Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [8]
My philosophy teacher, meanwhile, whose name I have forgotten, began his course with a stunning observation. “Sixty years from right now, every person in this room will be dead. In the face of that, we must judge how seriously to take the subjects to be explored here.”
I was stupefied. Intrigued. In total agreement. Then, however, I interpreted his remark to mean, not seriously at all; now I would say, seriously enough.
I was walking down a hall one day and heard a strange noise coming from an empty classroom. When I looked in, I saw him, sprawled across a desk in the throes of a horrible asthma attack. His face was brilliant red. Spittle streamed from his mouth as he struggled for air. I offered to get help but he waved me on. I thought about the incident a lot. I dropped his class. My encounter with him in his private agony only served to convince me that I couldn’t take his class. I feared this guy would break my heart. I saw the flawed philosopher in myself and felt that love, women, and the endless search for meaning would have to proceed without a guide.
There is something tragic, fleeting, self-destructive about these men of poetry and song. Relishing in their mortality, they seem to convey a sense of satisfaction in their slow degeneration, as if the example of their passing lends legitimacy to their expressions of it. All as beautiful as David when they started out, now, as men, they know true things. These can be read in the lines of their faces, seen in the humor hidden behind their eyes, felt in the coarseness of their once-soft hands, heard in the gravel of their voices, driven by hearts almost weary.
Ten years removed from college, I found myself alone on Clovelly Island, after business failures had sent me packing to a faraway place to collect myself and reinvent my reasons for existing. From a box of books I had brought with me I picked out a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and read those first fateful pages: “I have no resources, no money, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am.” And I realized that my whole life had to start over again. As it had before and would, no doubt, have to later on.
Sculpture isn’t for young men.
A fine piece of work I was. Young men are for sculpting, by women, life, and the time of man into which they were so unexpectedly born.
Huidekoper
“Goddamnit Goldilocks, wake up!”
My head is pounding and my mouth is dry. No.
My head is not pounding. It is the walls that are pounding. Someone is outside pounding on the glass, pounding on the door. Make them stop! Whoever it is must be looking in the big bay window just above the bed. I force open an eye and frantically check to the right and left. Luckily, I’m alone.
I’m not alone. Someone is screaming. “Goldilocks! Open the goddamn door!” I roll awkwardly off the mattress that lies on the floor and climb to my feet. My hair, normally past my shoulders in long tumbling curls, is sticking out in all directions. My face is a sagging pile of goo. I can’t afford an air conditioner and the ancient electrical system that services this basement apartment/office couldn’t handle one anyway. It is ninety-five degrees inside. It is eight o’clock in the morning and already I’m dripping sweat. I throw open the door and there he is. A retiree from Patton’s Third Army, complete with brushcut hair and white overalls. He’s holding a paintbrush in one hand. In the other he holds a filterless cigarette between two sawed-off stubs that once were fingers. Three fingers from his right hand and two from his left were burned off when his machine gun overheated during a battle long ago. He’s looking at me with utter disgust.
“Jesus Christ, Goldilocks. Would you please put on some