Define Success (Part 1)

No excuses and no answers, but I'll tell you what I know. All claw hammer and all "time to go"

I'm in little position to proselytize, to be sure, but I believe my anxiety pins together the myriad pains, boredoms and tribulations. Without an actualization of this we all see ourselves as something far less than complete, without an honest evaluation of its degree we merely prolong our inevitable disappointment and yet this personally variable concept goes without extrapolation for most of us.

Without a definition of success every point of pride is easily diminished, every failure unacceptable yet expectable, every step merely that and not neccessarily up or forward.

As people, and thus inward thinking and a bit feeble, it may be easiest to look at how many self-proclaimed successful individuals quantify this elusive success:

1) Money:
The world is run by very rich people, the richest of whom virtually always gaining their wealth well within the laws of a "free society" and yet with utter disrespect for those they'd shared a nursery with. Wealth is a welcome byproduct of success and a possible indicator of influence (more on this later) but what is this more than the acceleration of quite primitive desires and a degree of paranoia manifested in compulsion? Is this not the animalistic survival instinct (that is, tooth and nail struggle for life's essentials) exaggerated by our species' unprecedented means? Is greed any indication of a mental evolution? While the root of greed may be an essential (the push to obtain life's neccessities) hardly anyone could call it's apex personal success, no matter their creed.

2)Piety:
It can be said that when all else fails there is god. When the profound questions of the universe stand in stark challenge to the handful of knowledge we typically have, the readymade answers are easiest. One can sleep at night in the warm glow of their powerful imagination, comfortable in the knowledge that when all this anguish is over he or she will be rewarded by having held tight to what they'd been told. Faith trumps all for many: fact, impulse, aspirations, ability, determination. Faith treats success as it treats all other aspects of life, in the simplistic terms of conformity, repression. Faith allows one to give up all the wonder of life on earth to the easiest , simplest possiblity. I believe it was Nietzche who said: "For every difficult question there is an answer that is simple, clear and wrong." Faith allows success without effort, or rather with the effort it takes to fail classes or lose jobs. To truly define success we must understand what the point of all this sputtering and bustling is, faith restricts this question's investigation


3)Influence:
Virtually anyone labeled "successful" has had at least the degree of influence to attract that label. Influence can come politically, artistically, interpersonally (that is, affecting change in the life of another) or philosophically (for convienence let this category include religion). Influence is not positive or negative; however, the concept of influence introduces the dicotomy of good and bad into the discussion of success.

"The Dichotomy of Good and Bad"
Despite scientific abberation to describing things in terms of human perspective, influence can only truly be measured under the subjective terms of opinion. This condition does not stress popularity as much as it does demonstrable impact on the way groups change their behavior, performance or belief. Influence frequently comes as a result of one or more of efficiency (the "Engineer" definition of improvement, objective completion, conservation in pursuit of goals, problem resolution or mitigation, etc), innovation (introduction of something new and useful, be it idea, product or process) or "by example" (typifying any of society's wirtues of reliability, bravery, strength, creativity, honesty, foresight etc etc).


This, at best, only slightly clarifies the problem of defining success. Great heroes and great villians can both still be considered successful in the vagaries I've detailed. To further understand what success means, the human perception of positive action and negative action must be explored. Human beings rely on a strict morality that has essentially been handed down since time immemorable; this morality is often thought of as universal, manifesting among the faithful as God being the ultimate good and Satan being the ultimate evil. However, the precepts of these simplistic morals are in two ways flawed:

1)They speak only to humans:
An age-old argument for the existence of god goes something like this:
"Do you believe in a universal good and bad?" Asks the theologian, noting with pride how reluctant anyone would be to answer in the negative. Moral relativism is on par with evil even amongst the most agnostic minds.
"Why, yes" responds the athiest.
"Can you think of anything that is good that is not related to a person or a group of people?" the theologian continues.
After a moment of contemplation the atheist answers: "Not as such, sir, no"
"Then how can the ultimate good in the world not be personified?"
This trick, of course, is expected to leave many a slack-jawed doubter and set one on the course to conversion. The issue with this isn't whether or not moral relativism exists (more on this later), but the second question. The athiest is stumped in this part of the "proof" because, in essence, it is a trick question.
We, human beings, have evolved to a certain, arguably advanced, stage of mental power. At the root of this mental power is a "drive" to increased development based on survival and proliferation. Somewhere, likely very early, we developed a binary categorical impulse; we learned to put everything in our environment into the "good" category or the "bad" category. Our basis for these categorizations was, of course, what these items meant to US or our tribe. Edible plants are good, poison ivy is bad. Fire is good to keep warm by, but it is bad if it touches your skin. Everything is categorized by what things do to us and what things can do for us when properly manipulated. We never had a reason to wonder whether the wind was good for the air, whether the river was good for the rock, or whether we were good for the deer. Even now we would have a difficult time saying any of these things were good or bad unless they somehow affected us. For example, if we kill too many animals (through force or deforestation) there may not be anything for us to eat. The reason the athiest in the above example cannot think of anything "good" outside of humans is because our brains simply do not work that way. The theologian points to God simply because he lacks imagination (as do we all); he favors the simplest explanation that requires the least investigation. Whether there is an ultimate good or not, the conditions of it will not be limited by our imaginations.

2)They consist of only "Shall Not"
Among the morals handed to us are a great many "Thou Shalt Not"s, most of which we can all agree on. However, the more nuanced positions of these same institutions are often left ignored by all but the most devout. While "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a commandment, "Thou Shalt Realize Thou's Potential" remains an unimportant vow. it would be exceedingly difficult for an individual of any faith to deem a fellow human "successful" merely because he or she never murdered anyone or coveted their neighbor's wife (BTW: do women then only have 9 commandments?) , thus it seems willfully lazy to imagine that simply following these simple rules ("commandments") are enough to be "successful".

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After the War (VI)

This is the last ten pages or so. Thanks

The window became a point of contention and for a few seconds there was a nearly imperceptible line in the sand. Dr. Prang and Stanley seemed set on opening it, providing the room with fresh (if humid and hot) air. Br. Quinn and his equally irrational cohort Dr. Jiles sat on the other side of the line. It was a poetic moment to notice their striking resistance to change. Wes paid no attention to the discussion and rubbed his aching hip with decorum.

“Listen,” said Stanley. Amplifying his voice to ensure importance. “We’re going to open all the windows and the doors and see if we can’t get some kind of cross-draft. If you two don’t think it’s a good idea, no one is begging you to stick around.”

At that, Dr. Prang, Stanley and I set to opening all the windows. We returned with a pitcher of water and Prang blurting unannounced:

“So, brother Quinn. What do you think God has to do with this?”

“God? Have you looked down on the people below us Prang. Their group is growing.”

“And they seem so,” Dr. Jiles struggled with her diction “They seem so agitated.”

I looked down to see that there were fists pumping and shouting in a few sections of the crowd. I felt a twinge of their outrage. Somewhere down there an impoverished man felt power in screaming the English translation of those same mantras shouted in a Sri Lankin factory, or a Mexican field, or a Soviet breadline. Someone was demanding to know when enough was enough, or counting down the dwindling list of things that were yet to be taken away. A hard listen may have produced “The time is now!”. But then again, I’ve always been a timid revolutionary. Even if this “agitation” was simply revelatory or boredom-induced the community pillars in my room were visibly nervous, save Dr. Prang. The lower class, hell even the middle-class, was not supposed to behave outside of the status quo, no matter the weather. A parade, a riot, a block party, whatever, the citizens were not supposed to congregate in the middle of the afternoon. They were not supposed to mingle in the streets as the day approached rush hour.

“This is not an act of God, Albert. Can’t you see that. This is the act of evil. The devil opening the doors of temptation by pushing people out into the streets. Encouraging looting, promiscuity, all manner of … “

“Wait, back up Quinn.” Responded Dr. Prang, his hair was wet with sweat, especially the front, and several strands matted to his forehead. His glasses slipped down his nose, and he pushed them up with a disciplined index finger. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“When something like this happens,” Dr. Jiles, fighting to stay relevant “people have a lapse of judgment, they may do things that they regret.”

“Olivia, please let me respond to this .. . “ rapidly staring Dr. Prang up and down. By capillary action his collar was now wet with sweat. He took a deep breath “this heathen. The devil has tempted you as well Prang, with science and lies. God has tested your faith and you have lost.”

“Amazing.” Dr. Prang chuckled. “Well I . . .”

Brother Bobby Quinn, now standing at the precipice between my kitchen and the room we sat in, shook with rage. I heard his teeth grind.

“I don’t know how to respond to that. Why don’t you take things for what they are instead of trying to fit your strict definition around it . . .”

“I’ve heard enough!” His yell threw both perspiration and sweat at Dr. Prang’s feet.

“That’s part of your problem too, Quinn. See, your beliefs were all well and good several hundred years ago when no one knew better. What’s supposed to happen, what would happen if people like you would allow others to come to their own conclusions is that . .well people might think about things. New information could come to light and. . .”

Brother Quinn leapt towards Dr. Prang with a knife; my kitchen knife from my butcher’s block, and stabbed him in the chest. Dr. Prang stared at him for a moment and then closed his eyes. He betrayed no pain.

There was no predetermined protocol for response. Dr. Prang fell to the floor and for a brief moment Brother Quinn stood over him, embodying all sin and temptation. Prang pulled the knife out of himself as he lay on his back and an instantaneous arc of blood shot up onto Quinn’s shirt.

“What have I done?”

There was the requisite screaming, two bodyguards rushing thru the door, a tackle to the ground. The guilty screamed louder than all of us, pain and anguish beneath Wes’s troglodytes. By that time I was on the ground at Prang’s wound, pulling his shirt off.

“Why .. .why .. .” Dr.Jiles tried to speak through tense lips and the beginnings of tears. “Why would he DO that? How can a person . . .oh jesus .. .how can a person kill another person?”

I was the first to tend to Dr. Prang’s wound. I hesitated for a moment, assuming I had none of the knowledge or that my status at the bottom of the totem pole precluded me from response in an emergency. In my periphery I tried to keep tabs on the movements of the rest of the group; this quickly escalating drama needed to be somehow retained for history. The pot had certainly come to boil. I took off my shirt and used it to apply pressure to Prang’s wound and looked up at Wes.

“What are we going to do Wes? We need to call the police . . or . . I don’t know. What do we do?!”

Wes thought about it for several seconds; looked at the wound, looked at me now smeared in blood and looked at his own clothing for specks of the same substance. After a moment’s pause for deliberation he promptly stood up from the stool and left. He sidestepped his bodyguards (now trying to bring a zip-tie wristed preacher to his feet) and presumably headed back toward his room. As he closed the door behind him he looked back once at us; no emotion, no concern, only a stiff hint of self-preservation and the inaudible click of the door closing. He either did not want to disturb us or did not want to hear himself close the door on this tragedy.

Dr. Jiles, meanwhile, was admonishing Brother Quinn. I heard only a little of it over the din, and Wes’s exit. She scolded him for not being in control of his anger . . . for not realizing that he actually loves Dr. Prang.

This all happened in a matter of seconds, mind you, and I was responsive to Prang’s first words.

“Take me to my apartment, Julius. Don’t let me die here with them.” There was a great deal of blood in his mouth, and it bubbled over on the word ‘die’. Viscous blood ran down his chin and back towards the daunting wound on his chest. I couldn’t find the words to discourage his fatalism.

“Alright.” I said. “Up we go.” I pulled him up onto his feet and leaned him against me. Dr. Jiles was babbling something in our direction, a diatribe she’d probably recommended to listeners for recital at their loved one’s death. She reminded him, as some ineffective tack-on to her unlistenable dreck, to find his peace as he went.

“Listen,” Prang found strength to turn around and speak as I opened the door. Nearly all of his weight relied on me, his feet shuffled clumsily. “A man’s life is irrelevant . . .his mission in life is to . .” and he hacked up a deep red globule of his very essence onto my floor.

I struggled to get him to his room, him bleeding profusely the whole way, wheezing for air. He let go of my shoulder in the doorway and fell halfway into his room. Any doubt I had about the mortality of his wound had been erased. He moved his hand around uncontrollably and tried to swallow.

“Julius. I’m going to die.”

“Yes. Yes you are.”

“And I’m afraid. Very . . .afraid.”

“I understand. We all die. . .”

“Julius, I only got a hint of what you beliephhh. But I ..I don’t believe . I don’t know what I believe.”

“I don’t know either.” I was horrified and upset; a man I’d befriended only that day was dying in my arms. Even still I lack sentimentality and said the wrong things. He looked at me for the first time in vulnerability and I tried to respond. “Maybe it will be exciting to find out what happens.”

“Nothing happens. What iphhhhhhh . . what ipph that’s it? I lived this long to be knived. Ehm I a martyr or a fool?”

“I .. . “

“Don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

“But it. . . “

A tremendous sorrow passed over his eyes and a tightness in his chest released.

I walked back towards my apartment angry. Prang’s blood, still warm, dripped from me in various places. There was an extant surrealism, and despite the irony I must say, cinematic ambience to the day and the building. It was a unique and now tragic sequence of events to be sure and yet the most surprising footnote was that Prang had died in terror. Of all the wisdom he claimed, all the philosophical tenacity and confidence, death intimidated him. He had never really answered the question and, as I saw it, realized that it was the only one that really mattered. My heart racing, I could now hear the sounds of the street through my open windows as I returned.

“Ya’ know this whole thing . . .it’s a . . it’s my fault!” I heard Stanley say, sitting on the floor now rubbing his forehead and his eyes aggressively. Dr. Jiles was prostrate before him, waiting to console whatever garbage came out of his mouth. I was covered in a dead man’s blood, my eyes likely bright with some ember of vengeance. Quinn had killed the only person in this building that I could stand.

“Are you looking for sympathy?” I yelled. “What are you, a fucking victim now? I just watched Prang die in my arms because . .. “

“Julius!” Dr. Jiles stopped me with a surprisingly authoritative voice. All manner of unmentionable childhood memories came back, the way a woman in charge says my name runs to my very spine. “Stanley is feeling that he wants to open his heart to us, and I think we’ve had enough argument for one day. Go ahead Stanley.”

I got a warm beer out of my refrigerator, out of which wafted the sickly-sweet smell of spoiled food, and sat on my counter to hear Stanley’s confession and kill a few dozen brain cells. Not the ones that recalled the vermilion collapse of a life dedicated to knowledge (that memory in all it’s disruption was mine to keep), but perhaps some of the rage inducers accompanying the snake charmer’s meltdown or a former world-leader’s sheepish retreat. Apparently, Stanley’s was next.

“You see,” Stanley started, and then looked at me as if unsure whether I should be sitting in my own kitchen or not. “A significant portion of my investment goes into the utilities. Power, natural gas, that kind of thing. Electricity, in these last few years, hasn’t been profitable. So . . umm .. . we’ve taken steps to increase demand.”

“By shutting it off?” I asked. Olivia seemed nonplussed. I’m not sure if she understood what he meant, of course a famous psychologist would have no understanding of economics or how they affect an individual’s life. Surely that is someone else’s job.

“Yes. We . . . .because people aren’t willing to pay high costs. We have to . .. .we have to make them willing. We shut it off for a few hours in a crucial region and suddenly businesses and individuals are willing to pay more.”

As I gathered my thoughts, not easy in the heat, determining whether to cuss the businessman out or perpetuate the cycle Brother Quinn had started, Olivia asked him a question.

“Why does that make you responsible for Prang’s death?”

“Are you kidding? Seriously, Olivia, seriously. Even if Prang hadn’t died this man. This tool that I shouldn’t even allow in my apartment. Would be an asshole. Look out that window Olivia. How hot is it? How many people out there are walking home in the heat, not getting paid for a day’s work, coming home to rotting food. And why? Because this guy, this whimpering. . ..”

Olivia, seemingly hopeless at bisecting my seething, gave out an indistinguishable noise and sat down. She put her knees together and looked down.

“Stanley . .. leave” I said. Why was he in my apartment anymore? It was well over one hundred degrees and I was sweating bullets in muggy, shared air for no reason other than happenstance. Stanley’s admittance of some kind of guilt, whether actually responsible for the day’s events or not, made him amongst the last people I wanted to share my heat stroke with. Olivia began to cry; not, of course, with resistance or in remorse for Albert but in loud, attention grabbing sobs. Stanley, a bit slack-jawed, collected his wool sport coat and a few items; he looked briefly at Olivia, admittedly stark and curious in her sudden lack of comfort and control, and walked towards my door. He was on a course to be painfully close to me and as he approached Stanley cast down his eyes.

“Olivia!” I said, her childishness now annoying. “You leave too, but don’t go far. The cops will want to talk to all of us.” They both looked at me, likely savage and ethereal in Albert’s drying blood.

“I don’t know how the hell any of you people made it to where you are, but all it took was a little bit of pressure and you cracked.”

Stanley opened my apartment door and nearly fell as he caught an obvious prostitute screaming his name. She flailed on flimsy legs that wobbled as if atrophied. From my vantage point I could see the dense bubble of foam at each corner of her mouth, the dark, rheumy eyes of overdose or addiction. After her scream, sores on all legs, exposed midriff, fish-belly white forearms, she again gargled some approach at “Stanley”.
“Stanley . . . is this your wife?” had I earned the pretention to speak that way? He slid from her embrace and grasped her hands at the wrist as she fell. He was more concerned about being swatted or having his eyes raked with her jagged coke-nail than preventing any damage to her skull as it hit my kitchen floor. She spoke in drug-sick tongues and hacked.
“Stanley . . who is this? What is going on here?” Olivia said. Equally confused about the OD’ed whore’s age-old profession, it’s modern association with dangerous drugs, or the faculty of a “respectable” businessman to indulge in her temptations as she had been about Prang’s murder, or the throngs on the street below.
“This woman is . . .”
“Tell the truth man. Who cares?”
“I pay this woman for services . .” he gulped, she was unconscious now on the floor. This emergency did not call me to action as had Quinn’s attack, Stanley had to take care of this. Besides, the police were already on their way; I imagined their push down our crowded street being met with beer bottles and trash. “I pay for her services and she is supposed to stay in the goddamn room until I tell her she can leave.” His anger was building, the whole fabric of his clothing now soaked with sweat, his glasses foggy with condensate.
“And she’s obviously a drug-addict, Stanley. Shit, she might die right here.”

I got off the counter and walked to the window, Stanley turning over his prostitute, emptying her pockets of contraband, looking for identification. Despite our presence, he had to be thinking about throwing her in the incinerator. Down below, as I’d imagined, two police cars nudged through a crowd of now thousands. I could hear paramilitary announcements and commands through the PA, and I could make out the faint hollers of resistance. The people below believed they’d been sent in to corral them, not respond to legitimate crime. Where was the damn ambulance? I had a flush of pride.

A squad car stopped at the foot of the building, they would be up in moments.
“Stand your ground” I whispered to the masses “No one is better than you, believe me.”
“What?” Olivia asked.
“Nothing. Let’s go out into the great room and wait. The police will be here shortly.”

I walked back across the apartment, Dr. Jiles followed closely behind. We stepped over Stanley’s prostitute, now certainly pushing death, traipsed thru Prang’s blood and once again I felt the cool marble floor on my feet.
The ex-president’s body guards and a hog-tied, former televangelist waited there as well, in the dark. A minute behind us Stanley dragged the prostitute limp and lifeless into the room as well. We were a neighborhood pacing around for the police to show up as though someone had crashed our hootenanny or one of our drunk cousins had wrapped himself around a telephone pole. Dr. Olivia Jiles cried not unlike the stiff-lipped cry of a drug-dealer’s mother as her son is taken away.
As several police officers shuffled into the room, the lights came back on. Guns drawn, bulletproof vests on, the leader looked at me first. There we were again in the grandiose hall; gaudy, traditional decorations, a bust of someone important in each corner. And the crooked sword or bloody remnants of five who failed at the critical moment, illuminated brightly enough to burn off my writer’s block.

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After the War (V)

So, I guess this is where I would say it gets interesting.

“Tell me … can those people even read? Not English, but do they have their own language to read and write these noble savages you always talk about?” asked Olivia, her voice loudening ever so slightly.

“No.” Dr. Prang snickered the tiniest bit, and continued to rationalize his admiration for those simple people in a way progressively more agreeable to a sentimental old WASP. “Not as such. But then again, very few hunter-gatherer tribes in isolation ever develop their own written language . . .In the timeline of civilization it . ..uh . .” And never quite getting there.

“Ahh, Joolius? “ Bobby Quinn had broken our silence.

I stood up abruptly: “I think we should go into a room, maybe have a look outside,”

“But whose room?” Prang asked.

“Why, we’ll go into your room Stamp. It was your idea!” said Devonshire, a fair trade I suppose.

“I’ve been wanting to see what you’ve done to the place. Yes, let’s move in there!” Dr. Prang added.

And so began the first in a series of self-inflicted shots to the foot. My room, of course, lacked the necessary prestige for the dignitary in the group, and as I ran through the list of social contraband in my house I realized that both Br. Quinn and Dr. Jiles would be outright offended, or at least claim to be. There were no crosses, there was no pre-nuclear tidiness in dress rehearsal for future expansion, there was enough food in the icebox to make perhaps one meal but it was without a doubt vegetarian.

In the dark we jockeyed for positions, everyone immediately onboard for the migration despite everyone’s attempts to sneer at at least one other resident, myself included. Without comment Wes’s bodyguards followed us out of the room and into the slightly better lit hallway. They stood outside after we had all entered.

“So what exactly is the procedure on that kind of thing, Wes?” I asked once we had entered the room, still within earshot of the bodyguards themselves. “They don’t have to come in here and do a sweep or anything?”

I led us into the kitchen and living room area; the very clear, hot conditions that had perhaps contributed to the blackout also gave us potent natural light.

“Well, I generally keep them out of private residences. I’d get rid of them entirely if I could.”

There were enough seats for everyone but myself. It was, however, cool on the hardwood floor and I was tempted to stretch out and lay on it. By chance Dr. Jiles sat closest to me and immediately began asking the first round of questions to psychoanalyze me without alerting me to her intentions. Her approach struck me as the least “slick” of all the neighbors.

“So, Julius. . . are you married?”

“Yes.” I said. Where is your wife?

“Where is your wife?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Really . . . .hmmm

“Really? Hmm.”

“Yeah, she left earlier this morning. I’m sure she had some things planned.” At which she would clearly and without fail try to bait me into further explaining the situation between my supposed kindred spirit and me.

“I see. . .”

“We have an arrangement so that I can work. If she was here all of the time with me I wouldn’t get any work done.”

“Is that true?” Or do you want to retain some of your independence?

“Yes. When we first moved in it was like a honeymoon.”

“And what’s wrong with that? You two must love each other.”

“Yes. I. . . we do.” Is she pregnant?

“So . .. do you two plan on having children?”

“Frankly, I have about a million things I need to get done before I think about bringing an adult into this world.” At which I predicted she would be taken aback.

“My . .these ambitious youngsters today.” She said to Br. Quinn I believe. “Julius, you must know that you will never be satisfied without love in your life. Love is the . . . “

“Look!” said Dr. Prang, who was standing at the window and looking out over the city. “People are beginning to gather below.”

“My heavens, why?” asked Dr. Jiles. Everyone looked at her except for Dr. Prang and I. Prang perhaps because he somehow expected her questions, and myself because I was less interested in their content than in the ripples they caused. Why would people come out of homes and businesses now that the lights had gone out? Wouldn’t even more come out because of heat and the time of day?

“Because something has changed. Don’t you see, Dr. Jiles? Something has changed in their environment. Something significant, and that means that all bets are off.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” I added “There is a mild panic with this kind of thing” oh my god, where is Lois? “People want to form larger groups.”

“But, don’t they expect the lights to just come right back on?”

“It’s hot,” said Wes, perched, with the silhouette of a hulking comedian, on a stool. The most distant from his closest neighbor and looking tired as he raised his water glass.

“Heat builds pressure.” Dr. Prang added “Chemically and . .uhm .. .socially.”

Br. Quinn wiped sweat off his brow, I caught him looking at my stack of magazines on the floor. No one was sure what to do exactly, although Wes probably had the best course of action; or else he looked the most dignified silent. I again found myself wanting to film these people; now even more isolated from their environments and even more surreal and sharp-edged. They nearly appeared with small, neat captions below stating their name and affiliation.

I stood up to open the window and Wes promptly fell out of the stool and on his side. Br. Quinn and Dr. Prang ran to help him back up. His face was not flush with embarrassment, he did not thank the extra hands. He sat back on the stool and shortly explained what had happened.

“All I did was shift my weight a bit. I guess I’m too big for this stool.”

“Should I open the window?” I asked, careful to not make any overt move to rock the boat.

“Well .I don’t know. . .”

“But, it’s so hot out .. perhaps we can keep some of the cooler air trapped.”

“But we’re on the 12^th floor, we should get some kind of breeze . . .”

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After the War (IV)

The room began to feel
crowded. There were now eight of us packed in and the gradual increase in temperature poised us all for competition; the larger plots of personal space providing diminishing returns of ventilation. Dr. Jiles, soggy eyes staring up, was asking about Dr. Prang’s marriage; a topic he seemed disinterested in. Apparently he remembered me and, ignoring Dr. Jiles mid-sentence, requested my assistance in fetching a glass of water for all of our friends.

On the way he asked me if I had ever learned another language; “Spanish, Japanese? Anything?”

“No. And yes Uncle Evan resented me for it.”

Dr. Prang laughed and we walked out the door and around the corner to his apartment, the heat in the hallway already exceeded that of the sitting room. I worried a bit about Lois. She must have been somewhere in the air conditioning. Or she may have been stuck in a musty cab somewhere. I wished that she would come home, despite the awkwardness it may present for Prang, the ex-president and the others. I don’t know why I even decided to stay in the sitting room with all those strangers. Part of it, I suppose, was to avoid thinking about not being able to write, but another part of me was fascinated by the entire scene: each (save Prang at times) had very carefully tended to their appearance and their interactions, spent years being polished by the stiff expectations of high society. Their humor compromised for edicate and expensive tastes; any faux pas fell to the floor like lead. I sat not so much admiring five Great personalities so much as I watched these same five clumsily interact.

“So, Julius.” Dr. Prang said nothing until we were in the hallway and out of earshot. “What do you think of the Altoona? Plan on living here long?”

“It’s alright so far. To be honest with you I won’t be all that comfortable if the ex-president is around all the time.”

“Oh, he’s harmless. The best thing to do is stop giving him a title like ‘The Ex-President’. Just call him Wes. He’s just a regular joe, I’m sure you can tell.”

“Yeah. I was surprised when I met him.”

“You don’t think you get to be a president by being your own man do you?”

“I guess not.”

“You should be more concerned with Bobby Quinn.” He said, looking back down the hall, as we entered the room. It was, of course, a complete mess floating above tactful and cosmopolitan décor. He had several ancient looking objects, souvenirs from his travels, positioned in a way that intimidated or welcomed depending on one’s tolerances. Books splayed open and half empty wine glasses sat upon every flat surface. “You see, some years ago, back after the Mississippi case he and I participated in a public forum on evolution. A sort of a townhall meeting in which his handpicked crowd could ask us questions. The idea was that it would be broadcast on the radio and Brother Quinn could, you know, further legitimize himself by taking some generous swipes at me. He was on quite an ego-trip.”

“How did that work out?” I asked.

“Not so well for him. You see, after I had sort of tripped up all of his arguments, or at least cast them into serious doubt or neutrality, he began to smear me. It was quite a mess really, because, you see, my reputation with the masses means virtually nothing. My livelihood is in academia and not celebrity, something Quinn cannot really attack.”

“So name-calling, or what?”

“In a sense, in a ‘Christian’ way he called me names. But he set it up for me to quite easily tear at his entire religion. I truly embarrassed him on a live broadcast and sometimes I wish I hadn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think he’s dangerous. As much as I think him a fool, something about him intimidates me. He follows ‘god’s’ rules and sometimes I think he makes them up as he goes along.”

“Yes.” I said, adding a queer observation I had made myself. “He has straight teeth with very sharp incisors.”

“What? . . . I suppose he does.”

“There’s a lot of other things too, I mean the suit and what not. But those teeth. They’re like villain teeth.”

“Well Dr. Jiles and Stanley aren’t better.”

We walked into the kitchen and Dr. Prang began to fill water glasses.

“I’m not really familiar with them,” I said.

“See, I think Dr. Jiles is harmless in much the same way that Bobby Quinn isn’t. Publicly anyway, she has none of his viciousness. Dr. Jiles, and I really hate to say it, but she is a fool. She’s a radio psychologist and she seems, to me anyway, to advocate some ideas that really help no one.”

“How’s that?” I had never heard of her.

“Well, she was sort of . .well, one of the founding fathers if you will of this snobby lexicon that is running around in psychology today. It’s not all lies but it all seems to come back to love for her.”

“I heard her mention ‘self-love’ to Stanley. I mean, maybe that works for some people . . “

“I don’t know. The problem, as I see it, and I’ve been studying what you might call the bigger picture of what she talks about, is that people need something to feel significant.”

“That’s very true.” Dr. Prang had finished filling water glasses, but we stayed in the kitchen to talk longer in private. Dr. Prang even sat down and relit his pipe, all the while talking:

“That’s why religions are created. They seem to be enforced for other reasons, but what is universal is this idea that people feel completely irrelevant. A notion that science doesn’t help us with particularly. But you have a God that will supposedly love you no matter what. Suddenly, that becomes all a person needs to be relevant. Do you understand?”

“Yes. And so, she’s a religious psychologist?”

“Not explicitly. She will mention faith. But what she really does is give people emotional tricks to either make them forget that they are in fact irrelevant, or lower their standards of significance. For instance, and please don’t take this as being from someone who thinks I have some kind of superiority over people, but take your average person. People you know, faithful people, people with loving relationships or whatever. Are they significant?”

“From the perspective of themselves and their community they may be. But from the universal sense, probably not I guess.”

“Exactly. See, if there is a God he doesn’t care about us. This whole universe is his creation and nothing about it requires him to pay any special attention to us. That’s a terrible feeling. And instead of confronting that and realizing the truth of things, Dr. Jiles and to a further extent Bobby Quinn, are just fooling people for long enough that they feel worthy to die.”

“I see.”

“Yeah. Well Stanley is no better. He’s rich, and I’m sure there is a smart guy in there somewhere because he has managed to keep his money. But he didn’t make any of it himself and I think that makes him feel irrelevant. He’s very dodgy in talking about what he even does. You should ask him when we get out there.”

“Maybe I will.”

He put the glasses on a tray and handed them to me. We left his apartment and headed back towards the great room.

“So, tell me more about this movie. You said that something was missing.”

“Well yes, something about the making of the swords themselves. And I’m having difficulty visualizing how exactly I will express it because it’s very intangible.”

“What about the swords? Their symbolic relationship to us . .the whole ‘Live by the sword and die by the sword’ or . . .”

“More that…Well. A sword can have imperfections in the very first layer. Some foreign object or just an unevenness. Steel is never perfect. But in swordmaking that flaw can be magnified, you know. As the sword is folded over into thousands of layers that flaw becomes a deep, almost important part of that sword as is.”

“But if it’s not perfection, will it even work?”

“That’s just the thing . . it may pass any test and appear perfect.” We rounded the corner. “But at some point, in a vital instant, the sword will fail.”

As we entered the great room the lights cut out and a lumbering, ambient noise I hadn’t even noticed previous grinded to a halt.

I also hadn’t noticed how little natural light illuminated the sitting room; the entire scene of Dr. Jiles, the ex-president, Bobby Quinn and Devonshire was in cave-like darkness and no one made a sound other than the rustling of Duchess in Wes Croughbah’s lap. A thin slice of light came from above, and illuminated a small square of carpet. By this we all maneuvered and positioned ourselves.

“Well?” A woman’s voice, Dr. Jiles “Are they going to come on again?”

Ah yes, everyone was waiting in limbo for the power to come back to life before investing themselves in the temporary black-out lifestyle. No one, especially not an inhabitant of the Altoona, would be foolish enough to be caught rounding up candles and flashlights only to have the overhead lights turn back on within moments.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see that everyone had stood up. Stanley Devonshire walked halfway across the room to the doorway which Prang and I had entered through and grabbed a glass of water, His glass of water, and without comment he turned and walked back to his position near the ex-president. I tried to nod in acknowledgement or welcoming to no avail. He instead leaned toward Wes in a way that indicated he wanted to continue the conversation.

I walked all of the way into the room, intending to sit on the couch and wait for either the lights to come back on or this fascinating little group to disband to their respective battle stations in the face of this urban crisis. The bodyguards had moved in closer to the ex-president; somewhere in their training they were reminded of the possible threat of an intentional power outage. Everyone took their water glasses and very little was said for a moment. I tried to follow the conversation between both Dr. Prang & Dr. Jiles and Stanley & Wes and simultaneously avoid the social obviousness of the conversation I should be having with Br. Quinn.

“You know,” said Stanley “An outage like this is inevitable. There just isn’t the right market forces at work to keep it viable.”

“It’ll be alright Olivia, remember the black-out a year or two ago?” Albert said.

“But that was on a summer evening, I was asleep anyway. It will get oppressively hot in this building in a few moments.”

“True. But you know, in the bush, people I met all seemed to get along just fine without any power whatsoever. The first time they see an electric lightbulb they think of it as not only quite extraterrestrial, they see it as ludicrous. No use for it.”

“Yes Albert. I’m sure they do. They also share their living space with goats and spend much of the days squatting in mud.”

“Well . . . “ Dr. Prang responded.

Bobby Quinn cleared his throat, beamed at me for attention.

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After The War (III)

It continues, there are something like 40 pages altogether.

“You’re Julius Stamp, is that right?” and he stuck his arm straight out at me, “Evan’s nephew.”

I stood up and shook his hand. I had my suspicion of his identity and voiced it.

“Yes yes. You’re Albert Prang, correct? My uncle mentioned you many times.” I do not know for sure if the ex-president was offended at this, I hadn’t commented on my uncle’s acknowledgement of him, but he picked up the paper and resumed his crossword.

“Yes, I am Dr. Prang. It’s a pleasure to meet you. And I must say that I am honestly a fan of your work, whether a relative of my good friend or not.”

“Well thank you. The president and I were just discussing something that I am working on right now.”

“Isn’t it too hot a day for conversation? Huh Wes?” And Dr. Prang rubbed one hand on the back of his neck. “I say, it is so hot out there that the birds have ceased chirping, probably from dehydration!”

Dr. Prang was about the same age as the ex-president, or so I approximated, but he had aged far better than the politician. Not surprising given the respective stresses of their profession. Dr. Prang was a zoologist known, if memory serves, for a long list of achievements including the discovery of several new species in his early career and more recently for his incendiary comments and research regarding evolution. He walked all the way around the davenport and myself to sit in my chair’s twin and light his pipe; in his body language I could tell he wanted a rousing conversation and was depending on his new neighbor in light of the alternative.

Several years back he was involved in a trial in Mississippi regarding the teaching of evolution in schools. My Uncle told me that he had cut down the opposition quite convincingly, even openly and harshly criticizing individual activists on the other side of the aisle. He’d brought in diagrams showing the adaptation of dogs and corn or some other obvious example and, purportedly, talked down to the opposition like grammar school students. He has since been seen as something of a villain by the religious right, personifying the deviance they blamed the other side of the schism for rendering on the nation. It was my understanding that in topics of which he is well versed he is an excellent debater. I feared that he might get to the quick of my literary problems embarrassingly easy.

“So first. Welcome to the Altoona son. Old Wes here hasn’t made it hard on you has he?”

The ex-president would not make eye contact with either Prang or myself but he simply looked at his fingernails and stated calmly:

“I merely told the boy that there are expectations in this building. If he is to live here he will feel much more comfortable with his neighbors if he contributes to the world, just as any self-respecting person would want to. Living in the Altoona is a great honor under the weight of history alone.”

Dr. Prang puffed on his pipe and said “Didja get all that” in a whispery tone that was clearly loud enough for the ex-president to hear.

“So tell me, what are you working on? I’ve been looking forward to today since I heard the news.”

“What news is that?”

“That you were moving in.”

“Oh.” And I told him about the premise, including every gimmick I could think of so it didn’t sound like a self-indulgent wad of artistic ambivalence. I had real reasons for making this thing.

“Running into any problems? Seems like a formidable project. Always wanted to do a bit of creative writing myself.” Dr. Prang eased in his seat a bit and took his hand off the back of my chair. He folded his arms and began what seemed like a sincere, nervous habit of contemplation; he put the end of the pipe in his mouth and pulled it out, each time making a little popping noise. I looked over at the ex-president who either stared into a corner or was dozing off.

“Well, the way it’s coming together it doesn’t seem to matter that these characters are in the trade that they are. The focus of the piece is supposed to be on their personal story, but the act of making these swords really fascinated me and something is not yet coming across in the screenplay or the frames.”

“Curious. Well, m’boy, I can tell you that the president and I have full faith in your abilities.” He put one hand on my back in a very paternal way, and glanced at the ex-president. “Did you see Castor Oil , Wes? It was fantastic, simply fantastic.” I can’t say I did not smile.

“Let me tell you Julius, that I’ve seen this craft first hand. The old, incredibly frail looking man bent over a fire and orange-hot steel. The smoke .. . uh .. rising thru the stone chimney.” Dr. Prang squinted and I thought I’d see a hazy recollection of the event in a thought cloud above his head. From my Uncle’s ruminations, Dr. Prang had a million stories to tell. All of them memorable, with the same streak of humanism and application of universal ideas. “He folds over the steel and another man hits it with a hammer, all very dramatic and rhythmic.”

“Yes, I feel that that is part of it really.”

“Like all Japanese customs,” he continued as he felt he was expected to. “the very structured, very meditative quality of it is non pariel in western culture. They have a spirituality in those kinds of acts that we seem to lack in even our church services. If I might add something . . . I’m not running contrary to your themes am I son?”

“Absolutely not sir,” this tie with a genuine inflection that made the ex-president visibly wince. “I agree, though I’ve no plans to contrast their customs with ours per se . .”

“But it provides a unique perspective.”

“I think that the act beautifully reiterates a major tenet of their philosophy as well.”

“Besides that, I mean that perfection can be a goal. And that it is difficult.”

“But none of us are perfect, dear boy.” The ex-president butted in.

“That’s not really the point Wes,” I responded and Dr. Prang nodded wistfully. “What I mean is that things can appear very perfect and ideal, and be the opposite.”

“I see where you are going with this Julius, I think, you must let me read the screenplay upon its completion.”

“Only if you let me read your work.”

The body guards flexed their pectorals and a shadowy figure not quite over the threshold yelled out:

“Yes Albert. Tell him about your fallacies and your devilishment. The young man craves it.” Dr. Prang stood up to greet him; a wry, barely noticeable grin on his face.

“I didn’t realize you had returned Bobby. You should have buzzed me, we’d have had a drink together.”

The two shook hands, out of civic and neighborly duty if nothing else, and Dr. Prang introduced me to him.

“Julius, I would like you to meet Bobby Quinn. Our resident man of the cloth.”

Bobby stepped forward audibly, in expensive shoes, and grabbed my hand firmly. His left hand grasped my arm at about the elbow and as he gave my hand a vigorous shake he looked into my eyes. I didn’t feel any subliminal spark, nothing at all in that gaze compelled me to esteem Bobby Quinn above any I had ever met. His fat ruby pink ring bobbed up and down as he shook my hand. When Brother Quinn began to speak to me, his dialect dropped a few miles south.

“Hello Joolius. Yah Stamp’s nephew, that right?”

“That’s me. Pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Bobby Quinn. If ya need any spi’itual guidance dahin ya stay he-ah at the Altoona. Well, Joolius. Ah’m ya man.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Dr. Prang had walked over to a shelf of books and was thumbing thru a leatherbound edition, squinting through his reading glasses. Bobby Quinn looked at me seriously. He summoned all of the powers that had allowed him to buy his fine white suit, his photogenic hair, even his makeup: I could smell face make-up when he leaned in close:

“Now, Julius, ya mus’n baleeve ev’rything that Dr. Prang says. He has learned a great deal, but he has wanduhed from the Lord.”

“In what way exactly?”

“Well. He bahleeves that you and I are duhscended from monkeys.”

“I see.”

The ex-president looked tense and held Duchess close as Dr. Prang returned.

“You know, they have a first edition of… oh, never mind, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Julius, has Bobby convinced you that I’m crazy yet?”

“He told me you believed in evolution, as though I hadn’t known.”

“See, Albuht,” Quinn interrupted, “it’s people like you who have helped this to spread. Carried out the devil’s work and you’re guidin’ people like young Julius he’ah away from the Lord.”

“I just study facts Bobby, I’m not trying to contradict your version of things at all. I have ideas that I put together from mounds of documented research papers and then I test th. . .”

“But you know,” he said to Dr. Prang “and you too must know, m’boy, that God has created this wuhrld” he punctuated by stabbing his pointed index finger into the top of small table at the end of the davenport. Every other word was likewise expressed. “ . . .And he can make it be enything that he wants it to be. He can even make you come to conclusions that just ahren’t right. It’s called a test of Faith, Albuht!” and a tiny globule of spit escaped his mouth. Dr. Prang, still on his feet, retorted:

“I think you’re testing my faith!”

It seemed that I had to contribute something to the conversation or be virtually invalidated as a fence sitter between two extremes. Bobby Quinn was glaring at me, awaiting some kind of response. To my surprise, I thought about what effect any comment I made would have on my standing in the building. Anxious, I looked to the ex-president, former diplomat and head of my native land; Wes Croughbah had his index finger knuckle-deep in his nostril either scratching an itch or picking for debris. He had completely dropped out of the conversation. If things got too bad, I would simply move out.
“I believe, Mr. Quinn,” I said, “that at some point the universe makes sense. All of this, our lives, the cosmos, gravity, electricity; after some degree of investigation we will be able to understand it. And I believe that refusing to

look at the evidence is a step away from this understanding.”
Bobby Quinn scoffed, brought his heavy, jeweled hand up to his face:
“Ah’m not refusin’ enythinge son, Ah’m accepting the Lord.”

“Who said I was implying you?”

Bobby Quinn sighed, run his fingers through the hair on either side of his head, rebuttoned the button on his suit coat and gracefully walked to the other side of the davenport and sat down.

“So, Joolius. I hear you make movies.”

“Yes.” Dr. Prang and I both looked at him a bit baffled. “Yes I do.”

“Excellent.”

“Bobby . . there was something else I wanted to talk to you. More of a sort of cultural anthropology question I had . .” and I stopped listening. Not for the same reason as the ex-president; unlike the confusion his dopey expression betray, I could actually follow whatever it was that Dr. Prang and Bobby Quinn talked about. Bobby Quinn struck me as an unapologetic charlatan and I had a difficult time imagining anyone devoting time, money or faith to his cause after meeting him in person; I was not as disinterested in his garbage as I was disgusted by it.

Furthermore, I was far more interested in the physical dichotomy present in the way he and Dr. Prang stood together. As I have said Dr. Prang was dressed modestly, presenting an eager interface with the world that spoke of his moderation and understanding. He could be accepted virtually anywhere. Bobby Quinn, on the other hand, had all the trappings of the bourgeois and stood comfortably in a pose that bore well on his expensive tailoring. His image was carefully managed and appealing in the explicit, fishy manner of a good salesman. Moreover, his wealth was the result of sheer swindling.

The two of them moved out of immediate earshot, Dr. Prang had led Bobby Quinn to the bookshelf, and I leaned closer to the ex-president:

“You know, I may be wet behind the ears, sir, but I’m not nearly as full of it as that guy.”

“Who, Bobby? Well…he’s…” the ex-president tried to recall an excuse for the man that someone else had likely defined for him several years prior but was interrupted by the foot shuffling of his body guards. Two more residents entered the room, a man and a woman, and they talked to each other loud enough for both the ex-president and myself to hear.

“You have to love yourself, that is first and foremost Stanley. Otherwise, how can anyone else love you?” I would have characterized her language as sarcastic if anyone else had said it, but she then hugged him and gave him a very practiced nod, squint and tight-lipped grin. She knew well how give a person a positive end to the conversation. She too was overdressed for the weather it seemed, in a woolen shortcoat and matching skirt that revealed her ankles only. She had a fashionable but conservative haircut of apparently natural color managed with three or four tasteful sort of clips that seemed unnecessary.

The woman turned to the ex-president and myself. Her eyes a bit glazed over and, though this observation may be bold, improperly dilated for the lighting; that is she had big puppy dog eyes that immediately called on one’s sentiments.

“Hello Wes. Isn’t it terribly hot today? And I’m guessing by the way your perspiring out here that the air isn’t working either. Who is this handsome young man?”

“You would be correct. This is Julius . . Stamp’s nephew. Julius this is Dr. Olivia Jiles.” The ex-president was officially tired of introducing people; Dr. Jiles’s companion introduced himself excitedly. He had what can loosely be termed ‘people skills’. His face pulled by a small grin he must have affixed upon every immersion in mixed company, tortoise-shell glasses that testified to some magazine’s taste, and a narrowly missed clump of hair in the lower right quadrant of his scalp that dared me to announce it. His suit was a diagram in a textbook; navy blue on lighter blue with a tie that only hinted at money green.

“Hello Julius. I’m Stanley Devonshire.”

“Nice to meet you” and I shook both of their hands, Stanley’s covered in hints of grease, pomade maybe. With each new neighbor I felt less and less intimidated by their respective legacies or their collective importance. Devonshire, a skilled networker, walked closer to the ex-president and began to talk about the weather; in plaintive terms the rest of the group seemed far too well acquainted for. Wes responded well to this approach and added his own sort of folksy comment on the heat and humidity.

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