For two days, I had seen the Unabomber look-alike in a baggy orange sweatshirt restlessly wandering around through the halls of the hospice center where we each had a friend who lay dying.
Each time we passed each other, I tried to read the words printed on his sweatshirt below an image of planet Earth, but couldn’t quite make them out. He wore a red hat over his wild, shaggy hair—reminding me of those clown hats with a wig attached. Around his neck, was a heavy silver chain with a figure dangling from it.
On the third day, at the coffee cart, still unable to make out the words on his shirt, I asked him, “So, who’s the little shiny fella there?” pointing to the dangling figure on the silver chain.
“The patron saint of lost causes” he answered. That says it all, I thought, but still haven’t figured out what the “all” is. Did he believe that America needed to be “great again,” but didn’t have much hope that it would happen, or was the lost cause his friend who, like mine, had no options left, except to wait for the grim reaper to swing his scythe?
I misunderstood and asked, “But Judas isn’t a saint?” I knew, but I had a saints confused with a sinner.
“No, no, no. It’s St. Jude,” he said sarcastically, suggesting I should have not have Judas Iscariot in mind, the apostle who betrayed Christ.
“Oh, sorry, that's who I was thinking of, silly me—for thirty pieces of silver, right?”
“Exactly!"
Exactly thirty pieces? I wondered.
Just before I bit into my multi-grain muffin, I blurted out, "Well, they say, no good deed goes unpunished.”
“What do you mean, good deed? His was the greatest betrayal in the history of all the world.”
"You mean the greatest Catch 22.” I corrected him this time, explaining, “If Judas hadn't turned Christ over to the Romans, he wouldn’t have been able to" die for our sins," which was the reason he came to earth. So, they both died, Judas' hanging from a tree and his friend and teacher on a cross, sometimes referred to as tree.
“Well, never thought of it that way," he said, scrathing his head, “but Christ in died in victory and Judas in defeat.”
Then, I had to put the mystery of it all and the three mystery men, Christ, Judas and the Unabomber out of my mind for now. It was starting to sound like a sporting event.
I poured the third mystery man a coffee, and passed him the cup. We stood eating our muffins in silence. Then, nodding to each other, we moved on into our respective friend’s rooms—to watch and wait at the foot of their beds.
My friend died after a long evening, and I wept.
On my way out in early morning, I passed mystery man #3 coming down the hall. Our eyes met for a moment in a kind of farewell. As I looked again at his orange sweatshirt, I was able to see the words below the image of our lonely, blue marble planet:
“YOU ARE HERE.”
(2018)
ME: Welcome Señor Borges. May we imagine that you are here with us at the Gloucester Writers Center, and that we are having a conversation with you?
JLB: You may imagine anything. You are a writers, are you not? But, please, Señora, call me Jorge. It is good for me to be remembered. So you have been wishing to meet me?
ME. Well, I must admit Señor, I mean Jorge, I barely knew you existed until very recently, but now that I have read a little about you….
JLB: Ah! Then we have something in common, as ”I myself never knew if I actually existed.”
S. That is exactly why I am drawn to you. I feel that way sometimes as a writer between the thin veil of reason and imagination, reality and fiction.
JLB: Si si, si, my point, well one of my points. My work has been described by one critic as “irrealty.” You are experiencing what has become known as the “Bogesean conundrum”: "whether the writer writes the story, or it writes him.”
ME: Or “her"? When I heard what you had said about writing, and of coure how you write, I knew I had to meet you.
JLB: You mean instead of Stephen King? Are you referring to my statement that, “I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors.”
ME:. Yes, that’s it! I see your point. Who are we, fundamentally, if we are everything we have experienced, known or have ever been?
JLB: I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.
ME: “I Am the Walrus,” I loved that song—a man of your stature and erudition quoting the Beatles?
JLB: As you say, Señora, you barely knew I existed, so your reaction is understandable. The essence of life and the universe to me is “an inexplicable maze, a labyrinth: I have only my perplexities to offer you.” I said that when I was almost 70 years old.
ME: I just turned 70 myself, and I too am filled with perplexities, which keep me in wonder and doubt. I am agnostic—sometimes!
JLB: Which simply means that, “All things are possible, even God. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. I have given the major part of my life to literature, and I can only offer you—doubts.”
ME: I can say the same—living for literature, or at least with literature all my life, which is more real to me than most things—-the body of truth in it clothed in fiction. So, you mean to say you did not live by any one religion or system of thought?
JLB: I have lived in many countries, experienced many cultures, read and understood many philosophers. The most significant influence in my life was father’s library with its thousands of books. I have not thought to find answers to my questions or solutions to the enigma of being human, so I enjoy everything and employed everything as esthetically enjoyable constructs.
ME: Your thinking, and your writing remind me that, at times, I feel it is not I who is writing, as if what comes to me is latent in my DNA, waiting to be expressed, but randomly…or maybe from somewhere else—again perplexities and doubt. Not that I am in your league; don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t presume to…
JLB: Gracias, but, Señora, there is no league—only labyrinths, mirrors and dreams.
ME. Oh, I don’t know what to say about that, do you mean in writing?
JLB: I mean in life, even for Shakespeare. Have you read, my “Everything and Nothing”?
ME: No, but I heard about it when I was listening to a New Yorker Fiction podcast in the introduction to one of your stories.
JLB: Really, I am mainstream now? I invented hypertext, did you know?
ME: What? I have to look that one up. Hmm... I am not sure you are mainstream exactly, but I wouldn’t be the one to ask. I do remember reading one of your short stories when I was in college, “Funes the Memorious,” about a young man who is haunted by his memory of absolutely everything he has ever seen and experienced.
JLB: Si si, So you have read something of mine and now heard of others . So, tell me about that New Yorker Fiction podcast.
Me: Well, the story on the podcast was your “Shakespeare’s Memory,” and made me think about…hmm, I guess it made me think about and understand more about irreality.
JLB: Ah, my story about a man who is given the gift (and curse) of having all of Shakespeare’s memories which displace his own. Wonderful, and you will read my “Everything and Nothing”?
ME: Yes, I will as soon as I get back to reality—whatever that is, right?
JLB: Right. I will briefly summarize it, if I may to you and your fellow writers: Jane, Dan, Barbara, John, Stacey, Cindy 1 and Cindy 2, as it contains the essence of how I think about the relationship between writers and writing, creators, and creations.
ME: Yes, please do; we’d love to hear it.
4 JLB: It involves Shakespeare, who he was and his own search for a fundamental identity. We know him by his works, but little of his so-called real life. First, he was as an actor, and content to play someone else, but was that enough? No, he then imagined, moved, thought, spoke and felt through his characters in the plays—hundreds of them, many of whom also disguised themselves as others. He created “all possible shapes of being.” After twenty years of “controlled hallucination,” he returned to the “village of his birth, where he dictated his final will, which excluded every trace of emotion and his life-long literary gifts.
In “Everything and Nothing” I wrote, “The story goes that before or after he died, he found himself before God and said: 'I who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself.’ The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: ‘Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons—and none.' ”
ME: I will have to take that into my "ponder heart," as Grace Paley would have said. Thank you, Jorge Luis Borges, for being with the writers in Gloucester tonight, and for your life and work of imagination and inspiration. It was an honor a most "real" honor.
JLB: De nada, es un placer—to exist once again in the present among the living, rescued from death's oblivion to speak to fellow writers—seekers wandering in and recording life's labyrinth of everything and nothing.
People tell me things, and I write. What kinds of things do people tell me? Things that are true, made up, funny, sad, crazy, joyful, tragic, secret things and sacred things.
There are stories of hard-won knowledge and transformation. I hear beliefs, doubts, regrets, hope, illusions, longing, magical thinking and despair. I notice a gesture, a gaze, a facial expression, a mood. At the time, I am not thinking that I will write about what people are telling me, and I may never write most of what I hear, but I am truly interested, so I listen. I empathize. I learn. I am enlightened. I remember.
Later, sometimes much later, when I am in moments of inspiration, I seem to free associate in a compilation of what I have heard, my own experience and frame of reference (mythology, literature, history, psychology, etc.). I may see a pattern or theme in people’s lives, as I try to see in my own. I interpret, intuit, dramatize, expand, magnify and integrate in the throes of the creative process, ultimately touching on relatable experience about being human.
Dante Allighieri wrote about the medieval tradition of interpreting story on four levels, which can be applied to experiences in life as well. There is the literal - the reality of a story; the allegorical - what a story represents symbolically; the moral - a story's ethical implications or lessons; the analogical - what it is like, the metaphorical aspects, that which rises to philosophical, spiritual, universal realms. I may tap into this kind of interpreation, but not methodically--more or less in a subconcious way, but always with a wish to convey the profundity of truth therein. It just happens that when I am writing--being moved along by what and from where I don’t know--what I have heard starts to appear as poetry or story.
I love when this happens, a flowing forth without conscious intention, taking a form and shape of its own. I do not feel, though I have wondered, if I violate a trust, even though what develops is a compilation, a blending of stories sifted through and expanded upon through my imagination and inspiration. I suppose if people who have shared things with me recognize their words, actions as parts of their story, they may feel betrayed or offended. I would hope not. A writer's task has always been to lay bare the human condition and, in some cases, to "rescue the dead [and forgotten] from obscurity."
Writers bear witness.
Fabulist Italo Cavino noted, “A classic is a book that never finishes what it has to say.” And so it is with our lives—filled with meaning that writers pass on, paying tribute to those who have shared their stories. Thus, collectivly, writers reveal, again and again, in all its variety and forms--the human condition--which also never finishes what it has to say.
For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell. It’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness (James Baldwin).
People tell me things, and I write.
