Steve Tomasula: IN & OZ

“But the true bottom line is that the book came into the world in the form it was meant to be, I was able to buy it, and since the publishers put such a high price on the book, they will be sure to reopen their doors. Or at least open a new kitchen-table operation under a different name. So you see, it was a win-win situation!”

Mechanic said nothing, remembering how his own mechanic’s business had gone under. Would he have been better off compromising? What would that even mean? Making every other repair regular? Repairing every car half way?… He sighed heavily, wishing he had looked harder for a way to stay out of the tollbooth….

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Photographer said, turning the book to look when she had finished the dedication, “now that the book has sold out, there’s sure to be a second printing. We are in negotiations with the publisher right now. Or at least will be once they return my calls, isn’t that right?” Photographer didn’t allow her to release the book as he took it from her, though. Instead, he took Mechanic’s hand and placed it on top of hers. “Now that the publishers realize what they should have thought of before they even went into publishing,” he said, bobbing the book in cadence with their hands upon it. “Your art, your life, your love is not the place to be timid.” He pronounced the words solemnly, looking directly at her as though he was some kind of judge, or minister conducting a ceremony with the book between them, and the emotionless mask that her face became, the way her eyes refused to meet Mechanic’s was as meaningful as some secret handshake he had been allowed to participate in, if not understand.

“When I took my job at the tollbooth,” Mechanic lamented to Photographer, back in Photographer’s camera-house after the reading, after the two of them had labored for the rest of the day to get his broken car back to Mechanic’s garage, “I thought I would enjoy swimming in a sea of cars.” The oceanic hiss and rush of cars on the bridge continued its accompaniment beneath their feet. “But I didn’t figure on how depressing the drivers could be, only concerned with getting from point A to point B, never giving their vehicles a thought unless it was to gild these lilies by the addition of fuzzy dice, or toy dogs whose heads bob up and down.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Photographer sighed sympathetically. “Perhaps you would be happier in a less people-oriented line of work, like gravedigger.” He poured Mechanic another cup of tea.

“Sometimes I feel like such a fool.” He pointed to his name stitched over his shirt pocket. “The toll-road uniform is exactly the same as my old mechanic’s uniform. I didn’t even have to change clothes.”

“Ach, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Photographer scoffed, hearing none of it. “What else were you to do? — Go on making ‘ repairs’ ? Only a werewolf can write like a court reporter all day and howl poems at the moon by night. That’s why I quit making photographs with film entirely.”

“But even if I take off this uniform,” Mechanic said, trying to make his point clearer, “under my clothes my body is still the same.”

Photographer pulled his chair closer. “Listen my friend, let me tell you a story. At my darkest moment, when all the world told me that I was crazy for wanting to change the world with my movies— Ha! — I began — like you — to wonder if in fact black was white and white, like they said, black. But chance, or Zeus, or fate or whatever it is that sends to us what we most need in our hour of need, sent to me a story from my youth, the story of Adam’s Peak: the highest point on earth, protruding from The Garden of Eden to a height halfway between the strife of the earth’s surface and the serenity of the lowest sphere of heaven, the moon. From this peak, it was said, Adam could hold the entire world in one, unframed view — and I clung to this story as if my life depended on it. This is why I moved to this house atop the toll bridge. At the time, it was the highest point around, even higher than OZ. A person could see all the way to the sea from this spot. But then, of course, OZ grew like a new mountain range, blocking the view. No matter, that was also about the time I realized I was losing my sight.”

“What do you mean you’re losing your sight?” Mechanic asked, recalling a creeping stiffness in his own fingers that made it increasingly difficult to hold a wrench.

Photographer nodded. “I am going blind.”

“No!”

“All those years of standing in the place of film, focusing light on my eyes, is making them useless. So I practice by closing my eyes. And I discovered that if the essence of photography is seeing, the essence of seeing is the mind.”

“You mean you are actually losing your sight?”

“From that day on, I determined to make a genre of photography no one else could see, one that when I died, would die with me — and that, my friend, is the essence of art. And of life.” He paused a moment, then added, “And that is also why she has feelings for you.”

“She?” A wild hope went through Mechanic, thinking for a minute that Photographer had meant Designer. But seeing him nod solemnly, it became clear why Photographer had insisted he attend the meeting of the Anti-Billboardistas; why he had called him a blockhead that night after the concert; why he had been agitated at Mechanic for nearly missing a reading. All of these instances had one common denominator. “She told you that?” he asked.

“Not in words, of course.” He pulled something out from under his chair. A bicycle chain. One of its links was missing. And Mechanic came to know that it was from her bicycle and that she wanted him to fix it.

Only a few short months ago, he would have known what to do with a clarity that he had never had before or since. A friend who would ask him to make a repair could be no friend. Could be only an enemy, a brute without the slightest understanding of him or his work. And Photographer would have agreed. But now, looking at the rusted chain draped between Photographer’s two fists, its stiff links bowed into the outline of a valentine, Mechanic was so confused he wanted to cry.

So Photographer couldn’t see the emotion coming over him, he pushed his face in his hands.

“Let me explain with another story,” Photographer said. “For different stories are meaningful to us at different times in our lives. Isn’t that right? The Sur myth for an artist is not the story of Adam’s Peak, I, now wiser, understand, but The Tower of Babel, though the tower gets far too much attention in most retellings of the story. For you see, God’s wrath wasn’t over the tower, the presumption of man making an artificial Adam’s peak out of brick. As it says in the Bible, the people of Babel only set out on this project because they wanted to make a name for themselves. In other words, take possession of language, what made humans human. And God, being the ironic comedian that He is, always gets even with His challengers by giving them what they want. In spades. ‘You want language, then here’s language!’ He thundered, His Voice so powerful that its sound shattered the one tongue they spoke into many — making them even more human.

“Yet, therein lies the first of two lessons any artist can live by: to resolve yourself to an earnestness of such intensity that you will succeed gloriously — or fail so tragically that your failure will become as legendary as success — the inevitable fate of a mortal who challenges the gods. For you see, though God knocked down their tower, scattered their tongue, the people of Babel did make a name for themselves, as we prove each time we retell the story of their failure. And that name is ‘people,’ i.e., all of us.”