The Fragile Wings of a Legacy - a brief tale of historical integrity
Randy Ray
2007-03-22
Peaches En Randalia #13 THURSDAY>
I met Mr. Watson at the diner near the school. He chose a booth in the back so we could chat. He had offered a casual get together after Tuesday’s class. Apparently, everyone in the class was being advised on how to complete the impending Final. It was due in little over a month. Our discussion, however, would take place outside of the classroom.
We hadn’t spoken much to each other. Truth be told, Mr. Watson has said very little to me verbally, but there is present the instinctual common understanding that sometimes passes between two people. I think it helps that I’m in my mid-thirties and I had somehow tread the same path, read the same books, listened to the same music...either that or the man is just plain bored if he has succumbed to talking to me. Anyway, he felt that we should slide The Final Essay Discussion into perhaps an outside, more relaxed location. I was eager at first as I always seem to be about new experiences but then near panic set in as the day drew near and I feared that perhaps, quite contrarily, we didn’t have much to say to each other. He could just be feigning politeness or even worse, he was going to get back at me for a few of my smart ass comments that I had made during one of his Zen-freeform-mondo obscuro lectures.
There did seem to be a vibe to him that made me feel that I could get away with murder in his class from day one. I guess I’m too humble to simply speculate that Mr. Watson believed that I was a kindred soul. He had been teaching for quite a while. Maybe, just maybe, I had touched a nerve. A young, pseudo-beatnik like me had slipped into his literary lion’s den. I would just have to feel comfortable that when he spoke I truly understood the point or the subtle lack of a point that he was trying to conjure up. At the very least, I felt that I had been incredibly stimulated in his classroom. I wasn’t alone in my search for meaning in past events and my quest for a promising future. The lectures in Mr. Watson’s class tended to lean towards literature that I had read. Any new things? Yes, of course. However, Mr. Watson expected us to bring some intellectual baggage to his English Composition-Critical Thinking class. He certainly wasn’t going to supply knowledge that one hadn’t tried to find on one’s own. It’s the chicken or the egg story: Does he educate us or are we teaching ourselves? A TRILLION FUCKING LIGHT YEARS AGO>
“God?”
“Yes, my child.”
“What came first—the chicken or the egg?”
“Egg. To tell you the truth, I was a little peeved that a chicken came out of it. That's not what happened in rehearsal.”
THURSDAY>
I met Mr. Watson at the diner near the school. He chose a booth in the back.
“Trouble getting here?”
“No,” I replied.
“A booth in the back alright with you?”
“Sure.”
“Long commute?”
“No.”
“You live in the City?”
“Yes, I do. You?”
“Oh, Mr. Jefferson (laughs), you should know the answer to that one!”
“Come on. What am...What? Am I on Jeopardy or something?”
“Where would Mr. Watson live, son?”
“Uh...the City? A cardboard box in someone’s backyard? In a dumpster outside the school?”
“Berkeley, wise guy.”
“That was my eleventh choice.”
“Eleven, eh?”
“Sorry...I’m a little slow right now. The bus took forever to get crosstown and I’m a little frazzled because I thought I’d be late.”
“Indeed. Good choice: the bus. Try to rely on public transport, my good-natured friend, it is the future.”
“I’ll remember that, Professor.”
“Carl.”
“Pardon me?”
“My name’s Carl. Carl Watson.”
“Robert Jefferson. Call me Bob.”
I extended my hand for him to shake and he firmly gripped it as the waitress slid two coffees on our table and we picked up our menus and told her to give us a few minutes.
“You are the smart ass, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I chuckled as I responded. “That I am, sir.” I sit and daydream as usual… SPOCK: “Captain. Jim. We’ve altered history by bringing Dr. McCoy.”
KIRK: “How so, Mr. Spock? Explain.”
SPOCK: “He got a bit, I believe you humans would call it,‘tipsy,’ and started a barroom brawl killing Jesse Ventura.”
KIRK: “The twentieth century wrestler?”
SPOCK: “Indeed. He was also the President of the United States.”
KIRK: “We survived this?”
SPOCK: “Your species did. I’m Vulcan. It didn’t impact me.”
KIRK: “Was he significant? Was he? Spock, I must know. Was he significant?!”
SPOCK: “Fascinating.”
KIRK: “SPPPOOOCCCCCKKKKK!!!!”
SPOCK: “Affirmative. He was—at that time—significant.”
KIRK: “Then it’s done.”
SPOCK: “Captain?”
KIRK: “Spock, this is science fiction television. I’m the captain of the greatest starship in human history. I get babes throughout the galaxy. I defy death on a weekly basis. Let’s see any other mythical hero claim that.”
SPOCK: “Our options, Captain?”
KIRK: “We’ll just go back in time and change the past. We’ll change it back to the way it was and should be. Fuck it, Spock. I’m Captain James T. Kirk.”
SPOCK: “You go, boy.”
KIRK: “Beg your pardon, Spock. I didn’t quite catch that last comment.”
SPOCK: “Nothing, sir.” I sat across from Mr. Watson. He ordered some spaghetti with meatballs, a Caesar salad, and a glass of Chianti. The man was predictable but cool. I ordered meatless lasagna, the house salad, and a glass of ice water.
We small talked and suddenly… all the music kicked into my head.
TUESDAY>
“Alright. Let’s get some order here.”
Mr. Watson eased into his weekly three-hour discussion r.e. life, love of literature, poems, everything under the sun cosmological survey. The class was a microcosm of the differing layers of adulthood: (a) elderly, (b) just-out-of-high school, (c) stoned pseudo-intellectuals who discovered Umberto Eco and didn’t know what to make of the belovedly obscure Italian author, and, of course, (d) those that have recently departed from the armed forces, marriages, kitchen, boredom, parental units, employment, society, Panic tour, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Why was I there? (e).
Two reasons: I didn’t want to be a bean counter and I didn’t want to work for The Man.
Who is The Man? The bastard that runs the Big Show.
What is The Big Show? The mad dash for currency.
Why is currency important? Because it insures that power stays in one’s hands.
What is power? That which controls one’s thoughts, actions and environment via conscious elevation of the subconscious intellect to initiate direct acts of disciplined will. Don’t go looking that definition up in The New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language. It’s mine and I’m not giving The Man the power any longer to suffocate me.
“Alright. Let’s get some order here.”
“Is the Final still due the second to the last week?” asked a middle-aged female classmate.
“Funny, you should ask that—” replied our amusingly smug Professor.
“It’s been cancelled,” I cut in. “Replaced with a stripper? A film? A night off?”
“Hardly. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I wouldn’t have to read pages and pages of drivel from you would-be philosophers.”
“It’s what you live for, Mr. Watson,” I concluded.
“That it is, son. You’ve got me there. That it is. It is both appropriate and heartening that the infamous Final was brought up in an ill-advisedly courageous attempt to get it postponed or—never going to happen—cancelled. After a month of careful consideration, I’m going to give a very simple yet potent assignment.”
There was an unnecessary and typically ballsy pause from the man.
“Which is?” a young hipster dude pondered.
“Your grades on the mid-term should offer the first clue,” said Mr. Mysterio Watson.
“Look,” I said in an attempt at levity, “you’re taking the moniker Watson too seriously. We’re not junior Sherlock Holmes types here. If we have to guess what the Final is going to be, sheesh, I think we’d just as soon not do it. Haven’t we given enough? If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
“Alright, Mr. Shakespeare. I’ll give you another clue: the grades were average at best on the mid-term. I asked all of you to answer the question: ‘The Health of the Nation’? I believe the answers were incomplete.”
“You want us to re-write the mid-terms,” said an aging chap, “and turn them in for the Final?”
“Not exactly.”
“We wrote half of a thought on the mid-term. We must now complete that thought or idea,” I said in a rare moment of dawning clarity.
“Mr. Jefferson, again, you seek the truth and you somehow blunder upon it.”
I smirked at such humorous indolence from this bookish shyster, Watson.
“Let’s get one thing straight. All of you are playing The Scales right now,” began Watson’s latest lecture to his shining beacons of literary ivory tinklers. “When one starts at the piano, one plays what one is taught. Eventually, one must lock the door and play without thinking. Some of the sounds will be out-and-out noise and rubbish. Some of the sounds will be tone-deaf yet humorous asides. But, some of it will be inspired. How does one get inspired? Find an idea, define one’s purpose regarding an idea, explore it, nurture it, feed it, clean it, bathe it, live in it, wallow in it, breathe in it, smother it, leave it, abandon it, go in the desert pondering the allegedly betrayed idea, and finally, only after deep deep thought about all interiors, exteriors—subterranean and interstellar—finally, finally, return from the desert. For example, I’m trudging along in my life. My parents provide sustenance. My friends offer laughs and mischief. My siblings render equal measures of guidance and insults. I excel in high school. I do intellectual somersaults in college—so-called ‘higher education’. I meet a lady at school. We date. We find common ground. We graduate. We wed. We drop acid. We explore life. We love each other and all living creatures. At that point, I swim in the waters of peaceful contentment. I believe in the Dream. I believe in the American Dream, although, goddamnit, I don’t know what that Dream is or what it offers or how much it costs and who paid the price or where it came from or where it is going. But, what the hell? I’m happy. I get shipped off to Nam. America is perhaps mortally wounded in this war—this
goddamn war to keep communism from continuing its contamination of our national ideals. We fail. We fail miserably, people. I come back aged twenty-six chronologically, but sixty-six spiritually, and, thirty years later, I learn that some young adults can’t even find the fucking place on a map. Why is that?” Watson took a long breath before continuing. “That’s an inspired idea. I am ready to start the paper.”
A dramatic pause ensued that seemed to span three millennia. He mercifully ended the break in communication.
“I’ll meet with each of you for five minutes tonight to discuss what idea you might want to complete from your mid-term. Mr. Jefferson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll talk with you last.”
Heads turned as they zeroed in on me, the anti-hero, the bewildered teacher’s pet, and the morally reclusive spiritual stepson of the legendary Watson.
“I expected no less,” I said short-circuiting the silence that hovered over the class like a cloud. What shape was the cloud? How the hell would I know?
“Good. Let’s begin with Ms. Sanders. Obviously, a brief lecture tonight, my sons and daughters. I hope you’re all gratified about that fact.”
We all cheered in politeness; although, little did he know that we actually enjoyed his verbal dissertations, but he had a point to be made with each of us on this night. He would illuminate me outside of class on Thursday. Oh, the burden of being the chosen one: the one the teacher wants to carry because the student is inept or confused or troubled or misguided or just too darned pretentious.
THURSDAY>
“You know why I asked you here, Bob.” Statement of fact; bold assumption.
“I think I do, Mr. Watson, uh, Carl. My paper—The Slob’s Inferno. Incomplete, huh?”
“An interesting incompletion, however: very interesting beginnings of an idea.”
“What did you think—specifically, Carl?”
“My lecture on Tuesday should have been clear.”
“I gathered that you were just trying to generalize about inspiration. Were you referring to my paper in your lecture? That bit about the Vietnam Vet?”
“That bit about the Vietnam Vet.”
“What?”
“Think about that.”
“I covered it. I said Americans had, uh, something like this: gone around the planet kicking ass for two hundred odd years and we were eventually bound to get our heads handed back to us on a platter.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“What’s your point? I’m not a goddamn mind reader.” “My point, you skinny little shit, is don’t write the Vietnam War off as some sort of payback for past ass-whoopings. I lost friends and relatives in that conflict. I was in Nam. I SAW THE TRUTH, MOTHERFUCKER. ”
The entire time Mr. Watson had delivered his diatribe he had sustained a low, firm tone. When he got to “I SAW THE TRUTH, MOTHERFUCKER,” he had reached an even lower level. In its verbal presentation, those five words had somehow subconsciously been spoken louder than any use of language I ever remember. My senses seem to be very heightened these days. I’m not sure how or why, they just are. There was a resonance to his low tone on I SAW THE TRUTH, MOTHERFUCKER that made me shudder for a full four or five seconds; however, the lasting impression lingered for God knows how long.
I SAW THE TRUTH, MOTHERFUCKER.
“Are you saying that if I wasn’t there, I can’t relate? What’s the deal with any sort of critical analysis of anything?”
He didn’t respond after those duel questions. In his silence, Watson spoke volumes from his depth of despair at my inability to get to the truth of his reason for sitting across on a Thursday eve talking to a modern man who missed Vietnam, its point, its impact on the Health of a Nation, and all of what that period of time meant to our societal well-being.
“I think that I should do a little more research,” I pitched into the black hole of non-communication coming from Watson. That bastard wasn’t going to let me up. He had his boot on my mind and he was going to cut all the oxygen off to it if I didn’t come up with the right answer. Like I cared. I’d been divorced for nearly two years at this point. That was important to me. Did he know anything about the loss of a mate? Probably. He was in his fifties. He could have been divorced three or four times by now. A bad defensive tactic on my part. I must think. I should try to parry that I cared deeply about the vet but facts were facts. The deck of cards was stacked against the American soldier long before he got off the plane into Southeast Asia. Bullshit. Fuck Carl Watson. I had a right to my opinion. He SAW THE TRUTH but I’m here experiencing my own brand of hell. I’m sorry my buddy’s head ain’t exploding next to me, too. I’ll arrange for that to happen soon. I sound like Thompson now.
Thompson! That’s it. “Why did Hunter S. Thompson feel the Death of the American Dream was upon us?” I began my litany to hose down Watson’s fire. “Is that the idea I need to explore? Is that what you want me to say? Explore Vietnam and frame his writings around my opinions? Could that crazy, drug-induced, liquor-reeking madman have hit upon something? Was he the right writer at the right time?”
Watson finally broke his code of silence.
“You tell me. But, it had better be good.”
“Alright. Here goes—”
The contemptible oak tree of a man cut me off.
“No. Not here. On your paper—the Final. But, like I said, it had better be good or I will track you down and tear your limbs from that waste of a frame you call a body.” “Why? Why go after me? Do you threaten all of your students, you psychotic asshole?”
He laughed. I guess after the divorce, I had lost all pretense of fear. It was there, don’t get me wrong. I just didn’t care about a lot of iggly-niggly details anymore like calling a Vietnam Vet, a trained killer in his heyday, someone I should respect, a “psychotic asshole.”
He laughed. It reverberated through the diner until our waitress came over and served us more coffee.
“Is everything alright?” she asked in amusement, although, for all she knew, she probably thought that I had just told some bawdy, foul-mouthed joke.
“Yes,” said Watson to our waitress as he continued his return to pleasant restrained interplay. Either that or he was waiting until my guard was down so he could stick in the knife. Great. I’ve gotten a divorce, almost killed an ex-friend in a car accident, written a critical essay attacking the Church which could deeply offend my poor mother who unconditionally loved both my sister and I, a beautiful, intelligent woman goes out with me—although, I’ve been distant with her perhaps ending her patience with me and now:
I’ve pissed off my teacher, a violent homicidal maniac who has his right hand resting gently albeit solidly on his dinner knife. This instrument could terminate my pathetic existence. Good riddance, Bob Jefferson, ungrateful wretch.
“Son. Think about what you’re writing about. Write it with all the truth in your being. Finally, muster up the courage to stand behind your conviction. I believe in you.”
Forget his earlier phrase: I SAW THE TRUTH, MOTHERFUCKER.
“I believe in you.”
Those are the most profound words I have heard.
“Blind faith, eh?” I offered to him breaking the awkward bit of closeness between an aging gentleman and a dickweed like me trying to get my act together. Men don’t bond in verbal passages. It’s the events that cement their relationships. Unfortunately, I clung to this philosophy, an eternal one at that, with my tension-breaking “Blind faith, eh?” God forbid that a warm moment is exchanged.
“You’ve written a couple of sentences that ring true,” stated Watson with a smile.
“Just a couple?” I concluded.
“Make the Final breathe, son. Hell, do it whenever you feel the vibe. Write what I haven’t written yet. I experienced those times, but maybe you can shed some light on Thompson’s dilemma: Were the sixties the beginning of the beginning for the people in this country or was it the end? Where do you (he pointed at my chest)—who follow those events—fit in?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“I know.”
We left.
Oh, the fucking pressure. Goddamn class will kill me yet. Randy Ray, who is not a fictional character, is in the middle of a third novel and sometimes wishes he was back in the wave of time, in a classroom, tracing the outlines of historical integrity. He stores his work atwww.rmrcompany.blogspot.com.
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