from Men I’ve Known
Who Is Anyone
Nietzsche fell on the clouds and could not get up. “Stop staring,” he said to the dog, “and tell me how you got so happy.” My father, whose name means good genes, has fond memories of the Korean war having spent it in a dark room encoding and decoding secret messages. Faithful feeder of birds (and mice), he once said that God must exist because water gets lighter before turning to ice and so plants and fish can survive at the bottom. “God arranged it like this for us,” he said, ringing the rim of his wine glass with his middle finger. The gap between fantasy and reality is as good as a moat, that is, when your home is your castle.
Who Is Anyone
A young man serves in the war to end all wars and never speaks about it, sends his two sons to two different wars. A man who doesn’t speak might speak in the dark when no one’s listening, mouthing sounds of gunfire. The man, whose name means supplanter, goes to work in the plant manufacturing corn products, never blows a whistle, not even when his leg gets caught in a machine and he has to cut it off himself. They give him a desk job where he sits quietly for two decades. His grandchild hears his wooden leg swear as he hobbles down the hallway, he turns to wink as if to affirm — see, the puppet can speak for its puppeteer.
Who Is Anyone
Money points to money without showing its hand. Money points to the empty lot, to the dry-docked yachts. Money has a thing for money and a way of calling things by their money names — lot for land, payola for ham. Marx called money for the sake of money “fetishism.” My first boss calls me “glamour girl,” tries to trick me into his bed, thus showing the hand of his bowtie and mid-Atlantic accent. He points to, no fingers the sore on his head — yep, still wet. Points to his belt before we land, “Grab it if anything happens — there’s a lot of money in here.”
Who Is Anyone
The boy writes that his pencil is so quiet it makes him feel dead. That’s why it’s hard to take dictation, although he can speak without doing speaking, causing his teacher to snap — she has something to get from her day. All he wants is to run in an open field like an impala, leaping over every obstacle, turning on a dime. But that freedom falls apart, soon legs and lungs burn, he’s got to rest. Lying in bed, he realizes he should either be committed or put on TV. Later, a teashop woman tells him, “The way is right straight ahead.” He’s back to running, following her pointer straight to Shunryū Suzuki’s mountain posture. There he stops. All at once. Nonstop stepping back going forward.
Who Is Anyone
“Remember, I’m the traveler, I bring only happy things,” he says stepping out of the bathroom in a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks, holding up a toothbrush. “OK?” Types in the Japanese word, then pushes up his glasses with his knuckle, “Immoral woman?” You might say metamorphosing like a mayfly growing in water then changing bodies to do it in the air. At the airport, he says through my veil of tears, “We make our own stories, but we also have to control them.” He films me walking downhill, my red sweater disappearing into fog — “like Casablanca.” Like a mayfly returning to water to lay her soggy eggs. Sixth generation, he must return to take over the family portrait business.
Who Is Anyone
Up with the birds heading down to the sea in his dark blue bathrobe for a morning dip. “Water is taught by thirst,” said Dickinson who chose her teachers wisely. Thirst is taught by sadistic masters called old school. When the students launch an attack on their professors, they only criticize his feet: And this one wears sandals in winter! Meaning what—too earthy? Too Jesus? No deeper true self, just the need to shape one’s life as a work of art, according to Foucault. Instead of mandatory military service he volunteers at a small art museum on a small island of his small country where there are such options, and there he starts to rewrite the test: What would you give up for love?