I
Am I really
pessimistic, indifferent in my writings? So the Publishers say. I thought I was
a realist, although for myself I suppose I’m a misanthropist, meaning: a loner,
recluse, cynic malcontent with the world, but Pessimist? I don’t get it. Well I guess I will live with it, and be
unpolished for a while, the Man of Woe, that is me. The telegram said, they liked the draft, but I needed
to take all the gloom out of it. That is like saying your mother passed away,
and at the funeral, you’re not allowed to give her deep sympathy, or allowed to
say out loud her name, or in this case for me to print the gloom of the world
at hand. The Will of the world is dead! Life
is a despair, the only victory in life is war. And the victor is never wrong
because if you tell him so, you’re one dead duck, along with the many.
The last publisher out of forty, said I only saw misery and unrest in
the world. Somehow life left scars and deep reservoirs, but I made them too
deep. He said I said ‘Life was meaningless,’ I didn’t say that, I’ll have to
write him back, tell him, I said, ‘The world lived as if life was meaningless,’
no I said, I think I said, ‘nothingness,’ that ‘the world took on the spell of no
certain faith, an old religion of nihilism is taking place, that life has gone
out of the soul.
After reading his comments it struck me, ‘when I had young eyes like the
publisher, for he’s only 27-years old, and I’m 68-years old, he sees the world
with young eyes, he can’t see beyond the dimness of today, us older ones no longer can. I know he
mocks me as a dimwit, living in the past, but it is the present I am talking
about in the book, and future: the ruin, man has caused the world, is it not
so, that the roof is falling in? I’d like to call him up and talk to him about
that. Maybe go see him, or have him see me, convince him the world needs my
book, it is like a gospel, per near, a gospel of doom! I know Mr. Christion
Durant, laughs at me, and if I call him he’ll say “Mr.
Solomon Salem, I had a busy morning in my office, I’m in a good humor, don’t
wreck the day for me, I’m too tired to fight, we’re not going to publish your
rot.”
The previous publisher, for him it was regrettable, he agreed— “…but
people do not think the way you think,” to his mind anyhow. Did he take a survey? No! Did he read ‘The
Epic of Gilgamesh,’ or Achebe, or ‘The Trial,’ or ‘The Castle,’ or ‘Sentimental
Education’ or Virgil, or ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Moby-Dick` or ‘Metamorphoses’: no, no,
no, but they all have gloominess to them.
How about Faust or Voltaire? No,
no, no, again gloominess. For him there is no calamity at the tip of the
horizon, no nuclear clock three minutes to midnight, he lives blind in a
foxhole.
When I got home last night I noticed a pile of bills on my floor, the
mailman’s too lazy to put them in the mailbox, instead of the door slot, that’s
for when I’m on a trip, and I haven’t taken one for six years. This mailman’s a
new one, he’s older than I, or looks older, with his wrinkles on his face
swaying like masts in the offing.
By the time I reached the restaurant, ‘The
Chef’ off Payne Avenue and West Seventh Street, my little apartment, two rooms
on York Street not far off, just a little walk, not so much an unusual place,
more on the order of a greasy-spoon place, with heavy waitresses with loose
aprons and bulging pouches, where white haired men eat, and hopefuls with no
sympathetic view on life go. I was still feeling badly about the previous
turndown of my MS, but Christion Durant was on my brain now. Yet, oddly enough,
so much alike they both are. I thought everyone had a view on the chaos going
on in the world, did not Aristotle say, “We are all political Animals,” and did
not Pope Francis quote that quote to Mr. Donald Trump concerning the wall he
wants to build, to narrow the gap between the overflow of Mexicans sneaking
into the United States. I guess my view
on it was what Confucius, said: “For a wise man should know what he knows and what he doesn’t
know.”
I like them both, but I wonder if Confucius should have changed his
maxim to: “A
wise man should know what he knows, and not pretend to know what he doesn’t
know.”
“The Regular,” I told the fat waitress, with heavy-duty
varicose-veins, it’s a crying shame, her insurance policy here doesn’t pay for
them to be taken care of, and evidently they don’t. Just then a man came in who lives in the
bottom apartment of my four-plex building. He’s 93-years old, he said he sold
furs in his younger days.
“Hello,” he said, waves; I give him a wave back.
Mr. Christion Durant, should know evil is not blind, only hope and those
like Russia, and Putin, and al-Assad in Syria, and the Islamic State, and North
Korea’s head honcho, China likewise, they are all brooding over owning more of the
earth.
To know them you got to know their fathers and mothers, because they get
their temper from their father, and their good sense and intellect from the
mother. The world lives in half-truths, like dreaming, if they put it all
together, they’d have a heart attack. But what is stronger than the temper or
the good sense or intellect? That is what my book is about, ‘The Will’. Why the
world is falling apart. Why people
put-up with living an unbearable life, a burdensome life. That’s why I live by
myself, short-tempered and all, and live a challenging-like life, it takes guts
to do that. Not mouth-guts, like the politicians, but gut-guts, it takes a
strong Will.
I still don’t know if I should call him. I didn’t know until recently my
book produced such a bad impression on him of me.
I have two sons and two daughters, seldom seen, all out of wedlock, one
of the daughters has what I have, that is a strong ‘Will’; not so much intelligence
per say, but the Will, and that compensates! Her husband just died, and she’s survived it quite
well. She is not in touch with the pretense of the world. She’s not gloomy, and
cynical, or suspicious. Or obsessed with fears, and evils, or fancies.
It is an effort thinking all these things out, the old man, the fur man,
looking my way, smiling. Hair loose, flying to and fro, he sits under a fan, to
cool his aging overheated body, and life, he laughs happily at life as being a joke,
well, not quite a joke, but I know him, he thinks he, no, we are the salt and
summit of the universe, not a passing phenomenon like so many philosophers, not
a hidden illusion, separated by space
and time, he told me once “Wise men since the beginning of time keep saying the same thing,
and the fools, all act alike!” I
talked to him about the Will, ‘Free Will,’ and he said, “There is no real free will, as long as
there is necessity. You see…” he
says to me, “…the Will, wants!” I got thinking then, I’d bet he’d agree
with my book to be. I think Dante would
have liked my book too, he created Hell, out of the world he lived in, and that
is what my ‘Gloomy Book,’ is all about.
I sleep with a gun under by bed, and I hate noise, it is unbearable, but
those with less mental capacity, they can endure noise it doesn’t torture them,
for intellectuals, it does, the knocking, hammering of neighbors, loud music,
that base thumping, all torment.
I remember once my boy, one of the twins
questioned me on if I had any friends? Not one single friend. A lot of acquaintances, but I’d not call them
friends. Between him and them, resides infinity. And I’m immune to political
protest and nationalistic fevers. What is so outrageous, so absurd, and so
egotistic of this? I can sleep well, I know my prayers are heard by God.
I shall name my manuscript, ‘The Dark Side of the Riddle,’ because
there is a double-edged riddle in the book, perhaps triple-edged. And what is a
riddle but a puzzle if not a question, a mystery, a challenge for the world to
find.
II
It was a struggle waking up this Saturday
morning, full of sweat and bad odor; I looked out the window, and saw some
joggers, and the breakfast sign on at ‘the Chef` café, up the street. I wanted to get into the shower, and not be
troubled with breakfast. I wanted to call Christion Durant, tell him I got a
name for the manuscript. I had to get up
out of bed slowly, my head always hurts if I get up and out of bed too fast, I
wanted a cigarette, but I had quit for 32-years, it seemed like the bitter
taste would wake me better, but that was out of the question. I went and got
into the shower, I do a lot of thinking in the shower sometimes.
I realized the MS attracted little attention for Christion, and his
publishing house, but in my last of several letters I let him know he should
publish it for humanitarian reasons. And he wrote me back, “Use it
for waste paper.” But I knew he didn’t mean it. Oh, he also said, remember, “If a
demon looks like a demon inside your book (somewhat…quoting Confucius, I believe,
misquoting him…), then it is a demon, but somehow you expect
an angel of God to come out of it, I think either the demon or the angel needs
help, and you have to iron that part out! The book is hollow, and on a
collision course.”
The only thing I could tell him, and I’m not
going to, but if I did I’d say: ‘Like it or not a man must be humanistic in
general, and I can’t take your comments serious, perhaps I’m too alien for
contemporaries, knowing what I wrote, is what mankind has turned down in place
of chaos, for he knows at large, man knows at large—even if only in the
unconscious, he is the fox being hunted. And who are the hunters?’
I picked up a letter the mailman left on
the floor. It read from Mr. Durant, “You
are deaf to your audience, because you cannot see no one applauding, can you,
yet you persist in us publishing your rot? Tell me what is in your book to
applaud?”
How can he talk like that to me! Here is an editor who wrote at one time
and could not sell, so he took a job editing books to judge them for his
publisher. A judge with less applause than me.
The poorest of the players! The only thing his job does is raise his
ego, and rejecting my MS, was and still is, a short cut to his compensation for his
absence of fame.
In other words, Christion knows my MS reads like the Torah, a doomsday
Torah, but all thinking people must find seclusion, and for that reason I
cannot go knocking on his door. But I’ll stop giving lectures at the
University, I can survive on the revenue of my mother left me, she left me
quite an investment in apartments.
III
There are a few areas, dark areas I never
cared to expose. And a few days after Mr. Durant’s last letter, I’ve decided
that this phase of my life, at this old
age, it was time to; of course that is
why I wrote the book, but Durant I doubt read it. Nonetheless as time goes by,
it must be written or talked about and he is the last one I want to send my MS
to. I can feel his aversion, and it has no substance, his resistance is
pride. I was hardly conscious of this
before, before this morning, I must have thought it in my head last night,
vague as I remember. I will rename my book “The World’s Dark Soul”. A new
name for an old book. I don’t want to leave home today, I want to write him a
letter, or talk to him. But I don’t like eating in, too many cockroaches, rats
and mice, flies and spiders, mosquitos. I’m no house clearer that’s for sure.
Where is the Argentine wine?
I guess I’ll go to the bar, the “Do Drop Inn,” it’s a ways away, but I
can take a bus.
Fill the glass up please!
“Why,” asked the waitress, “every time you come here you order two
glasses, a glass filled with wine, and leave one glass empty?
“A good question, not sure if you are too noisy or not, but I’ll tell
you why! I’m going to fill that second
glass up, whenever I come here, and not hear anyone complaining about world
events, and war, and the shape of girls, and gambling, and drugs, and guns, and
drinking too much, and expect a change to occur by not facing the issues, they
are complaining about. I see when I came in, you had a grin on your face, now
you answer me why?”
“It wasn’t a grin, I’ve read several of your articles in the newspapers,
and on the internet, a few in magazines, and you’re a real thinker?”
“Really! So you don’t think I have a dark soul, that I’m eccentric,
write with peculiarities.”
“I didn’t say that, but what you write is always interesting.”
“Interesting. Does that mean,
pretentious jargon?”
“What does that mean?”
“Conceited nonsense!”
“No, it only that you write in riddles!”
Just then the postman came in.
“Mr. Salem, I have your mail, take it here and you’ll save me the climb
up your stairs.”
And he handed me a letter from the publisher, Mr. Durant, as Susie
poured me my third glass of wine.
“Good or bad news,” asked Susie.
“My book just got accepted for publication!”
“You should call and thank your publisher!” said Susie.
“I have nothing to say to him, verbally. Although I shall be writing him
quite soon enough, anyhow.”
IV
When I got home, it was quite late, and
the phone was ringing. I answered it, it was Mr. Durant on the other end.
“Mr. Salem, I have now read your whole book complete, cover to cover as
they say, and I want to know what the riddle is, the so called Chinese puzzle,
its terminology seems to have blurred that area up for me. I assume you got my
letter.”
“Well, it’s about time you read it, and I suppose I can try to put it in
a nutshell for you, if you can take my conception of the world, with a black
frankness?”
“Shoot, I mean go ahead, I’m not that closed mind.” Replied Durant.
“It’s only a 125-pages, but no time can be more favorable than now in
which God sees the world in a shamefully misused way, and indeed may look the
other way as He did at 9/11. Leaders worldwide, only wish to further
their own objectives over the masses, the political arena is a bullring. There
is nobody to oppose them, but God Himself. These present-day leaders indeed
wish to live it up, with power and greed and have special rules for them, and
for us, obedient to their rules however they make them up, and they make them
up at any unused moment. It is impossible that we have not adopted—or better put,
approved the demon for the past 50-years to guide our societies. That truth
will come quietly and modestly to the surface only to have a short lived life.
Truth is no longer nobler than recognition, favoritism; they should go hand in
hand. And truth today is what the people want it to be at any given time: not
what it is.”
“Well, what is the riddle,” asked Mr. Durant.
“I must answer with hypocritical humility, and first I’ll give you an
example, then the maxim, if you don’t mind. Would you build a library
underground next to a neighbor’s garden and not expect him to water it, thus,
not waterproofing your library, which should be a must. Should it not? (Durant didn’t
answer, as if waiting for the punch line) I’ll answer it for you, no you would not.
If you did, you’d be a dumb head, or drumhead for someone to beat there drum
sticks on. Now for the second part, ‘Out of darkness comes light,’ evidently
you did not see that. In our world today of over seven-billion, we all speak
not as if the other guy or gal doesn’t exist, we act as we are separated from
our one united human race, as being the only one that counts in the human race.
God hates indifference.”
Asked the publisher “What does this light say about all of this?”
“To accept the external world as real, and don’t put your worse foot
forward. Attack materialism, and
nihilism. The most vital part of the light is God. Stop trying to explain God
as matter, because we only see things as matter through the mind. There is a
door, there is God, and there is a key, and he has it in his palm, it is to the
entrance of the external world. Check out the Book of Isaiah. The crust of the
earth, is much like the crust of the mind, there is much underneath it.
Actually, here is where the vital resources reside.
“We have become a world of ducks and chickens, and hedge-hogs clustering
together for warmth; fighting for another day to draw another sniff of air into
our lungs. This is the fate of billions.
“Are you aware, the ‘Will’ is stronger than the guide, if you are its
master?”
“Now what does that mean,” asked Durant, “I read something on that in
the book!”
“It means just what it means, that if the world cannot find a reason to
stop the chaos, it is obvious they have found reasons and enough reasons, because
they want it. Sometimes logic is useless, and useless knowledge becomes a form
of income. This is the sum of my riddle, and of course the end, being the ‘Will’
or third part of the riddle, to do what has to be done, the world does not have
the Will. That is to say, their ‘Will’ is to be satisfied, and until that, the
curtain will not fall, but of course, the Veil of Maya never falls for long…”
“You didn’t answer complete!” exclaimed the publisher, “We’ll publish your book, but to be frank I
think the stupidest men in the world get their foxy words to have multi
meanings, and our Board of Directors, thought your book held some juice, or value,
because of that I have to go along with them.”
“Let me explain, once and for all Mr. Durant: Character resides in the ‘Will,’
not intellect, and this ‘Will,’ has eight wings: ambition, demand,
determination, resolve, motivation, backbone, longing, hope against hope (God), and this
is what the world lacks, Will!”
V
Said Mr. Durant, “I did like your last
chapter in the book, may I read it to you?”
“If you must,” I told him, although I wrote it, and knew what it said,
but how can you refuse or argue with the man who just said, ‘I’ll publish the
darn book!’ as if he was unwilling, and the Board of Directors made him do so.
“Okay,” said Mr. Durant, “last chapter:
‘War, Effect and Will’ goes on to say, ‘…there is a power within
us, in all living things, and this power rises in every living thing: plants,
planets, animals, men, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe. It is the Will, at work, its determination to
survive, the instinct to carry on, and that demands balance, geometry, without
it the universe and man would produce only chaos, and have ended long ago. So
God constructed one and all to be guided by this, or meet its end; that is to
say, if it is entirely without this.
‘Will and intellect, put together, says, the elephant will not cross the
weak bridge; it foresees the effect. The world today is the elephant without Will
or intellect, it is crossing the bridge, at its own peril. Without regard for
anybody or anything. The Will, is not there. Perhaps I can say, there is only
the intellect at work, it maybe so, that man sees the fall but knows he’ll be
dead by the time its impact hits him. So
why not allow it, dead is dead to him; out of sight, out of mind. So he allows
the fall by apathetic reasoning.
‘The Will, is of course, the power to live, want to live, the man above,
knows he has lived his maximum, of life, so indifference sets in, he only cares
how dear life is to him, not all living things. So in silence he bides his
time.
‘Culture to him has less value than an ounce of copper or zinc. Even the
living toads found in limestone share in the eternal enemy called death. And do
not mistreat their environment, they understand reproduction.
‘The Will, is independent of knowledge. In a way it works blindly. For a person with a
strong Will, it is life sustaining. A low background means nothing to him or
her. He or she will make it. All the organs inside this person will follow the
Will. And forgo knowledge, he knows the
Will is the principle form which all living things proceed; s/he knows because
they know. They may not know why the moon circles the earth and the earth
circles the sun, and the nine planets in their orbit, circle the sun within its
solar system, and that the universe moves as it does, and the galaxies move as
they do inside the universe, and what a supernova is, or the forces of gravity
at the edges of a black hole have to with gravitational pull—which in essence
pull the dying suns into its abyss, and what a gravitational wave is, and that
they sway through the universe at the speed of light and that some thirty
asteroids hit the earth each year, some the size of twenty meters in size, that
most burn up in the atmosphere, but some have the equivalent of 13,000 tons of TNT,
most asteroids or space racks end up in the Atlantic or Antarctica; but Will
tells them, they don’t have to know. God balanced it all out for them, He’s in
charge!...
‘Chaos, the unbalanced world among man, causes war. If man is not at
peace with his neighbor, it is a cause for war, and the end of peace. In the 21st
Century war means the end of our species; we will be sent back to the Stone
Age, by duped politicians. We have seen recently in 100-years: WWI, 8-million
people died. WWII, 80-million people
died. Three wars in Israel. Two wars in
Iraq. Two wars in Asia, the Koreas, and Vietnam, 4-million lives taken in both
Asian Wars, and the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Libya, and now in Syria,
that has taken in four years, some 250,000 lives. At any given time, per near
25% of the world appears to be at war, or preparing for it. Russia has had
three wars in the last decade; and Africa has become a war zone. Russia has even
hinted they’d use nuclear arms if need be with Ukraine. North Korea boast of
the H-bomb and that they’d use it if they thought they’d lose their regime, and
says it can target America, South Korea, and Japan. Iran has a working nuclear
plant, convincing Obama it is for peaceful reasons when they have the 5th
largest oil reserves in the world, who does he think he’s kidding, when we all
know they have sworn to eradicate Israel with it, as has Hamas, who leads the
Palestinians.
‘The impulse for war among some nations is as strong as the impulse to
have sex. We’ve allowed certain individuals—like leaves on an evil tree—to grow
wild, unaccountable to the world order, Obama being the worse of the guardians
of the world, since America is the so called watchdog. This allowance, will
castrate the world, if we do not cut down the tree of evil, or at least, deaden
those harmful leaves, before it ends our species.”’
#5087/2-21
& 22-2016 / Copyright © 2/2016 by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. H.c.
The Artwork was
done by an anonymous Cubin Artist! When
the author was visiting Havana, in 2003
