The Quietism of Andy

It makes me feel pleasantly insignificant.

The cluttered descent into memory.

consumed.

The bubbles make an interesting escape. There is a point on the glass; all of the bubbles rise from this point. It seems completely arbitrary—an anomalous weak point between the world of solution and precipitate. They stop just before penetrating the surface. Can bubbles experience fear? The line up suddenly becomes a line to the side of the glass—a right angle of carbon-oxygen-oxygen lemmings, so excited to rush to freedom but too terrified to take it. The anxious little runaways gather at the edge of the glass, and one by one are pushed into the gaseous anonymity of my room’s atmosphere. Freedom at the price of insignificance…

I’ve been sitting at the edge for far too long. My doubts do not matter now, because my course has been determined long long ago. Freedom is my final destination, but how much longer can I linger here before I am pushed into insignificance?

1000 Words about champagne bubble lemmings.

[scene]

One time during his later years, an aged and weary Andrew sat down at a café on a warm California Christmas Eve.

“Is there something I can get you today, sir?” asked the waitress.

Her name was Reagan. She was a student at the nearby university—a junior studying business and world economics—and worked just short of 40 hours-a-week as a part-time employee.

(The manager used this strategy with a number of waiters and waitresses so that he could have nearly-full-time workers without having to provide them with full-time worker benefits.)

“I’d like what he is having,” replied Andrew with a wink as he gestured to an attractive young couple a few tables away.

There was an exhausted, cold, seriousness to the statement which caused Reagan to stumble a moment while attempting to figure out if the old man was joking or not. She finally decided that it was mostly jest, and that Andrew was referring to the thin, attractive, wide-eyed companion of the young man.

The young woman had rich brown eyes and straight brown hair that fell just below her shoulders. She was dressed plainly but well, and was madly in love with her handsome young escort.

(In less than five hours, she would be overwhelmed with joy as the young man presented her with a modest but elegant diamond engagement ring. It would be nothing spectacular—just the traditional bended knee, solemn, request for marriage—but at that moment she would believe that she was the most beloved woman ever to exist. And perhaps she would be correct.)

But Andrew was not referring to the young man’s companion. He was not referring to the man’s entrée or beverage either. Nor was he referring to the youth, health, beauty, or modest wealth. What Andrew desired was the young man’s appreciation for all that life had provided for him and the unconcern for all that life had withheld from him.

“The Bourbon Street Chicken with Rice?” inquired Reagan with some hesitance.

“Yes, that would be wonderful,” Andrew responded, “with a glass of lemonade, please.”

[/scene]

It is like a dueling banjo competition, with either side plucking the chords of light until an overwhelming fevered pitch is reached and one side emerges the victor. The challenger from the East is slow to warm up, but always wins; and the once-proud West is put out. But regard for a wandering prodigy fades as quickly as its warmth, and soon the once-proud and now-deposed West begins to shine again.

Houston was also beautiful to see from the air. First it was just a few glowing clouds beneath the plane, then the light began to break through the clouds as we got closer. As we passed through the clouds, the city began to emerge, appearing like a vast volcanic plain of the far North. Thick clusters and thin strands of golden orange lights looking like volcanic hot-spots and magma veins. Large patches of darkness—interrupted by bluish-greenish lights resembling glacial ice patches that capture and release the light from the moon and magma pools—appear as newly-hardened or melting basalt and obsidian.

Praise the heavens.
There is a strangely warm and luminous rain on a cold night in Morgantown.
It reminds me of nature’s grace and beauty, despite all this human grafitti that we call civilization.

Even as the cold touch of nature’s indifference penetrates my denim hide,
I have never been more grateful to be a simple insignificant animal on the lonely blue planet in the lonely milky galaxy.

In anticipation of my upcoming twenty-second birthday, I have composed a haiku sequal to last year’s. It carries on with the blackjack as a metaphor for life theme.

Happy Birthday Andrew! (2004)

Twenty-two is bust.
I am over twenty-one,
can I quit the game?

©12/08/2003

Sydney Smith (1771–1845), a witty parson, writes the following in his Sketches of Moral Philosophy:
If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other.

To which Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain) contributes:
A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

But to which I reflect:
If we look back, we find that the triangular person is to blame for the square person’s having to squeeze into the round hole. I resent having to change in order to find my place in life and (most likely uncomfortably) fit in.