David Wallace - Broom of the System

“God, what a man he is, ” whispered the doctor, barely audibly, rolling his walleyes until the action hurt the styes which crusted his eyelids.

“No, really, ” smiled Fieldbinder. “Think of the sound, ‘fuck. ’ ‘Fuck’ A good sound. A solid sound. The sound of a heavy coin rattling in a thick porcelain cup. The sound of a drop of clear cold water falling into a still pond from a great height. Roll the word on your tongue for a while, Dr . J___.”

There was a silence while the doctor rolled the word silently on his cold gray tongue. Across the ambiguously lit room, Fieldbinder obliterated a tiny wrinkle from his impeccable slacks.

“I can recall being a student in college, ” Fieldbinder ruminated after a time. “I can recall even then a deep dissatisfaction with the words used by my peers to designate the act. In college, women were locutionally reduced to earth, or impediment. ‘Have you blasted her?’ ‘Drill her yet?’ ‘I pounded hell out of her last night.’ None of these are right, Dr. J ___, is this not transparently clear? None of these words are adequate to capture not only the reference but the sense of an act in which two distinct selves interpenetrate, not only physically, but also of course emo tionally. I simply must say, as crass as we are conditioned by a troubled society to regard the word, I am a firm believer in the comparative merits of the word ‘fuck.’ ” Fieldbinder looked up and smiled coolly. “Have I offended you?”

“No, hissed Dr, J ____, playing maniacally with the controls of his mechanical chair, making it bounce up and down suggestively, as drool coated the doctor’s pathetically weak chin.

Fietdbinder smiled coolly and speculatively stroked his own generous jaw, lingering over the deep cleft that somehow through physical processes obscure caught and reflected light in such a way as to blind anyone who tried to look directly into Fieldbinder’s deep green eyes deep blue eyes, the color of cold crystal, with tiny fluffy white diamonds frozen in irises of ice.

Fieldbinder grinned wryly. “The word has a music, in my opinion, is all.”

I just

“And your house?” Dr. J _____ lispingly hissed. “Are we not deeply upset at the destruction of your house, at the death of your phenomenal pet in its iron cage, at the disastrous fire and the plunge into disorientation and chaos which such an event must symbolize and entail?” J _____ played with himself covertly under his note pad.

Fieldbinder smiled coolly. “Doctor, I believe I have progressed to the point where I can honestly say that the event did not significantly ‘upset’ me — with all the ramifications and meanings implicit in your choice of the word. Attachment to things, to places, to other living beings requires in my view expenditures of energy and attention far in excess of the value of the things thus brought into the relation of attachment. Does this seem unreasonable! The attempt to have the order of one’s life depend on things and persons outside that life is a silly thing, a thing perhaps appropriate only for those weaker, less successful, less fortunate, less advanced than I. ”

“We are not sure what you mean, Mooted Dr. J _____, lovingly stroking the controls of his mechanical chair.

“Think of it this way, doctor,” said Fieldbinder patiently, smiling coolly. “Think of the Self as at the node of a fan-shaped network of emotions, dispositions, extensions of that feeling and thinking Self. Each line in the protruding network-fan may of course have an external reference and attachment. A house, a woman, a bird, a woman. But it need not be so. The line that seeks purchase in and attachment to an exterior Other is necessarily buttressed, supported, held; it thus becomes small, weak, flabby, reliant on Other. Were the exterior reference and attachment to disappear, unlikely as that obviously sounds in my own case, the atrophied line would crumble weakly, might also disappear. The Self would be smaller than before. And even a Self as prodigious as myself must look upon diminution with disfavor.” Fiekibinder grinned wryly, removed a molecule of lint from his impeccable slacks. “Better to have the lines of the fan stand on their own: self-sufficient, rigid, hard, jutting out into space. Should someone find herself attracted to one of the lines, she could of course fall upon it with all the ravenousness that would be only natural. But she shall not be the reference. Only the ephemeral night insect, drawn to a light that is intrinsically inaccessible. She may be consumed in the line’s light, but still the line stands, juts out, rigidly, far into the space exterior to the Self. ”

“We are afraid we are inequipped to understand such a thing, ” hissed J_____ “Please allow me to consult and masturbate over the writings of my teacher.”

“No real need for that, doctor. ” Fieldbinder held up a stop-palm and smiled coolly. “I think it is in my power to put the insight in terms you can readily understand. Have you by any chance ever watched an ani mated television program called ‘The Road Runner’?”

“I watch the cartoon ever week; I am a rabid fan. ” Drool cascaded over _____ ’s chin as he wriggled in his chair, his feet dangling far above the burnt-yellow office carpet.

“I somehow guessed as much, ” smiled Fieldbinder. “So too is my latest mistress, when she is not busy working as an incredibly successful re corder of messages for cash registers in high-quality supermarkets. I have on occasion taken a Saturday morning off and watched the program with her. Has it occurred to you that ‘The Road Runner’ is what might aptly be termed an existential program? That it comments not uninter estingly on the very attitudes that would be implicit in a person’s feel ing ’upset’ over a catastrophic fire in his home? I see you are puzzled, ” Fieldbinder said, noticing Dr. J ______ frantically scratching his head, a plume of dandruff shooting up into the air of the office only to resettle on the obscene bald spot in the middle of the doctor’s skull-shaped head.

Fieldbinder smiled and continued, “I invite you to realize that this program does nothing other than present us with a protagonist, a coyote, functioning within a system interestingly characterixed as a malevolent Nature, a protagonist who endlessly, tirelessly, disastrously pursues a thing, a telos — the bird in the title role — a thing and goal far, far less valuable than the effort and resources the protagonist puts into its pursuit.” Fieldbinder grinned wryly. “The thing pursued —a skinny meatless bird —is far less valuable than the energy and attention and economic resources expended by the coyote on the process of pursuit. Just as an attachment radiating from the Self outward is worth far less than the price the es tablishment of such an attachment inevitably exacts. ”

Dr. J___ inflated an anatomically correct doll and began to fondle it as it stared blankly. Fieldbinder smiled patiently.

“A question, doctor, ” he said. “Why doesn’t the coyote take the money he spends on bird costumes and catapaults and radioactive road runner food pellets and explosive missiles and simply go eat Chinese?” He smiled coolly. “Why doesn’t the coyote simply go eat Chinese food? ”Fieidbinder’s face assumed a cool, bland, wry expression as he attended to his impeccable slacks.

Dr. J____ snarkd and

/g/

“Rick? Am I interrupting?”

“….”

“I can come back.”

“What is it.”