1
People are always thanking me for my patience. It makes me think I might be missing something.
Q.
My name is Bartholomew Fredrick Chester. I’m five foot ten. And if you think time exists, I’m twenty-seven years old.
Q.
I’ve been a nonsmoker for ten minutes, a vegetarian for three hours, and most of my thoughts and all of my actions have been heterosexual up to this point. Do I consider myself a happy person… Oh golly. I’m perspiring a good bit if that’s what you’re asking… You might even say doing this sort of thing, with this kind of lighting can make a sane man crazy.
I’m like you guys – I’m about this good all the time.
Q.
When I am happy, I tend to feel guilty.
Q.
Statistically speaking, someone commits suicide every forty seconds. Here in the United States, our life’s purpose is to find a favorable ratio of pleasure to pain. So we only feel guilty when we’ve been sad for too long. Don’t you guys ever wonder if you’re happy out of guilt…
Q.
Most days I have to remind myself I’m just a holon.
Q.
H. O. L. O. N.
Q.
A holon is simultaneously a whole and a part – like you. Let’s get concrete.
Water = subatomic particles that make up molecules that make up the two-hydrogen and one-oxygen chemical make up of H2O. Skip over a few holonic levels – all the way to – water being sixty percent of the human body. Focusing on the water in our bodies, imagine humans went extinct. Water wouldn’t necessarily be affected. But if hydrogen went away, everything above it – all those holons – would die – including and especially humans. No matter how high up on the holonic levels you are or think you are, you amount to nothing without the little guys underneath you. You need all of you to be you. Every single hairy piece of you has a higher purpose and is the highest purpose at any given level.
I don’t know how to start this story other than to tell you I’ve spent the better part of my post graduate life with a group of dreamers who had an unyielding sense of hope for the world.
Q.
I, like most of you, have an Ivory tower of student loans. If you think about the holonic structure of debt, you only end up getting depressed, so I’ll skip along to the chorus.
Q.
Only if you want the whole picture, if you’re interested in it…
Q.
You should note I have a severe case of self-diagnosed attention deficit disorder and am prone to forgetting everything around me, and fully concentrating on my thoughts. Sometimes the segues into those thoughts don’t make sense on any holonic level. I’m pretty sure I’m addicted to thinking, mostly overthinking – like the time when I thought this book would be best served without a single period – which would’ve been an honest view of the incessant stream of basic cerebral processing ruined by and enhanced with my experience.
Q.
Do you mind if I call it a book…
Q.
Can I photocopy your notes when we’re done… Or at least get a notepad for myself…
Q.
My graduation was as much a surprise to my parents as when my brother River came out. The holonic make up of their anger would look something like this: Education leads to career; which leads to homeownership, spouse and children; which leads to thirty years of safety and routine; which leads to retirement and new routines; which leads to hobbies (like writing) and fulfillment; which leads to death – it is truly a miracle to know that you and everyone you know will die, and loving the way that makes you feel.
For better or worse, my parents followed this holonic pattern with a severe sense of worship – and trust me, everyone worships. Of course their current role in the holonic structure being cheerleaders in an I’m going to micromanage your happiness and tell you when you’re having fun sort of way. Similar to those people who work at vacation resorts and have that special kind of permanent smile and perennial tan lines landscaped around their sunglasses, and a you will dance and you will have fun and you will tell others you’re having fun performance. That’s why I hate to think college may’ve been the biggest, most expensive mistake I’ll ever make.
My parents didn’t know I switched my major halfway through until the dean botched up my first name – under the English department.
I explained how hard I worked to graduate on time – to no avail. To them, I had a worthless degree – which kind of makes sense if you think about the holonic makeup of money. Molecules – chemical combinations – green fabric – ink – and what...— worth... If the worth of something is only what someone else’s is willing to pay for it, what does that say about self worth... Is my self worth really determined by the chemical make up of ink and green fabric someone is willing to separate from his or her wallet... And then you have the actual classes you have to take, where you’re reading about writing instead of writing. But all of that is melodramatic, and in order to see the shadow of a flame the opposing light must be brighter.
Q.
The problem… I hadn’t a clue what to write about – until I met Tony Satori.
Q.
Tony = a long line of people waiting outside a building and all I wanted to know was, what’s inside... If people, I mean anyone of any age, see a large crowd waiting in line somewhere, they’ll want to know what’s going on – what they’re missing.
I was writing when I met Tony. He looked over my shoulder as I scribbled on a notepad for a book that was to be called, Mutilation and the Catalog of Self-Destruction – an illuminating sense of the kind of person I was before I met him.
Tony tapped the top of my head. I turned around. Then he and I talked about everything. In him, I saw a long lost friend of mine – hope. And I won’t apologize for saying that because it’s honest. Let’s clear something up here.
I’ll tell you right now, I’m not the type of writer who wants to paint pictures about how softly the Spanish moss sways in the summer air or how the vibrations of brick roads remind me of new wine wrapped in old skins. It’s not for me. I’m the kind of writer that believes the past and future are malleable, and that the people you associate with most make up all the better parts of who you become – holonically. I also believe happiness is in the doing, not getting what you want. Plus, isn’t everyone a photographer now…
Q.
How recent… Before or after New Zealand…
Q.
Through my window, Tony honked the horn from his beat up car. Tony was dirtier than the rest of us, and his eyes were too close together. Otherwise, he looked like me – privileged and overeducated.
My parents said Tony looked like a homeless Jack Kerouac. He just smiled, “Yes, yes.” Although anyone who knew Jack Kerouac knew Tony was more like Neal Cassady.
“What an evening!” He honked two more times.
I jumped into the car, nailing my knee against the shifter.
Q.
I loved the way he looked at the world.
You never truly know what’s on someone’s mind. They have to tell you and you never know if they’re lying, suppressing, or expressing the truth. It’s all subjective – I mean, what the hell are thoughts made of anyway... You can’t measure them empirically, although they do have a physical correlate in waking life – in order to weigh out the bad from the good ones, the heavy from the light, the real from the fake, the emotional and mathematical. How can you tell the constructive from the destructive... How do you make friends with the former and put on blinders for the latter... And when we think about what happens every forty seconds, are delusions what we need…
Tony moved his smile from me to the open road.
I asked, “Where are we going...”
“Nowhere! We’re going nowhere!”
“How long will it take...”
“Time, time, time, everybody’s late, everybody’s doing fine, everybody’s living, and everybody’s lying. Don’t you know, the possibilities are endless if you never choose… Have you ever given it a thought as to why they don’t penalize you for not answering a question on the SAT’s...”
He knuckled my shoulder.
“You need a mantra.”
“You think I should hypnotize myself...”
“Law of Attraction. Everything in your life – good and bad you’ve attracted. You want something better, a life that doesn’t hold you down… Look at yourself in the mirror every morning – preferably naked – and just repeat something you want.” He put the car in drive, still pressing the brake. “Franklin does that, you know...”
He drove on. We talked about our friend Franklin – who had a poetry reading that night. “So he’s not working on his memoirs anymore...”
“Said he was too young to write a memoir.”
Although Franklin’s writing tended to be deep and dark and angry, Tony and I found his expression to be an exhaust – a straight pipe ridding itself of loud mental noise. It’s easy to hate everything, harder to pretend to love it, and even harder to believe it. Through all the mess coming out Franklin’s exhaust you could hear the smallest tremor of hope – most of the time. Something I wish my brother River had been able to do.
Q.
We sat shiva at my parent’s place. I don’t think I got up from the floor the whole week. Is it okay if we skip the part about him…
Q.
Well my writing is certainly different from Franklin. He’s a poet.
Q.
Actual life was more interesting. So I wrote about that.
Q.
Franklin’s a hipster most nights. He operated on his own cotillion. Depending on the night, he’d speak in a different accent claiming it had to do with his background in the dramatic arts.
Franklin is an autumn is here, everything dies kind of guy. Tony, summertime always, you see! And me, winter is always coming, but so is spring. It just depends on what you want to consider.
He and Tony were dishonorably discharged from the Peace Corps years back. I’ve always tried to picture myself with them overseas – being as I’d never been outside the country.
Q.
Tony and I had planned to go to New Zealand together – a four-week excursion, following summer’s end. A way for a bum like me to get some experience, as Tony would say. I was further along with the paperwork. Tony asked me not mention it to anyone.
Q.
“So I was dance walking on the beach. Headphones on–” Franklin caught the falling food, wiping his mouth with his two wristbands – he wore them on each arm and no one knew why, other than the attempt of being unusual.
“Right on, right on.” Tony smiled.
“I mean I’m out there, and ain’t nobody on the sand. Pitch dark. My hands are just a wailin’ side to side, and I’ve been trying to spin and keep up with the snare. Music blaring through the phones. Pitch dark. I’m talkin’ pitch dark. Then BAM!”
Half of my beer hit the table as he demonstrated how he nailed the ground rolling.
“Then I hear this moan and it ain’t comin’ from me. No. It comes from this gorgeous – I mean heaven sent me a perfect gift five feet, eight inches tall. She gets up. Asks if I’m okay... I’m like lady, I tripped over you.”
“How could you see her if it was pitch dark…” I asked.
Franklin went on describing this girl in his poetic way of stringing words together – a classic language bender. He told us the girl was an activist against factory farming. “I tried to tell her to be pro-love, cuz none of that anti stuff ever works you know. No war on anything ever worked outside of political campaigns.”
Georgia – Franklin’s sister – joined us. She never spoke, ever. Who knows if she took a vow or if it was a way to experience life in a holonically different way.
“But she’s not the angry type you know. She’s real cool. Told me some crazy stuff about the meat industry. Disturbing really.”
I interrupted again, “So she’s a statist...”
“Nah. She don’t even care about animal welfare. She just don’t like the industry you know... Four companies owning ninety-nine percent of the meat market–” Franklin spliced lyrics together to make sense of the word statist until he stopped to ask what the word even meant.
From the brewery, we stopped by an Indie bar across the railroad tracks. A jazz band played. Hipsters tried their best to rhyme a fast, uneasy, freestyle – while women searched for dance partners. Tony and I spent all night in the front row bouncing, bobbing, swaying, and sweating.
Tony knew all the band members. Introduced me as his brother. He even asked the band if Franklin could say “a couple of words” before they packed up.
Franklin had an ability to forget everything around him, and enter this uncharted setting deep inside. He was never afraid to ask what something meant and never pretended he already knew unless it was part of the act he played. Insult his intelligence, insult his way of life, insult his tight pants and his dragon tattoos and you’ll find that this man lived the straight edge way. Couldn’t care less about negativity and disdain – unless, of course, he was writing about it.
About halfway through Franklin’s words, he caught the attention of the bar. Musicians added a little background to his poetry.
“Stupidity.”
Thirty years you pay,
For visitors to marvel,
No longer for you.
Couches and screens and granite and marble,
All cleaned to affect.
Made beds, made candles, made dishes,
All made to impress.
First impressions of our impressions
Of life’s only lesson – an impression.
We’re merely reflections of reflections,
Left by our predecessors,
Who all envy the impressive.
We drank until four. By the time we reached my apartment the sun peered over the Cape Fear.
Q.
Wilmington, North Carolina.
Q.
Tony stopped us. “Wait, wait!”
He scrambled to get in front.
“I got it. Happiness lies not in the acquisition of achievement. We all know that. There are no checklists for life, no qualifications, no certifications, or anything that requires the energy for seeking validation. We all want truth and everything else in this beatific world is designed to take us away from it, or bring us closer. Like Barto’s always saying, it just depends on what you want to consider.”
Tony pointed to Franklin.
“Your words speak louder than the vibrations of your frail voice.”
We patted Franklin on the back. His armbands went from bleach white to a dirty shade of red as the night got older.
“Frank-Lin. Frank-Lin. Frank-Lin!” We huddled around him.
We traveled in this manner for two blocks. Collapsed into my crummy apartment. Dirty, sweaty, brotherly, exhausted debtors – if we had to identify ourselves with form this would be a great holonic start.
I couldn’t sleep that night.
Somewhere inside of me is a desire for everyone else to fail. Unless people were succeeding in other areas of life I didn’t care to pursue. I feel better telling you about it now.
I stepped outside to talk to Tony about the restless minds of our generation – which we never gave a title to because, well, we hated the one they gave us. I told him I found it funny that sometimes the nicest people you’ll ever meet are covered in tattoos and piercings, and some of the most selfish and judgmental people go to church on Sundays. Not always, but sometimes.
Tony took a long drag then, “Institutions fall prey to same mistakes individuals do. They’re made up of all the imperfect holons that fill the room.” This was the first time I’d ever heard the word holon – which tells you I basically steal everything.
We talked about the poetry reading. Then he gave me a quote from Thoreau, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Being a man of many quotes myself, this one, like all the ones Tony gave me, was at the right moment – which of course means a right and wrong moment depend entirely upon what you choose to consider.
I went back inside. Fell asleep right away.
Q.
We need to do that now…
Q.
So I digest each ingredient and then what…
Q.
If that’s what we need to do, then yeah. I’m ready.
