Trucks are important, here in the suburbs. You are my neighbor, and I envy your possessions — I see that you bought a new red pickup. In winter, when thick snow blocks all the roads, you’ll have no trouble getting around with that all-wheel drive.
Did you notice? On Saturday I myself bought a brand-new pickup that matches yours, just for the sake of mimicry. Yeah, I don’t even need transportation, because I choose to stay put — I’m a homebody — but now I purchased this shiny red truck (which I cannot afford; in fact, I had to falsify my credit record to get a loan to pay for the thing), and I parked it in my driveway, because, to me, it’s a work of art.
§
Someone should invent transparent wood, or some equally strong type of building material that is sturdy yet see-thru. Maybe transparent steel would be a good option. I wish that all houses were clear as glass. Instead of having brick or vinyl siding, each house should simply be one vast window. This way, we lovers who routinely walk thru the neighborhood hand-in-hand can enjoy watching the inner workings of each household. I mean, it’s fun to guess — surmising might even be superior to knowing — but I’d still like to be able to view the truth:
If the husband of the family is sitting in an armchair smoking his corncob pipe and reading his newspaper (Mark Twain smoked a corncob pipe), I’d like to see that. And if the children are opening their Christmas gifts by the fire, I’d love to observe what type of toys they got. My guess is that the girl received a note that reads “Look in the formerly vacant barn stall: you shall find your dreams have come true”; whereas the boy discovers that, after tearing the wrapping paper off the gift-box, it contains a yellow toy pickup truck that he can smash to pieces. He immediately begins to hurl it against the clear wall, over and over.
All barns, garages, and other shed-like structures should be transparent as well, so that if one is curious to know their contents, one need only lean in close to one’s lover’s ear and whisper “I’ll be right back”; then hasten over to the barn, garage, or shed, and press your face up against its surface: look inside and see what is there. Draw a sketch in your detective’s notepad, if you like — it’s a free country.
Or say there exists a woman in her mid-to-late forties; and this breathtaking beauty is posing unclothed in her living room while the rest of her family is down in the recreation center playing badminton. In this present case, passersby could stop and stand and breathe slightly quicker while gazing on perfection. Lovers could set up easels and make paintings or sketches of the sight. Posing thusly within one’s own living room could become a national pastime: whenever one does so, one would immediately notice a small crowd of sophisticates gathering on one’s front lawn with their art supplies. And this would make one feel admired, which would help to improve one’s self-confidence.
I’m not saying anything that everyone hasn’t thought at one time or another. The purpose of this book is not to break new ground but rather to acknowledge our common bond as a…
And doctors and nurses should always greet one at a funeral, especially if the service is for one’s last remaining parent (who is, alas, alive now forever) and pull one close and say “May I talk to you in private?” Then this doctor or nurse, who is familiar with you because she has been your practitioner since you turned seventeen (her own present age is either fifty or sixty), I say, now this doctor or nurse should take your hand and lead you to the powder room of the opposite sex, and you will reflexively protest: “Tis verboten to re-enter paradise!” but she meets your eyes with an intent look and answers “Trust me, I’m a certified professional.” And, once you two breach the stall, she pulls you close and confesses that she has, for twenty years or more, been deeply in love with her idea of you.
These are the ways that doctors and nurses should behave; and this is how the suburbs should be rebuilt. But none of these things can ever happen now, because you, the gentle reader, destroyed our city. Now I want to rattle off a tirade of questions for you, which I do not expect you to answer:
Why did you cause our new idea for an improved suburb to melt and run? Why did you turn up the heat on our idea? It oozed out like an ice castle in the oven.
It was full of people, in my conception of it — how could you do that!
My invention of a better suburban existence was like a princess among the modern ideas of city planners, but now she has become a hot widow. Why did you yank the rug out from beneath what could have been a Ruling Empire so that it fell over and now looks like a tributary? Answer me, if you’re not afraid of lying!
You remain silent with contempt. You are unwilling to suspend your disbelief and don mortal flesh in our dimension to play with us further. You used to visit us often — you knew us all intimately, and called each one of us by our name.
The way that you turned your nose up at my clear city and then treated it like glass stemware and stomped all over it with your bare feet, leaving its streets resembling the rivers of blood in Hell — that made me weep sore into the night: Why in God’s name did you do that!? I was only pretending — is it necessary to bring the pain of rejection even here, into the visionary realm? What is your problem?
[As our ceremony comes to an end, you, the bride, are invited to step on an all-glass city inside a cloth bag to shatter it. This breaking of the vessels holds multiple meanings, to this day. That’s why I hope that you’ll explain it.]
Those lovers that I planned would comfort me, if my Redeemer ever dies — you took them all by their gorgeous hair and dragged them into servitude: You put them to work in your clock shop, and taught them to tune your timepieces. And they found no rest — you knowingly overworked them.
Why do you choose to persecute instead of joining in the love-fest? Would it kill you to remove your clothes when you read my scriptures?
Why must you go around scaring off all my potential lovers, and then confronting them in the back room while they’re on a smoke-break? Do you think that this plot would make a good Bible? Maybe it would — but it’d be a horror flick; and you know me: I don’t like to be frightened… I’m rather a fan of the happy ending. (Why not be? Seriously, why reject pleasure when she’s practically everywhere, freely beckoning you to enjoy?)
I bet that I could send you the most voluptuous harlot in a dream and you would reject her, saying “No, I cannot embrace you: I am spoken for,” and yet you’re not even wed in the eyes of the prison’s priests! — Why do you do that?
I think you prefer everyone to remain a virgin so that they cannot criticize you when you offer them lessons in love. However, you never do get around to teaching any truly lovely lessons, because you’re too busy murdering folks! (Why, reader, why!?)
Was it absolutely necessary for you to snipe off those poor kids in our earlier myth? My guess is that you’re frustrated about something exterior to our literary work here, and that’s why you’re having trouble focusing — that might explain your destructive attitude as well: Perhaps something is awry in your own private world, and you’re taking it out on this world that is shared by us all.
Maybe you have a lot of enemies on your side of the text, and I’m just over here making love to character after character, oblivious to your sufferings; thus you’re trying to get my attention by abusing all the people and places in my own realm…
Well, OK then: you got my attention. But what can I do about it? (By “it” I mean the fact that my scriptures displease you.) You never speak, you only ACT (howbeit invisibly, like whatever moves the marker on a spirit-board)!!!
Has all your beauty departed? Not here, it hasn’t: you’re one of the most desirable presences whose absence is palpable. — Has one of your rabbits fled from the pasture, because it took its own shadow as a pursuer? Well, that rabbit is alive and well, here in Eternity. Behold: her little face is peeking out thru the wooden lattice under your neighbor’s deck, this instant!
By any chance, had you committed to ascending the temple’s stairs in your skirt, even after, partway up, you remembered that you were sporting zero undergarments? And did you fear that your peers would ridicule this pious oversight? Well, on my side of the divide, I can assure you, everyone who saw that sight simply marveled at your contours and the exquisite charm of your womanhood. And we yearned to ask you: Who are your favorite poets?
Do not turn backwards. Approach us and haunt. Will you leave off denying us and, at long last, succumb to our whatness?
All I need to do is take this magnifying glass out of my wizard’s robe and hold it up before mine eye when I gaze at your form, and you appear as a gigantic enchantress.
Let’s join a congregation — it doesn’t matter which religion: I’ll believe anything — I just want to experience a worship service alongside you. For I suspect that your personality will sublimate certain aspects of the service, while my own has a chance at sublimating a fraction of the remainder.
Then we can part for an agreed-upon duration. Say, one fortnight. Our love may ferment during the interim and grow madly passionate. Then, when I return, you will marvel that I resemble a grizzled wise-man. And my body is masculine now, firm, and ten times as attractive.
Whoa! look: You sighed when you saw me, did you not? Then I took you by the hand to the nearest diner — we sat in our favorite booth and ordered bread and made love. The surrounding customers craned their heads and remarked “Ooh, pleasantest things are happening at table 14” and they began to learn that the meat IS the soul: and there is nothing vile about this.
And the waiting staff began to pass by our table more and more frequently. At a certain point, you suggested that we startle them by addressing them. So you sprang up the next time one drew near — you said “Hi there! Do you desire what you see?” Then you winked and said, “Join in, if you dare.”
But this was the type of soul who sez “No” to bliss, even if it’s only in a dream; so the staffer ran away, abandoning a multicolored cloak at our table. (So you ended up cloning this garment and distributing the results to your army of angels. — For the record, I was against your idea of keeping a militia; but I bowed to the adage: “The reader is GOD.”) Then another member of the staff — this time, one of the waitresses — ventured near, and you did the same thing, exclaiming “Boo!” and extending an invitation; and she joined in cheerfully.
The divorced couple from that earlier tale now entered the diner. And when they set eyes on you, their eyes grew wide, and they said: “You, it was you! O you gentle reader: Why did you force us to snipe our own offspring?” For they were referring to the part of the earlier story where the group of folks who were escaping from the forest had just used a vine to traverse a great chasm between that scene and some next big thing that never happened...
And I began to weep, and I stood up and cried out: “Sometimes, the reader is our enemy.”
And that’s the moral of our fable, O gentle satan: You misread this weakly. Please, be bold: you’re not contributing enough of your creative misunderstanding. We’re in this together. Let’s pose united, as combatant magnets. If you don’t compose your own poetic essay threatening other critics-as-artists in your world with severe consequences should they fail to peruse, praise, and recommend our joint creation, then we’ll be left with that same old boring formula: All the worst parts of this present text shall be credited to us, its authors, and all the best parts shall be unfairly imputed to Tolstoy.*
* FOOTNOTE: This final line is just an inside joke that refers to the ending of my previous entry; and I was gonna add the following parenthetical statement after it, but I realized that, if I did so, I'd be trying too hard to make all this blatantly obscure text seem like it has some hidden meaning, when it's truly just an air-ball of automatism:
(Imagine how the Count might be planning to use his pocketed weapon during this instant we’re bestalled in.)
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