Sage and the Scarecrow - The Parable of the Statue
Project Summary: The following is Chapter 7 from my 2004 novel The Sage and the Scarecrow.
At the moment, I am revising the chapters from this book into 3-4 page short stories for posting on my blogs and in literary magazines.
If you are interested in reading the eventual completed revised edition of “The Sage and the Scarecrow”, please email me at ghostsofnagasaki [at] gmail [dot] com.
The Novel in Short: Six months after his father has died from cancer, Pierce finds himself in a state of anxiety and crisis. In his mind, there are two worlds. In one world he is a second-year college student trying to finish the semester; in another world, he roams an apocalyptic landscape searching for scraps of wisdom that will lead him to the perfect society. In both worlds, he is on a quest to find a girl named Jennifer, his best friend, true love, and the only person he believes can cure him.
The Philosophy of Fuck All
Or
The Parable of the Statue
In the picture I have stuck between the pages of the Tao Teh Ching Jennifer is wearing her glasses with thick black plastic frames proudly as a testament to her geekdom. Whenever I think of her, I always think of her with those same thick black frames around her eyes.
After Brian left my dorm, I looked at that picture for a long time. I sat in my chair at my desk and looked and looked and thought about her with the gorgeous blonde hair, that smile, those brilliant and positive eyes, and that way of making me feel...like the world wasn’t coming to an end.
I think about her and what she would think about what I have become.
*
In my wandering through the city I come upon a statue.
The acrid, nuclear rain has melted parts of the statue into something inhuman. It has nothing that could be recognized as a face, and the parts that are supposed to look like hands and fingers are molded into stumps.
I try to recall a passage from the Tao Teh Ching. I try to bring something to life from my useless memory. The passage has to do with heaven and earth and their connection.
The statue mumbles to me, “...not live for themselves.”
“That’s right,” I say with an exhausted smile. “They live for each other. Heaven and earth live for each other.”
I haven’t taken any magic mushrooms. The statue must really be alive.
I look up but don’t recognize any form. Its melted face and hands are something less than human. Only when I turn away does it speak to me.
*
At some point I stopped looking at the picture and put it back inside the pages of the book. I thought about maybe writing some things down. I keep a journal just to write down all the things that happen in my life, get things off my mind, get things straight, the usual reasons.
It helps.
I mixed strange meditations, swearing matches, and essays probing the intricate issues of my life with words that I wrote down to pass the time. It was all there in text to refer back to: a written record of my nonsensical obsessions and neuroses.
I wrote in my journal for a little while. Then I went to the park just near my dorm. To sit on a bench, feel the night air, and think by myself. All worthy pursuits.
A perfect setting for just saying “Fuck all” -- which in just such a setting could be considered coherent philosophy.
“Fuck all” seemed an epiphany at the moment.
It was a December night. Anywhere else it would have been cold, but cradled in the sunshine state so close to the equator, all the night wind could manage was cool. Still I felt a chill come over me. I was shivering.
I sat in a park in my university and thought about my classes and school: How distant and surreal they seemed at the moment, and how little they interested me.
Please don’t rain, I thought. A cool wet night is more than I can bare at the moment.
*
The statue goes silent. I beg it to speak to me. I try to recall more passages from the Tao Teh Ching, but my mind is an empty cabinet, no food nor thought.
I feel a light something touch my shoulder and find part of my dirty shirt melting away.
The acrid nuclear rain has come to put me out of my misery.
*
I slowly began to move away from the F-word to a place less comfortable. I thought about how a man on a plane once recited to me an entire Raymond Carver poem by memory. It was a funny thing to remember at a time like that. It made me feel better, though. He pronounced each word elegantly, and he seemed inspired by the act of remembering.
I don’t remember which poem he had memorized. Perhaps it was “Happiness.”
Here is a few lines from that poem.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
I had never memorized a poem before—I still haven’t. I was born of that generation that thought memory was an antiquated technology.
Only my journal to guide me, or to lead me astray.
*
My useless, useless memory. I can bring forth no words...so the statue refuses to speak.
*
But I knew some of the words to “Werewolves of London,” my dad’s favorite song (“I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's / His hair was perfect.”).
The man on the plane told me how he had insomnia, how he hadn’t slept in days. Then he told me about his dating woes, how tough it was to get a date being an insomniac who wasn’t that attractive and who consequently had a bad sense of humor.
I sympathized.
He really did have the worst sense of humor and he never shut up. He made me smile, though. Eventually a joke would hit the mark, and it made the plane ride all that much better. Because, as he told me later on, “Sometimes all you have are bad jokes.”
I think my dad understood this. The man in the airplane sort of reminded me of him. Except my dad never had dark bags underneath his eyes, and, from what I understand of my dad’s youth, he was quite the ladies’ man.
*
The rain continues to fall. I feel a burn on my hand. I feel a burn on my cheek, a sweet kiss from the apocalypse.
I don’t accept death quite yet. I want to live. Or, at least try to live long enough to complete my journey. I look up the statue whose features have been melted into formless shapes. Another drop burns my forehead.
I smile and try my best with my last moments to remember the statue as it used to be. Something beautiful and unique. A glittering poem, a day at the beach, a hug on a bad day from someone you loved, a man on a plane pouring his heart out...
Things that existed before the world decided that “Fuck all” was a better alternative.
*
My entire life was recorded within the hardbound confines of my notebook: my dad, Jennifer, everything. Where was my life going? Where had I gone wrong? How could I do better?
These were all good, healthy, boring questions to ask.
Which is why it was absolutely necessary to reject them.
Instead I leaned heavily on the crutch of “Fuck all,” this simple phrase that solved so many more problems at the moment. The highest plain on Hegel’s dialectical hierarchy ended in two word.
I should write a paper on it, was my thinking. It will be all about moving from the philosophically pristine goal of objective truth toward an existentialist stance of what’s the point (similar to Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead”?). Fuck all was the highest truth because I was ready to fight wars and go on pilgrimages for it. Soon every man shall know the glory of the doctrine of Fuck All.
The thought was an especially funny one, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I must have looked like a madman, sitting alone on a Friday night in a park near my dorm when I thought the rain might come, laughing to myself.
*
More of the acrid nuclear rain comes to burn my skin. I laugh a little with my cries of pain.
I look up.
For a moment, I think I can see a face. Someone happy at a time when normal pleasures were normal. I pretend that I recognize this person and his normal happiness. I pretend it’s someone gentle, a familiar face.
The only friends in the apocalypse are the ones you insist on seeing, even when they are not there.
“Despite it all,” I tell the faceless statue, “I want to live just a while longer so I can know a pleasure or two not unlike the days before the world said ‘Fuck all.’”
The statue’s body unfurls and bends toward me. It leans forward and covers me from the acrid, shitty, nuclear rain.
Something where his head is supposed to be opens ever so slightly, and I hear these words, “I know how you feel.”
At the moment, I am revising the chapters from this book into 3-4 page short stories for posting on my blogs and in literary magazines.
If you are interested in reading the eventual completed revised edition of “The Sage and the Scarecrow”, please email me at ghostsofnagasaki [at] gmail [dot] com.
The Novel in Short: Six months after his father has died from cancer, Pierce finds himself in a state of anxiety and crisis. In his mind, there are two worlds. In one world he is a second-year college student trying to finish the semester; in another world, he roams an apocalyptic landscape searching for scraps of wisdom that will lead him to the perfect society. In both worlds, he is on a quest to find a girl named Jennifer, his best friend, true love, and the only person he believes can cure him.
The Philosophy of Fuck All
Or
The Parable of the Statue
In the picture I have stuck between the pages of the Tao Teh Ching Jennifer is wearing her glasses with thick black plastic frames proudly as a testament to her geekdom. Whenever I think of her, I always think of her with those same thick black frames around her eyes.
After Brian left my dorm, I looked at that picture for a long time. I sat in my chair at my desk and looked and looked and thought about her with the gorgeous blonde hair, that smile, those brilliant and positive eyes, and that way of making me feel...like the world wasn’t coming to an end.
I think about her and what she would think about what I have become.
*
In my wandering through the city I come upon a statue.
The acrid, nuclear rain has melted parts of the statue into something inhuman. It has nothing that could be recognized as a face, and the parts that are supposed to look like hands and fingers are molded into stumps.
I try to recall a passage from the Tao Teh Ching. I try to bring something to life from my useless memory. The passage has to do with heaven and earth and their connection.
The statue mumbles to me, “...not live for themselves.”
“That’s right,” I say with an exhausted smile. “They live for each other. Heaven and earth live for each other.”
I haven’t taken any magic mushrooms. The statue must really be alive.
I look up but don’t recognize any form. Its melted face and hands are something less than human. Only when I turn away does it speak to me.
*
At some point I stopped looking at the picture and put it back inside the pages of the book. I thought about maybe writing some things down. I keep a journal just to write down all the things that happen in my life, get things off my mind, get things straight, the usual reasons.
It helps.
I mixed strange meditations, swearing matches, and essays probing the intricate issues of my life with words that I wrote down to pass the time. It was all there in text to refer back to: a written record of my nonsensical obsessions and neuroses.
I wrote in my journal for a little while. Then I went to the park just near my dorm. To sit on a bench, feel the night air, and think by myself. All worthy pursuits.
A perfect setting for just saying “Fuck all” -- which in just such a setting could be considered coherent philosophy.
“Fuck all” seemed an epiphany at the moment.
It was a December night. Anywhere else it would have been cold, but cradled in the sunshine state so close to the equator, all the night wind could manage was cool. Still I felt a chill come over me. I was shivering.
I sat in a park in my university and thought about my classes and school: How distant and surreal they seemed at the moment, and how little they interested me.
Please don’t rain, I thought. A cool wet night is more than I can bare at the moment.
*
The statue goes silent. I beg it to speak to me. I try to recall more passages from the Tao Teh Ching, but my mind is an empty cabinet, no food nor thought.
I feel a light something touch my shoulder and find part of my dirty shirt melting away.
The acrid nuclear rain has come to put me out of my misery.
*
I slowly began to move away from the F-word to a place less comfortable. I thought about how a man on a plane once recited to me an entire Raymond Carver poem by memory. It was a funny thing to remember at a time like that. It made me feel better, though. He pronounced each word elegantly, and he seemed inspired by the act of remembering.
I don’t remember which poem he had memorized. Perhaps it was “Happiness.”
Here is a few lines from that poem.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
I had never memorized a poem before—I still haven’t. I was born of that generation that thought memory was an antiquated technology.
Only my journal to guide me, or to lead me astray.
*
My useless, useless memory. I can bring forth no words...so the statue refuses to speak.
*
But I knew some of the words to “Werewolves of London,” my dad’s favorite song (“I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's / His hair was perfect.”).
The man on the plane told me how he had insomnia, how he hadn’t slept in days. Then he told me about his dating woes, how tough it was to get a date being an insomniac who wasn’t that attractive and who consequently had a bad sense of humor.
I sympathized.
He really did have the worst sense of humor and he never shut up. He made me smile, though. Eventually a joke would hit the mark, and it made the plane ride all that much better. Because, as he told me later on, “Sometimes all you have are bad jokes.”
I think my dad understood this. The man in the airplane sort of reminded me of him. Except my dad never had dark bags underneath his eyes, and, from what I understand of my dad’s youth, he was quite the ladies’ man.
*
The rain continues to fall. I feel a burn on my hand. I feel a burn on my cheek, a sweet kiss from the apocalypse.
I don’t accept death quite yet. I want to live. Or, at least try to live long enough to complete my journey. I look up the statue whose features have been melted into formless shapes. Another drop burns my forehead.
I smile and try my best with my last moments to remember the statue as it used to be. Something beautiful and unique. A glittering poem, a day at the beach, a hug on a bad day from someone you loved, a man on a plane pouring his heart out...
Things that existed before the world decided that “Fuck all” was a better alternative.
*
My entire life was recorded within the hardbound confines of my notebook: my dad, Jennifer, everything. Where was my life going? Where had I gone wrong? How could I do better?
These were all good, healthy, boring questions to ask.
Which is why it was absolutely necessary to reject them.
Instead I leaned heavily on the crutch of “Fuck all,” this simple phrase that solved so many more problems at the moment. The highest plain on Hegel’s dialectical hierarchy ended in two word.
I should write a paper on it, was my thinking. It will be all about moving from the philosophically pristine goal of objective truth toward an existentialist stance of what’s the point (similar to Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead”?). Fuck all was the highest truth because I was ready to fight wars and go on pilgrimages for it. Soon every man shall know the glory of the doctrine of Fuck All.
The thought was an especially funny one, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I must have looked like a madman, sitting alone on a Friday night in a park near my dorm when I thought the rain might come, laughing to myself.
*
More of the acrid nuclear rain comes to burn my skin. I laugh a little with my cries of pain.
I look up.
For a moment, I think I can see a face. Someone happy at a time when normal pleasures were normal. I pretend that I recognize this person and his normal happiness. I pretend it’s someone gentle, a familiar face.
The only friends in the apocalypse are the ones you insist on seeing, even when they are not there.
“Despite it all,” I tell the faceless statue, “I want to live just a while longer so I can know a pleasure or two not unlike the days before the world said ‘Fuck all.’”
The statue’s body unfurls and bends toward me. It leans forward and covers me from the acrid, shitty, nuclear rain.
Something where his head is supposed to be opens ever so slightly, and I hear these words, “I know how you feel.”
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