Misha Firer
Beautiful Things
for Kendra
zero
he’d say --“we are stuck in the place where there is no soul and we want to get out of here because the emptiness is too much to bear but we don’t know how to do it because we don’t know where ‘there’ – the place with soul -- is.” And she would respond, “but certainly.”
nine
For years Kristine used to wake up every night at 3:20 am. She would lie awake, listening to the
raucous sound of the West Coast Express fade away, while letting her dream continue to unravel
into her consciousness, imprinting its magical details on her mind cleared by sleep, like on a carbon paper copy.
Kristine called it “dream riding.” It was a trick it took her many nights to master and many more to bring to perfection. Dream riding could be compared to soap bubble blowing. Or, alternatively, to playing a musical instrument: something Kristine had never learned to do properly (she quit her violin lessons after four months). It would be years before Kristine compared dream riding to love making.
The approaching express train would force her out of the subconscious and just then, in the border state, it would be the right moment to capture the dream’s fall -- otherwise it would evaporate (Kristine always imagined that at night there were vapors of broken dreams hanging above the houses along the railway tracks all the way to San Diego). A dream is made of very light fabric, perhaps the lightest fabric in the universe, and to control its flow without immediately destroying it is no simple task. Kristine learned the technique of dreaming the night dream as if it was a day dream. The benefit of it was that she could be a conscious observer of a subconscious process, and memorize it to the highest degree of precision. Besides being an observer, she could also participate and steer the dream in whatever direction she wanted it to go. For instance, she could always have a happy ending.
The dream would inevitably collapse from being overexposed to reality, like a photo film exposed to the light, so that Kristine had only counted minutes in her possession, but those minutes felt like they lasted for hours. Her personal record was fourteen minutes. It was on the night of her first period. She actually clocked out the end of the sequence with her ladybug-shaped alarm clock she kept on the dresser by her bed. She also kept a ledger with the descriptions of her dreams, accompanied by occasional illustrations and interpretations.
She had compiled four volumes by the time she went to college.
eight
“Let’s say you’re an architect. You get your degree from Cooper Institute and immediately join a high-profile
architect firm. You get your seventy grand a year as an intern. Now that’s a bit more money than waiting on
annoying customers in a French restaurant. You feel good about your new work, important, but you
find yourself dissatisfied after about a week. You look around and see all these older guys making four times
more, driving brand-new BMWs, living in condos, buying jewelry for their mistresses. You make up your mind
that you will be one of these guys. You start breaking your ass to get there. Your motivation, no doubt, is that
once you get there, to that senior position, you’d be happy about your life, with all the shit you’d be able to afford
how possibly would you not be happy?
“So let’s say after seven years of hard work you do get there. And what do you see, you see all these other
guys quitting their senior positions at Harris & Sedaris to open up their own architect firms. You’re dying to open
up your own firm -- after all you’re not going to spend the rest of your life laboring for other guys. You want to be
self-employed; you want to have other people working for you. So you borrow the start-up capital from a bank
and you open your company. You break your ass even more. You practically sleep in your office to get your company off the ground.
“Seven years of excruciatingly hard work and you get high-profile contracts: condos, government buildings,
even museums. You are making millions. You employ hundreds. You have three houses, three cars, one yacht,
one wife, one ex-wife, two children. Happy? No. At least satisfied with how your career’s going so far? Not at all.
There are these other guys, your friends, who received the Pritzker Prize. When I get the Pritzker, I’ll be satisfied, I’ll be happy with my life, you tell yourself.
“You take on contracts to build airports and high-rises, bridges and corporate trade centers all around the world. And on the day when you receive your much-coveted Pritzker, you sit on a chair in a restaurant and ask yourself: I’ve reached the top, where do I go from here, there’s nowhere I can go. I’ll build more airports and high-rises, bridges and corporate trade centers, but I will always know that I have already reached the peak.”
“Is this like a big whining excuse why you quit your architect studies?” Kristine asked.
John didn’t answer. They drank their coffee in silence. John said, “Ever heard of that guy who foundered Kodak?” Kristine shook her head. “He committed suicide at the peak of his career. He wrote in a suicide note that he’d achieved everything professionally and there was nothing else for him to do, but to die.
“You’d think it’s all about where you can stop and tell yourself, that’s it, I’m satisfied with it. I’m a junior partner at Harris & Sedaris, awesome, I’m happy. Or, I’m a senior partner at Harris & Sedaris, awesome, I’m happy. Or, my name’s Harris, I have an architect company, awesome, I’m happy. But you see, it just doesn’t happen to a hell lot of people. Actually it hardly happens to anyone. If you’re an average employee in Harris & Sedaris all your life, it’s because you’re so miserable, or alternatively so average, you can’t motivate yourself to strive for more. We always want more, because we’re suckers for this belief that the bliss might be behind the next corner. You think: God, I just need to get that position and I get my bliss. Once you reach the corner, boom, no bliss, or it’s as short as orgasm.”
Kristine thought about her bliss: dream riding. There were days she spent simply waiting to go to sleep and be woken up by West Coast Express to ride another dream -- if only for a few minutes.
John continued, “OK, you tell yourself, the bliss is right behind that next corner. But it’s always the same thing that meets you once you get there: frustration. And you know what’s ironic?”
“That we all know it.”
“Can I ask you something, Kristine?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your bliss?”
seven
Kristine’s father Heath spent four months a year counting taxes of American corporations in such far-flung
places as Mozambique and Vanuatu, and eight months at home, in a suburban house in San Leandro,
California, working from his office and also writing poetry, which he published online under a pseudonym
Marigold Blues. Heath thought no one knew about it, but Kristine did, although she never told anyone, not
even her mother. Heath had also been taking anti-depressants for eleven years, which wasn’t a secret at all.
Heath returned home for Christmas from Egypt. Customarily, he was out of whack for a couple of days. He sat for hours on the porch and stared despondently at the alien landscape of his backyard. He didn’t have any energy for the gardening and had an illegal Mexican (or was it Guatemalan?) take care of the plants. Heath watched him prune, cut, dig, water. It looked creepy, Heath’s watching, but the Latino gardener didn’t mind.
Perhaps it’s jetlag, Kristine thought, watching his father from the window of her room. They say that because
a soul travels slower than an airplane, it always takes time (hours? days?) for the soul to catch up with the body.
six
“Just think, how much attention this fucking dog’s getting. It can just crawl up to a stranger
and expect him to give it a massage.”
A dog was trying to lick John’s hand, but he pulled it away. “Go away.”
“Can you give the dog some affection?”
“Why would I?”
Kristine thought: what a prick.
John said, “Why can’t I just come up to some chick and ask her to pat me on the head without getting
slapped with a sexual harassment suit? I can’t ask a random guy for a friendly hug, he’d punch me in the nose.
But this dog has a right to ask for affection from whoever it wants.”
“It’s just a fucking dog, for God’s sake!”
“Precisely my point.”
John pouted.
What now? Kristine thought. Why does he need to
drag this dead relationship, like a corpse of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu?
“You know,” John said, “we Anglo-Saxons are badly addicted to gambling. It’s the very basis of our
mentality. We used to go to every distant corner of the globe, disregarding the danger, just for the kicks of it.
We created entrepreneurship and praise it to the skies. What is it really but taking risks, betting your money
on what no one else did, in the hopes that you’d win. Even this whole concept of dividing people into
winners and losers -- it’s the gambling addiction. Put your money on it now and worry about what comes out
of it tomorrow. We have a whole major city dedicated exclusively to gambling. But this mentality
makes us unhappy. I mean even if you win, you still need to continue to bet, because first,
you’re addicted, and second, that’s what society’s expecting of you. So first, a
winner can’t stop and has to go on gambling, thus remaining in the permanent state of anxiety,
and second, his bets have to be identical to the size of his wealth, so if at some point he loses, he loses everything.”
five
Kristine was dreaming she sneaked into Another World through a Hole. There were many Holes
between worlds, but not many people knew about their locations or even their very existence.
Once Kristine located one Hole, she learned how to find others. Using the Holes,
she traveled instantaneously to Egypt to visit her father
(saccharine-tongued Arabs surrounded her on the dusty street, offering their
services, ranging from accommodations to drugs, and she had to force her way
toward the four-story building and talk to the mustachioed guard in black uniform, show
him her passport, explain to him, and only then was directed to room 190 on the second floor).
She went
to Paris to see the tunnel where Princess Diana met her maker. She
went to Goa, to a trance party on the beach, where half-naked, drugged-out Westerners
were processing emotions through their information-overloaded minds, trying to forget they had
goals in life. She space-traveled to her past, to re-visit the day she met and fell in love with
John at a party at her friend’s place. She couldn’t travel to the future though, so
instead she traveled to Another World, and Another World was something not altogether different from ours.
In Another World she met people from her real world. Only all these people couldn’t recognize her.
She met her school friends, her teachers, her boyfriend, her father, and no one recognized it was Kristine they’d known for years, and in case of her father, all his life. She wasn’t perturbed by this collective amnesia. She was merely amused, eager to learn the rules of the world and figure out why this strange set-up existed.
At one point she was stopped by a cop. The cop asked her what her level of education was in
Her World. “I’m a college student.” The cop wrote her name down in the list that already had names
of her family members and also of John, her boyfriend. The cop wrote: Kristine, College Student.
Kristine asked for an explanation. “You see, the higher your education, the more cool and interesting
people you meet. And also, you can’t meet people from levels not identical to yours, or at least
you can’t relate to them. It’s the class system we got here. For instance, since your father’s
education level is higher than yours, he can’t recognize you. But if you keep studying you’ll
reach his level and you’ll be reunited, so to speak. Your boyfriend John. He didn’t go to college,
so your level’s higher than his. If he doesn’t go to college, he won’t be able to be with you again.”
“But why do I still remember them?” “Because you just got here. Soon you’ll start forgetting.
You’ll remember only those who are on the same educational plane with you.”
The West Coast Express tears through the fabric of the dream. When the dream is about to disintegrate, she saves it from the fall and rides the ineffable wave, fueling it with her consciousness that desires to know where it all ends.
Kristine met John. He began to hit on her just like it had been during that party at her friend’s place.
He had the same pick-up line. He had the same glimpse of lust in his eyes. Kristine couldn’t help but
repeat the same stuff she’d said in response when they’d met, although there was no element of
surprise for her, the future had already happened and she had participated in it. She tried to explain to him that if he only went to college, he wouldn’t have to go trough this meaningless motion, wouldn’t have to make himself ridiculous. “You should go to college, John,” she said, getting bored with this whole charade. About four hours from then they would end up in her room, having sex. This time around, this same time around, she would pass on sex. The question caught John off guard. It wasn’t in the script of the past. It took him a couple of seconds to regroup and start with an old hat, the story about the naïve architect who joins a big firm after graduation.
The reality is like a train itself, smashing through the fabric of the dream, prying it open, exposing it like a film negative, to the light of the day. Kristine doesn’t care to continue the dream. She exerts no effort to keep riding it. She quits and wakes up.
four
“Dad, are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said. He crossed his fingers. He straightened up his hunched shoulders. He looked listlessly above her head at the setting sun. He said, “We are just waiting.”
“Dad?”
He shook his head, as if driving away a moment of indecision, still staring at the yellow sun sliding down
beneath the horizon. Kristine noticed that the gardener had gone home and there were only two of them in the
garden. “We are merely waiting for Messiah to show up and save us all. But he’s not coming. And he won’t be
coming. It’s just us, you know. It’s only us here. And all these things. All these beautiful things
that surround us. They are left to remind us there was something before. So many beautiful things.
So many beautiful things.”
three
Every two weeks John would fall to pieces. Kristine had to be the one to pick up the shards and piece them
together into a coherent being. With time, John formed a habit of falling back on his girlfriend. He didn’t work
on his stoicism, didn’t keep it all inside to build himself up, make himself adamant, resilient. Instead John whined.
John threw tantrums. John misbehaved and then promptly apologized, as if the speedy confession could wipe
away the guilt. He was born-again every other week. Of course she blamed the unbalanced chemicals in John’s
head. She should’ve got him addicted to pills, any kind, the downers preferably. His hyperactivity was a drag; his
periods of depression almost coincided wih her menstrual cycles. It was as if he was mimicking her physique to
feel closer. The closeness that Kristine feared and vehemently resisted. She signed up an emotional
pre-nup agreement in her mind after the third time they had sex (premiering oral and anal): she wouldn’t
put herself out, at least not too much. They were just going out, they were just fucking, they were just
chatting on the phone and text-messaging
each other while at work in offices separated by three street blocks and seventeen floors. They would
drift apart; they lived in a fairly big city, they were very young, they couldn’t take chances.
And also,
Kristine thought, I hate to live in the moment. At her age she had to live for the future. Her father said
that there was no happiness without enjoying the present, but she managed to avoid that temptation, she
wouldn’t be one of those hipster friends wearing anti-fashion clothes and living in the filthy
warehouses in East San Leandro or North San Francisco. The concrete flower children, they lived
in the moment, and they weren’t happy a bit for it. Oh no, no, no, she would be aiming for the future,
the education, the high-paying job, the total independence. Yes, positively, John had become a drag. She
needed to get rid of him. It was good she’d signed up an emotional pre-nup, he was, indeed, disposable.
She felt pity for him. But she tried not to concentrate on that emotion, as it was wasteful, it didn’t do any
good to either party. In the end Kristine text-messaged John her decision. “We need to break up. Sorry.” But
she didn’t really feel sorry about it.
two
--there is a place -- and obviously (as you’re well aware of) it is not a physical location reachable
by a plain/bus/car/ship – a place, which might appear from this vantage point (where you happen to be
on the time zone map, truly, is utterly unimportant, not your approximate location on the Earth terrain, which
is still Earth-Google-able, remember, and cellphone-connected), it is a place untracked by commerce,
unconquered by technology, unmapped by the science, it is a place so well hidden, there’re no signs,
at least no visible signs, that it exists in the first place. And yet it does exist. For instance, that place has been
discovered by six teenagers living along the railway tracks of Western Pacific Line. The discovery occurred
when they were forced out of their night dreams by the Express Train riding at the speed of approximately
eighty miles per hour riding next to their houses. Just when they were about to wake up, they began to ride
their night dreams into that secret place. None of the six teenagers uttered a word about their discovery to
anyone, not their parents, not their friends, not their boyfriends and girlfriends. It was too dear a secret.
“John --”
“John Leibowitz happens to be one of these teenagers,” he told her.
“John --”
“Yes, me.”
“And why have you never told me before?”
“You’ve never asked.”
“And I assume -- “
“I found your dream diaries. You know, I’ve kept mine as well. Do you want to see it? Compare notes? God, this is so exciting! We both, you know, got it!”
“But John, it’s over between us.”
“Why? Aren’t you equally excited?”
Because I know you can’t ride dreams, Kristine thought. And I
know it because I know when you’re lying. And you’re lying to me now.
one
--the beautiful things. the title of the poem. signed: marigold blues. awakened father has gone to work.
john finally stopped harassing her with the cell phone calls. so peaceful & quiet now. kristine
closed the computer window with her father’s poem and opened the one with the college courses.
she printed out some information and shut down the computer. having picked up the printed pages,
she went to her room to ponder over her future & write down her latest dream-riding about egypt.
©2008 by Misha Firer
