Paul Auster - Timbuktu

“But don’t get me wrong. There’s too much out there not to feel tempted. The lure of particulars, I mean, the seductions of the thing-in-itself. You’d have to be blind not to give in once in a while. I don’t care what it is. Just pick a thing, and chances are a case can be made for it. The splendor of bicycle wheels, for example. Their lightness, their spidery elegance, their shining rims and gossamer spokes. Or the sound of a manhole cover rattling under a truck at three in the morning. To say nothing of Spandex, which has probably done more to spruce up the landscape than any invention since the underground telephone wire. I refer to the sight of Spandex pants plastered across the behind of a young chick as she strides by you on the street. Need I say more? You’d have to be dead not to warm to that. It darts and dives at you, keeps churning away in your head until it all melts down into a big, buttery ooze. Vasco da Gama in his puffy pantaloons. FDR’s cigarette holder. Voltaire’s powdery wig. Cunegonde!

Cunegonde! Think of what happens when you say it. See what you say when you think it. Cartography. Pornography. Stenography. Stentorian stammerings, Episcopalian floozies, Fudgsicles and Frosted Flakes. I admit that I’ve succumbed to the charms of these things as readily as the next man, am in no wise superior to the riffraff I’ve rubbed shoulders with for lo these many years. I’m human, aren’t I? If that makes me a hypocrite, then so be it.

“Sometimes, you just have to bow down in awe. A person comes up with an idea that no one has ever thought of, an idea so simple and perfect that you wonder how the world ever managed to survive without it. The suitcase with wheels, for example. How could it have taken us so long? For thirty thousand years, we’ve been lugging our burdens around with us, sweating and straining as we moved from one place to another, and the only thing that’s ever come of it is sore muscles, bad backs, exhaustion. I mean, it’s not as though we didn’t have the wheel, is it? That’s what gets me. Why did we have to wait until the end of the twentieth century for this gizmo to see the light of day? If nothing else, you’d think roller skates would have inspired someone to make the connection, to put two and two together. But no. Fifty years go by, seventy-five years go by, and people are still schlepping their bags through airports and train stations every time they leave home to visit Aunt Rita in Poughkeepsie. I’m telling you, friend, things aren’t as simple as they look. The human spirit is a dull instrument, and often we’re no better at figuring out how to take care of ourselves than the lowest worm in the ground.

“Whatever else I’ve been, I’ve never let myself be that worm. I’ve jumped, I’ve galloped, I’ve soared, and no matter how many times I’ve crashed back to earth, I’ve always picked myself up and tried again. Even now, as the darkness closes in on me, my mind holds fast and won’t throw in the towel. The transparent toaster, comrade. It came to me in a vision two or three nights ago, and my head’s been full of the idea ever since. Why not expose the works, I said to myself, be able to watch the bread turn from white to golden brown, to see the metamorphosis with your own eyes? What good does it do to lock up the bread and hide it behind that ugly stainless steel? I’m talking about clear glass, with the orange coils glowing within. It would be a thing of beauty, a work of art in every kitchen, a luminous sculpture to contemplate even as we go about the humble task of preparing breakfast and fortifying ourselves for the day ahead. Clear, heat-resistant glass. We could tint it blue, tint it green, tint it any color we like, and then, with the orange radiating from within, imagine the combinations, just think of the visual wonders that would be possible. Making toast would be turned into a religious act, an emanation of otherworldliness, a form of prayer. Jesus god. How I wish I had the strength to work on it now, to sit down and draw up some plans, to perfect the thing and see where we got with it. That’s all I’ve ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab, humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That’s the best a man can ever do.

“Okay, snicker if you like. If I gush, I gush, and that’s all there is to it. It feels good to let the purple stuff come pouring out sometimes. Does that make me a fool? Perhaps it does. But better that than bitterness, I say, better to follow the lessons of Santa Claus than to spend your life in the claws of deceit. Sure, I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to say it. I can hear the words in your head, mein herr, and you won’t get an argument from me. Wherefore this floundering?, you ask yourself. Wherefore this flopping to and fro, this rolling in the dust, this lifelong grovel toward annihilation? You do well to ask these questions. I’ve asked them many times myself, and the only answer I’ve ever come up with is the one that answers nothing. Because I wanted it this way. Because I had no choice. Because there are no answers to questions like these.

“No apologies, then. I’ve always been a flawed creature, Mr. Bones, a man riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies, the tugs of too many impulses. On the one hand, purity of heart, goodness, Santa’s loyal helper. On the other hand, a loudmouthed crank, a nihilist, a besotted clown. And the poet? He fell somewhere in between, I suppose, in the interval between the best and the worst of me. Not the saint, and not the wisecracking drunk. The man with the voices in his head, the one who sometimes managed to listen in on the conversations of stones and trees, who every now and then could turn the music of the clouds into words. Pity I couldn’t have been him more. But I’ve never been to Italy, alas, the place where pity is produced, and if you can’t afford the fare, then you just have to stay at home.

“Still, you’ve never seen me at my best, Sir Osso, and I regret that. I regret that you’ve known me only as a man in decline. It was a different story back in the old days, before my spunk petered out and I ran into this… this engine trouble. I never wanted to be a bum. That wasn’t what I had in mind for myself, that wasn’t how I dreamed of my future. Scrounging for empty bottles in recycling bins wasn’t part of the plan. Squirting water on windshields wasn’t part of the plan. Falling down on my knees in front of churches and closing my eyes to look like an early Christian martyr so that some passerby would feel sorry for me and drop a dime or quarter in my palm—no, Signor Puccini, no, no, no, that wasn’t what I was put on this earth to do. But man does not live by words alone. He needs bread, and not just one loaf, but two. One for the pocket and one for the mouth. Bread to buy bread, if you see what I mean, and if you don’t have the first kind, you sure as hell aren’t going to have the other.

“It was a tough blow when Mom-san left us. I’m not going to deny that, pupster, and I’m not going to deny that I made things worse by giving away all that money. I said no apologies, but now I want to take that back and apologize to you. I did a rash and stupid thing, and we’ve both paid the price. Ten thousand dollars ain’t Shredded Wheat, after all. I let it slip through my fingers, watched the whole wad scatter to the winds, and the funny thing about it was that I didn’t care. It made me happy to act like a big shot, to flaunt my haul like some cockamamie high-roller. Mr. Altruism. Mr. Al Truism, that’s me, the one and only Alberto Verissimo, the man who took his mother’s life insurance policy and unloaded every nickel of it. A hundred dollars to Benny Shapiro. Eight hundred dollars to Daisy Brackett. Four thousand dollars to the Fresh Air Fund. Two thousand dollars to the Henry Street Settlement House. Fifteen hundred dollars to the Poets-in-the-Schools Program. It went fast, didn’t it? A week, ten days, and by the time I looked up again, I had divested myself of my entire inheritance. Oh well. Easy come easy go, as the old saw says, and who am I to think I could have done otherwise? It’s in my blood to be bold, to do the thing that no one else would do. Buck the buck, that’s what I did. It was my one chance to put up or shut up, to prove to myself that I meant what I’d been saying for all those years, and so when the dough came in I didn’t hesitate. I bucked the buck. I might have fucked myself in the process, but that doesn’t mean I acted in vain. Pride counts for something, after all, and when push came to shove, I’m glad I didn’t back down. I walked the plank. I went the whole distance. I jumped. Never mind the sea monsters below. I know who I am, as the good sailor Popeye never said, and for once in my life I knew exactly what I was doing.