We're all together in this, are we not? And do we not do things for to be known, to be not erased? To live through what we make. To live beyond the walls of the body. We have wondered on this of late, as the roof above our poor and winter-brined heads continues to crumble. Sometimes, all it is is a matter of waking with drywall in your mouth and learning to love the drywall. At least it keeps you full. At least you have a wall to speak of, be it dry or no.
One of us is lost now. The one with the shortest beard, nonetheless. He went out to search for meat, and hasn't returned yet. And of course he has not. We can't help but moan in our beds, feeling just danged awful down to our furred and burly toes. For who would send out into the cold and senseless world the brother with the least going for him chin-hair wise? It was unwise, but he was mulish and convinced it didn't matter that he has not only a baldish face, but also the thin neck of a girl-child, and only two Walmart-brand wifebeaters knotted together as a scarf. We tried to offer him the raccoon skin we save behind the mantlepiece for winter meat-trips, but this, too, he waved off with the back of his effete paw.
There is no helping the brother who will not help himself. We repeat this at our dinner table like grace, splicing our peas into sections of twos and threes to make our plates seem fuller. But we miss him. We miss him bad, and though we all put up a rough show of clear-headedness, deep-down in the gut we all are squirming and lonesome. Is not this just a microcosm of the world at large? All of us putting on all manner of shows for everyone else? Pretending we are not terrified of not existing well enough, or doing things right enough, or living up to whatever standards we have set or have been set upon us? Pretending we are not flappable? But there are parts of us all squirming and lonesome, is the truth. There are parts of us all that miss our lost brothers, gone out for meat and never returned. It's enough to make a vegetarian out of any one of us. Give us our frozen bag of Birdseye and that'll be enough. It will be enough.
We found in the satchel beside his bed-space a book called The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. We know little of this book, but our missing brother was seen, many days, scuttled away, interred in its pages. We worry now for other need of interment, but we can hardly think or speak of that. We chew at our inner-cheeks and think not of women (well, privately of women, but we don't speak of them as we would have were he here with us and not in some worrisome outer-place we can't fix or define.) Some quotes (oddly, and worryingly, mostly pertaining to death) were underlined, and we will relay some to you, in case you happen upon a small-bearded man mumbling these words under his breath somewhere in the snow. (Take note the knotted wifebeaters about his neck. Take note his soft and subtle chin. Return him safe to us so we might once again resume activities involving the discussion of women and their secrets.)
""I have a feeling," I said, "about the axial lines of life, with respect to which you must be straight or else your existence is mere clownery, hiding tragedy...When striving stops, there they are as a gift...Truth, love, peace, bounty, usefulness, harmony! And all noise and grates, distortion, chatter, distraction, effort, superfluity, passed off like something unreal. And I believe that any man at any time can come back to these axial lines, even if an unfortunate bastard, if he will be quiet and wait it out....even disappointment after disappointment will not take away his love. Death will not be terrible to him if life is not. The embrace of other true people will take away his dread of fast change and short life.""
"It's better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls."
(we are certain our lost brother must be muttering this, whether lost or no, but perhaps this does not bode well.)
"Death is going to take the boundaries away from us, that we should no more be persons. That's what death is about. When that is what life also wants to be about, how can you feel except rebellious?" (This thought, by the way, seems to come at the heels of Augie's meeting a displaced (secretly German?) person, living in a monastery, begging money in the streets of Italy during WWII.)
"There's something about those business envelopes with the transparent oblong address part that my soul runs away from."
(there is deep, deep truth to this quote. We, too, feel horrible panic at the sight of such envelopes. A collection has amassed which we will address, later, when we are feeling less fragile.)
"I was still chilled from the hike across the fields, but, thinking of Jacqueline and Mexico, I got to grinning again. That's the animal ridens in me, the laughing creature, forever rising up. What's so laughable, that a Jacqueline, for instance, as hard used as that by rough forces, will still refuse to lead a disappointed life? Or is the laugh at nature--including eternity--that it thinks it can win over us and the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will."
Look for him, won't you? Every set of eyes you pass, every pair of weather-ravaged hands, every
impostor of inner-certitude. Speak to him of death and of life and see what he says. See him in turns world-weary and hopeful. Remind him of his smutty magazines and see how fast home he runs. He, as powerless as the rest of us. And as human.
Yours, truly,
Dick Fancy
Also, This:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VMf7OqTOuU
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