Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

rather dance on the feet of Chance.

`Oh heaven over me pure and high! Now that I have learned that there is no purposeful eternal spider and no spider

web of reason, you have become for me a dance floor for divine accidents; you have become a divine table for divine

dice and dice players. But my listeners blush? Do I speak the unspeakable? Do I blaspheme, wishing to bless you?"

I ended my reading and after checking to see if there might be more related material I looked up.

`I didn't recognize it,' Terry said.

`It's Zarathustra. But did you understand it?'

`I don't know. I liked it. I liked something about it very much. But I don't - I don't see why I should have faith in the

dice. I guess that's the trouble.'

`Not a sparrow falls to the ground that God does not see.'

`I know.'

`Can a single die fall to the table unseen by God?'

`No, I guess not.'

`Do you remember the great ending to the Book of Job? God speaks from the whirlwind and asks Job how he can

presume to question the ways of God. For three long, beautiful chapters God indicts man's abysmal ignorance and

impotence. He says things like: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . ."

Or "Who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb?"

And "have you commanded the morning since your days began?"

"Have the gates of death been revealed to you?"

On and on God rubs it in to poor Job, but stylishly - in the most beautiful poetry in the world - and Job realizes that he

has been wrong in complaining and questioning. His last words to the Lord are "I know that thou canst do all things,

and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted . . .

Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

I paused, and Terry and I looked silently at each other for several moments.

`God can do all things,' I went on. `No purpose of His can ever be thwarted. Never.'

`Yes,' she replied. .

`We must despise ourselves and lose ourselves if we are to be saved.'

`Yes.'

`God sees the tiniest sparrow fall.'

`Yes.'

`The tiniest die tumble upon the table.'

`Yes.

'He will always know what options you have given to the Die.'

`Yes.'

`Terry, the reason you must have faith in the Die is simple.'

`Yes.'

`The Die is God.'

`The Die is God,' she said.

Chapter Thirty-two

I was sitting at a board meeting of Queensborough State Hospital one Wednesday evening that spring, when the idea of Centers for Experiments in Total Random Environments came to me. Fifteen old men, all doctors, Ph.D's and millionaires, were seated around a huge, rectangular table discussing plumbing expansion, salary scales, medication charts and rights-of-way, while the patients in the square mile around us settled ever more comfortably into their various defined stupors. In the middle of doing a doodle of a multi-armed, multi-legged, multi-headed Shivt, whammo! It hit me; a Dice Center, an institution to convert people into random men. I suddenly saw a short-term total environment of such overwhelming impact that the principles and practices of the dicelife would be infused after a few weeks to the same degree that they had in me after many, many months. I saw a society of dicepeople. I saw a new world.

"Old man Cobblestone, our tall, dignified chairman, was speaking with great deliberation about the intricacies of Queensborough law regarding rights of appropriation; six pipes, three cigars and five cigarettes were giving the green-walled room a milky, underwater effect; a young doctor (forty-six) beside me had been wiggling his foot in the same motion for forty minutes without pause. Pens lay dormant by paper except for mine: the sole doodler. Yawns were smothered into coughs or hidden behind pipes. Cobblestone gave way to Dr. Wink on the inefficiency of bureaucratic systems in dealing with plumbing problems and suddenly, leaping at me from the seven arms, six legs and three heads of Shiva, was the idea of the Dice Center.

I took my green die from my vest pocket and gave it a fifty fifty chance that I would create such an institute. It said `yes.'

I stifled a scream. Whatever sound emerged slowed but did not stop the wiggling foot beside me. Four heads turned minutely toward me then back respectfully to Dr. Wink. I was ablaze with my idea. I cast the die a second time on the doodle pad.

`Gentlemen!' I said loudly and I shoved back my chair and stood. I towered over Dr. Wink, who stood just opposite me staring at me openmouthed. The others all turned to me respectfully foot-wiggler wiggled on.

`Gentlemen.'

I said again, groping for the right words. `Another sewer will only permit us to handle the shit better; it won't solve anything.'

`That's true,' a voice said encouragingly and several heads nodded.

`If we are to fulfill our duties as trustees we must have a vision of an institution which will change our patients and send them into the world as free men.'

I was speaking slowly and pompously and I earned two nods and a yawn.

`As Ezra Pound wrote in a late poem, a mental hospital is a total institution: it engulfs each patient with a consistency of rule, habit and attitude which effectively isolates him from the more unpredictable problems of life in the outside world. A patient can adjust successfully to hospital life because he can count on its limiting its horrors to certain predictable patterns. The outside world holds no such hope for him. He is thus often able to adjust to hospital life and yet be frightened foot less by the thought of having to leave. We have effectively prepared our patients to live-adequately in the mental hospital and no place else.'

`Is this to the point?' old Cobblestone asked from his seat at the head of the table.

`Oh it is, sir. It is,' I said a bit more quickly. Then with dignity: `I have a dream. A vision: we want to prepare our patients to fulfill themselves happily in all environments, to free the individual from the need to lock himself away from challenge and change. We-'

'This … but, Dr. Rhinehart,' Dr. Wink stammered uncertainly.

`We want to create a world of adult children without fear. We want the multiplicity built into each one of us by our anarchic and contradictory society to break free. We want people to greet each other on the street and not know who is who are not care. We want freedom from individual identity. Freedom from security and stability and coherence. We want a community of creators, a monastery for joy-filled madmen.'

`What are you talking about?' Old man Cobblestone said firmly. He was standing.

`For Christ's sake, Luke, sit down,' Dr. Mann said. Heads turned to each other and then back to me.

`Oh we've been fools! Fools!' I slammed my fist down on million years we've believed that -the choice lies only between control and discipline on the one hand and letting go on the other: we don't realize that both are equally methods of sustaining consistent-habit, attitude and personality. The Goddam personality!' I grit my teeth and shuddered. `We need disciplined anarchy, controlled letting go, queen for a day, Russian roulette, veto, eeny-meeny #161;miney-moe: a new way of life, a new world, a community of dice men.'

I made my appeal directly to old Cobblestone, and he didn't even blink.

`What are you talking about?' he asked again more gently.

`I'm talking about converting QSH into a Center in which patients will be systematically taught to play games with life, to act out all of their fantasies, to be dishonest and enjoy it, to lie and pretend and feel hate and rage and love and compassion as determined by the whim of the dice. I'm talking about creating an institution where the doctors periodically pretend to be patients, for days, for weeks, where the patients pretend to be doctors and give therapy sessions, where the attendants and nurses play the roles of patients and visitors and doctors and TV repairmen, where the whole fucking institution is one great stage upon which all walk free.'