, even in his mind’s eye, even years later, Jim is angry at her inability to give a thorough rebuttal. Instead of giving a thought-out answer, she resorts to the oldest trick in the book.
"So what do you want to do with it? Your art degree, I mean." As she speaks, the girl unconsciously holds a Chemistry textbook close to her, challenging the boy with both her dialogue and her body language.
The visual cue of the textbook signals to Jim that he has seen this girl before. She is in his lecture, weekday afternoons. He knows nothing else of her, except that now she appears to be a driveling idiot, but there is hardly an opportunity to dwell on that in the present moment. There is barely enough time between the girl's question and the boy's answer for Jim to mutter quietly, “Ah, the art student's favorite question. It will be interesting to see what this kid comes up with.”
The boy's answer is immediate and intentional.
"I plan to help others see what they are missing."
The sincerity of his response leaves an odd flavor in the air, as if what he has said, and what she had expected him to say, have become opposing forces, wrestling above the table between them and effectively bringing an end to their conversation. It would have been too perfect for someone to have actually coughed in that moment, but in Jim’s mind, in this little reminiscence, someone coughs, and the stalemate silence is broken. In reality, the inciting sound was the bell on the hill, tolling the hour.
"I have to go.” she explains, grabbing her bag, standing, and turning toward the door. "But it was nice meeting you, Rob. Thank you for the coffee, and… good luck, with… everything." She blunders off carting a sort of saved-by-the-bell attitude, pausing only momentarily to acknowledge the un-invited spectator.
"Good morning, Dr. Bentley, see you in class later." She mutters, inclining her head, and clutching her book tighter, as if to say, I have been studying for your class, so give me good marks, no matter what my actual performance.
In the matter of fairness, one must acknowledge that it is only in these re-creations that Jim has time to analyze the girl's body language. At the time, he’d thought nothing of her book, or the way she held it. Only in these moments of reflection does he realize that because she had lost the argument for science, she had left him with a bitter gnawing sensation that could only be interpreted to one end: he was ashamed to call himself her professor.
It must have been her acknowledgement of him that made the younger man turn to appraise Jim as well. Whatever the catalyst for the analysis, we must watch on to see how it plays out.
Rob nods in an unfamiliar salute and then smiles openly. The smile is all frankness, doling out understanding, not asking for it in return. Jim finds it smug beyond all reason.
"You must be a man of science yourself." the boy speaks, uninvited, but not necessarily unexpected, or (difficult as it is for Jim to acknowledge it) unwanted.
"I am."
"And what did you think of my speech, or didn't you hear it?"
"I heard it."
"And..."
"What?"
"What do you think of me?"
"You want the truth?" Jim spits, and then without waiting for an answer, delivers one of his self-termed 'blows'. "Good, because I always give it. I think you're just another damned idealist."
So clever is he, he hardly has to think before speaking. His opinions are quick to form and slow to waiver. Jim has turned around without waiting for, or wanting a response from the overly eager student. Silence returns to the little room, as it is still too early for much of a rush. The professor promptly finishes his coffee, reads three chapters of his book and gathers his things to leave before his spiteful adrenaline allows him to look again at the table where the younger man sits. Jim has begun to suspect that the lad has escaped out the back way to avoid walking past his table, but finds himself mistaken; for there Rob is, still sitting in his chair, scrawling in a black pocket notebook, pausing every few moments to glance in the direction of the older man and then back down again.
"What are you doing, young man?" Jim snarls, already suspecting the answer.
"Sketching you."
Were anyone walking behind Jim, just now, as he storms out of the cafe, they may be startled to hear him repeating the words "damned idealist" over and over, as though he can use his heated words to warm the raw air that claims him as he steps into an outside world—a world slavishly at its task, dressing itself in a cold, damp, dirty layer of autumn fog.
Again, to be continued... thanks for reading.
