Moments Of Clarity

--What do a Winchester hunting rifle, a moose head, and Mona Lisa have in common? --Please . . . --All three hang on the wall. --Please . . . -- Why are potatoes brown? --Please . . . --So that we can tell them apart from aspirin. --This is silly, not all potatoes are brown; some are red. --OK. Then the joke should go: Why are potatoes red? So that we can tell them apart from Tylenol! --I have never seen red Tylenol. “Serves you right,” his mind crows without pity, “for wanting a trophy wife, a fashion model. I’m bored stiff with this romance package honeymoon on the beautiful Mexican Riviera.” She looks around the large hotel room. Her eyes settle on an oversized sombrero used as decoration. She puts it on. His laughter turns into roars. She tries to remain serious and not only to make the joke more potent. She hasn’t forgotten -- how could she -- the humiliation at lunch on the terrace when she caught him furtively eying the pretty Mexican waitress. She steps in front of the mirror and loses it too. She looks like a giant mushroom. They both shake with laughter. “So, I am married at last,” her mind whispers insensitively, “even if it is to someone who completely lacks any artistic instinct and becomes mesmerized by every attractive woman.” Steel drums signal playtime. The featured honeymooners’ party game today: “Find my shoe.” “Never mind, four more days and I’ll be back at work” think both. How did the unforgettable Aldous Huxley put it? “Propinquity is not fusion.” After billions of lives lived, used up, and abandoned to the world of shadows, not once has exactly the same feel of self been repeated. Every “I” is unique and lives with an inseparable innate that observes it, talks to it, criticizes and warns it, mocks it, laughs at and with it. And as you and I -- having this brief anonymous contact right now -- both know beyond a trace of doubt, your fears and pains are different from mine and from everybody else’s. To return to the couple, miracles do happen. The two of them stayed together. But come to think of it, this is just one of those miracles that have perfectly good explanations once we poke a little further. The sacrifices they had to make were balanced by compensations. They were engaged in a deal not just with one another but with themselves, individually. At the cost of suppressing archaic outbursts and destructive impulses, each enjoyed protection and the opportunity to pass on their DNA through the genetic material of someone their procreative instincts found perfect for the purpose. Their initial moments of unquestioned clarity about this became the guardrail of a marriage that lavishly surpassed commonplace norms of unpleasant surprises and ugly scenes. The union proved to be a social failure but a biological success. They have three well-turned out children, although one of them was born with asthma and has

occasional attacks. (The couple thanks God for having health insurance.) Her days of strutting the catwalk to pulsing rock beats in the Gucci-Pucci circuit are long past. She saw the day coming and accepted the inevitable. Never a word of complaint or bitterness. What must happen will happen -- always. She works at a commercial TV station selling costume jewelry, food mixers, travel-size irons, or what have you. He has done well -- extremely well -- until now as chief quality control engineer at a Fortune-500 corporation. His ambition to become a mystery writer faded like those honeymoon pictures taken in the mid-80s at Puerto Vallarta. Worse, for a month or so, his boss, a vice president, in the old tradition of crude managerism, has been curt and sullen with him. It is disquieting to feel obliquely observed by one’s superiors in a bread-giving hierarchy. The company is moving several plants to Mexico and deregulation has reduced quality control for domestic operations to a computerized residual. But what could go wrong for him personally? He has seniority, an excellent work record; unquestioned loyalty. Sitting comfortably in his favorite armchair, stomach full, head light from the habitual after-dinner cognac, he tries to rid himself of angst about the future by wondering about the past. He frittered his youth away alright but should be proud of it. What is youth without throwing it away? Nothing is yours unless you waste it. Just thinking that you might be prodigal one day is not enough. It could be a subterfuge, a disguise for not living authentically. “But all the trouble I caused. Perhaps regret would be more appropriate than pride. No, no, my past exploits are not worthy even of regret.” He catches the contradictory nature of this self-appraisal: The same thing that he wants to be proud of is not worthy of regret? There is an unbridgeable chasm between the two perspectives, like between moments of mindless hilarity and immense suffering, between being and nothing, between time that frames things through circular self-completion and one-way time that dissolves them forever. We live in a state of confusion, suspended weightlessly over the deep, dark abyss of our spaceless psyche, drifting beyond control from one side to the other and back again. So what’s the big deal? Hasty decisions, virulent spontaneity, to be cherished and regretted decades later -- isn’t that what life is about? If you are unwilling to accept this muddle you may be trudging through the wrong universe. Circumstances rule us; we lie out of vanity even to ourselves, and forget the bulk of our sorrows. And curiously enough, in every new situation we somehow end up feeling just the way we did in the old one. “Your panicky thoughts go in every direction,” the voice within warns. “You had your share of fun; now get ready to walk your very own, custom-made Calvary. Your fate is sealed and you know it.” The house falls into an unusual, complete silence; there are reflections from a mirror and polished surfaces in the room. Without knowing how it comes about, his senses black out -- as if his mind entered itself -- and the portals of a diaphanous, ever-present, space- and time-free reality opens up. It is tomorrow morning. He arrives at the office. There is a message slip on his desk asking him to see the vice president without delay. “Clarity lies outside words and their ceaseless juggling,” he sighs, exhausted from the odd intensity in his consciousness.

He stops thinking and dozes off.