The Universe in Miniature in Miniature

by Patrick Somerville

  Human beings, you see, fall apart all the time. In many different ways. That is the central theme. There is no need to disguise it.

  It takes me six hours to drive home. I have no idea what he broke.

  Phil, of course, has already left when I return, and the next day I stand amongst the hundreds gathered at Sandy Beloit’s funeral. His wife and his two children stand beside the coffin as it is lowered into its hole. One of his sons is distracted by a bird in a tree. I catch a glimpse of Phil’s father weeping into the arms of his wife. (Going on 90, amazing thickness.) I wonder whether or not Phil is over the aquamarine sea somewhere, perhaps riding a hovercraft, rapt with anticipation, a hero with his own living dream. I wonder whether he will end up with long blond hair, Fabio-like, or if he will concentrate on something more dense, something respectable. Something perfect.

  After the service, at the reception, Phil’s brother Georgie comes up to me and gives me a margarita.

  “Sandy would have wanted you to have it,” he says.

  “Really?”

  “We think so, yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So listen, Danny,” he begins. He is packed inside of a suit too small for his large frame, and is obviously uncomfortable. He yanks at his tie and sips his own margarita as though the crushed ice will give him some relief from the pressure. “You’re Phil’s friend and everything. We were just wondering if you knew what was so important that he had to miss Sandy’s big day here, so to speak.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Ah, no, no he didn’t tell us. He just said that he didn’t feel like coming.”

  “You know that he’s left the country, don’t you?” I ask. “For a dangerous hair procedure?”

  “Dangerous hair procedure?”

  I explain Hair University. I try to explain the Norwood Scale, but Georgie frowns through most of it. I mention the Hair Monster.

  After I’m through, he says: “He went to stop balding?”

  “Yes.”

  He only looks back at me, margarita suspended in the air between us. I start to talk. I don’t know what I’m saying, really, but I talk about hair and roofs. His face sags more and more. I think that he’s going to cry, but he doesn’t. Instead he nods along as he listens, and I think: Go Danny, keep talking, just keep talking. People always listen when you talk. And he’s not going to understand this, anyway.

  Confused Aliens

  I am delivering a speech on the bridge concerning happiness, duty, and morale. I can’t quite put my snurf on it, but some of the crewmembers have looked a little apathetic lately, a little glassy-eyed—the speech is directed at them, yes, but I’ll be honest here, I’m putting on the show to pump myself up, too. You know that thing about how if you smile enough, it makes you actually feel good? That’s what I’m going for.

  As everyone knows from previous episodes, I suffer from free-floating low-morale, and the last few weeks have been pretty dark, plenty of gloom-and-doom, bedroom-and-cookies-and-molting time. Pathetic. If I’m being really honest this could easily be the beginning of another full-blown breakdown for me, which would be just fantastic, just great timing, considering everything else that’s going on with outer space and the universe right now, but as Admiral, you’re not about to admit you’re on thin psychological ice to a crew of disparate, idiot extraterrestrials who rely on you for everything. The mission to Belvetron IV demands more, demands the best that we can muster, not simply for morale, but for the future of the universe. (Theoretically.) Before us, the small yellow planet looms like a nugget; we are in position; the orbits are beneficial. The scanners have reported high population density and a technologically advanced race of intelligent, sensitive beings. They are not yet space-faring but we feel good about dropping in and saying hey. We ran the numbers. They’re ready for us to come in as deities, at least. We’ve been chatting for about a week, sending down some feelers into their electromagnetics. We just now beamed their diplomat up. We are prepared to open a real dialogue, to greet this dignified civilization, to learn from its history, to welcome it into the greater intergalactic community. Maybe we’ll do a little mining. We share in common our existence. As conscious beings we are linked by our loneliness and by our questions of BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH.

  What small comfort we have comes from knowing we are not alone.

  I say this to the crew. I say these things in an interesting manner, with decent gravitas. Everyone is interested at least, and near the end I start to feel okay. And as I turn for a final flourish, sort of a sum-up-the-major-points kind of spin-move, my tail sweeps across the weapons console, and the computer whistles to inform us that I’ve accidentally just shot the big gun.

  “Oh,” Gleegluk says. “Okay.”

  “Whoops,” I say.

  We all watch the viewscreen as the cannons fire and the little yellow planet explodes into a million pieces.

  “Whoopsy, Admiral,” says Gleegluk, nodding gravely. “That’s a whoopsy. There goes Belvetron IV.”

  My personal morale once again plummets. We are bad at what we do, and honestly, we don’t know how to run the ship. We try, but usually we make mistakes like this. It’s not because we’re immoral or lazy. It’s just because we get confused. We make mistakes. There are so many shiny buttons. You would never be able to guess what they all control (even though we try), and of course there is no instruction manual. We have many different body types, and I do not think this ship was designed with any of them in mind.

  After everybody’s calmed down and digested the deaths of seventeen billion conscious beings, Smellvamp asks, “What should we do now?”

  “Well,” I say. “We could use a new mission.”

  “What kind?”

  He is gazing back in my direction like I know.

  “We’ll retreat, how about?” I say. It feels good, trying it on for size, and I nod. “Yeah. I order you to retreat.”

  Smellvamp looks at his control panel.

  “Not sure how,” he says.

  “Press the green thing,” I say. “Then pull that thing there.”

  He performs the two actions in reverse order and the computer announces that all of the emergency life capsules have been jettisoned. The viewscreen shows us several close-up shots of the small gray pills drifting off into empty space, their boosters glowing orange against the vast blackness and the starlight.

  I leave the bridge. The mess hall is nearly empty, and as I snorfle my paste I blame myself.

  Pangea

  Dr. G. and the other fine mental health care people have suggested a journal—some might call it a log—others a letter (if we mail it to the company I admit I like that idea)—something along those lines. It’s helped already. It’s prompted me to make a choice, and you know what? Choice happens to be the answer. I have it right off the bat. Dr. G., who is you are lovely, gorgeous, talented, smarter than I am, I appreciate her beauty. Your beauty, it’s powerful, I feel as though me-being-in-love-with-her may very well be one of her strongest therapeutic strategies, almost a form of anesthesia, or even better, she is a soporific or mushroom, a sort of doping, pleasurable undercurrent of Dr. G. eros with us in the room, the pull toward beauty, the urge to become beautiful yourself when you’re around it, like an angel, say Gabriel is sitting in the corner but he’s invisible, one of the possible candidates to answer the burning question of whether not being alive but staying alive is a smart choice, which I seem to ask too much… questions…I’ve answered the central question of the journal exercise. The question on the prescription pad note she gave me (I thought that was cute to hand it to me like it would be a prescription for Xanax but it turned out to be an assignment, cute not sexy, an index I think she is also continuously calculating during our sessions, but one problem is this came from What About Bob?, didn’t it?) is: WHAT DO YOU LOVE AND WHY, JERRY? That’s all she wrote on the paper. WHAT DO YOU LOVE AND WHY, JERRY? I have never known where I’m going, most people just go forward and don’t, that�
��s okay you say. WHAT DO YOU LOVE AND WHY, JERRY? I feel proud, a real, authentic, embarrassing swell of super pride, about the skill of being normal, developed for so long, right, but no, I actually mean something specific: I mean life, my job, my family, mortgage, etc. I smoked cigarettes in 1976 for three months but quit because I realized they were not for me. Is that the information you want? Now? Afterwards? There was no question on any form that could have solicited the answer. You say it, I respond to it, yes, that way: In daily life I commute, I drive, I honk, beep, get angry in the morning, probably that’s caffeine addiction because it goes away eventually, I have trouble properly organizing and arranging closets and keeping them organized if I do, by some miracle, gather the energy required on a Saturday afternoon and go to the store and buy the basket/organizer units and put them all together and put all the shoes in the bottom, hats in the middle. My shoe size is 10. Cats? I like you. Chesterfield, ours, I believe I truly do love him in the same way I love my wife. Yes. That’s the same human heart. If you are a romantic it is. If you are me, it’s not. Think mundane-man thoughts most of the time but then I can be casually strolling down the street, on my way back to the office—this happens to all of us, I know, but I feel it’s important to draw attention to how I notice, I think that characterizes me better than other details—and this stroll is downtown Chicago, say I’ve been eating at The Berghoff, eating a hamburger in a crowded room full of people like me, suit-types, businessmen, neither successful or unsuccessful people, the middle unexceptional mass, just letting the bacon cheeseburger slop down all over my face, crazy, my napkin, grease and ketchup exploding, probably on my shirt, sitting at the bar because I go to lunch on my own, always, and now I’m walking back after this unholy gluttonous orgy of consumption as though nothing has happened, or I did not leave a part of myself back there, can still taste the luxurious grease, still dream of dying with bacon melting in my mouth, hot bacon, just finished, still dripping, salty, there is no other taste like that, I not only have what is clearly a unique thought that is indisputably my own and therefore something I should be proud of, proud of as a thoughtful and introspective human being, I mean, an example of how I’m special now and then, in my way, it’s not vanity, nor is it the most important thing, it’s just what we all are, I can even stay with it long enough to get back to my desk and feel happy about it for a few minutes, cross my feet, think more, say, Hey Jerry, okay, there’s a little insight, once in a while the clouds part and I catch a glimpse. Yes it all fell apart that night. For all of us the lightning bolt strikes. I believe that. I’ve always liked that. So things like: here’s life in our time, everyone (I am thinking this as I walk down the street with the hamburger grease on my face): do you know the sense of wandering? It’s astounding to me that I can walk, bleary-eyed morning-man in pajamas with hair sticking up, erection, the upstairs carpeted-hall first, then climb down the stairs, wander to the kitchen, make the coffee, pour pour, shake shake, and yet here we are, Dr., wanderers, crestfallen nomadic creatures who’ve sprung from nothing but the wet lush mitochondrial muck in a thunderstorm, give it a lightning strike for good measure because maybe that’s how it happened, and zip, zip, zap, magic, the supernatural, wonder, we’re on multiple, interlacing, simultaneous complex metaphysical paths just as thinking beings with freedom must necessarily be—read a book about consciousness sometime, okay? The many of our outside lives combined with the many of our inside lives form a net or a tangle, crisscrossing swath, yes it has meaning, it’s premised on amazement, however it’s bungled, however you hold the key, however it’s chronically misplaced—and astride or within or on top of or whatever these deep routes we get stuck, we get trapped, we get chained, right, and we’re stricken by…they are ours. Each one of these paths, routes, strings, secret lives (apologies, metaphors, but this is real, here, this isn’t refined, you overestimate me) is absolutely ours. A little exciting, a little liberating…yes. Or: proprietary, banal.

  That’s the idea I like, that’s the story of the bacon grease. And who else can say that? My wife? No. My son? No. But yes, too. It happens to them because they’re like me, like you, the people. To pandas? I saw a miraculous and awesome picture of a panda cub. It looked like a Fraggle and then I thought, Ah, no, Jerry, Fraggi look like panda cubs, you have it flipped. Do they walk simultaneous paths and have tangled nets? Either Fraggi or pandas? No. So we are doomed. Now there’s a worthwhile question. WHAT DO YOU LOVE AND WHY, JERRY? WHAT DO YOU LOVE AND WHY, JERRY? BESIDES ME, AND MY UNBELIEVABLE YOUTH AND BEAUTY, WHICH YOU SHALL NOT HAVE? My answer is the burning moment of choice that is our only inheritance as conscious beings. Does this mean I can quit now? Smiles all around, from me to you. I’ve given one superficial answer and the point is the exploration, I get that, I agree with that, I’m not this oppositional, a defensive patient who thinks he knows better than science and expertise, in fact I’ve always been beholden to expertise, probably always believed in my secular, well-organized-for-supply-side-economics beliefs too strongly, too adamantly been the science promoter at cocktail parties who himself has no real understanding of even the basics of science, Hey listen to this thing I read about quantum physics, so interesting, too often grinned and shook my head at the barbarism of those who expressed slight skepticism as to the findings of this or that study which, it would no doubt turn out after a little investigation, was funded by whatever interest it endorses. I’m with you, my healers, science is both true and false and as a truth-gathering device perhaps no more accurate than Shelley drunk and screaming in a tavern on a good night, talking about oceans or something, normal nineteenth-century bourgeoisie upset and disturbed by the volume of his rant, I love the thought of him there, scaring people kind of badly—short, ecstatic, drunk, aware, but you’re not him, you’re science, it’s okay, I believe you’re at work to make me better and “bring back my heart,” get the suit on me, get the case in my hand, get me up out of this very dangerous psychological state I seem to have dropped into, tee hee, get the lover of competitive sports operating properly once more. When was the last time Tom had someone to play catch with? I should have built a robot for my son before I lost my mind. It could have resembled me and done most of what I used to do. I’m working in tandem with you to solve my problems. Not one of these difficult ones who screams.

  Open it. (Of course none of you have problems, nor could you ever, ever descend to where I’m floating, we accept that premise.) But here’s a sure thought, if we are at the very least trying to snatch up certainty by using this exercise: I’m not going to be “getting better,” which is a problem, it will frustrate the insurance companies along the way, not to mention my wife, so maybe we should not after all submit this as evidence to the company, because clearly I am keenly aware of the stakes, and this undermines psychosis, so far as I understand it, but the ways in which our world is meticulously organized to hurt the weak, to crush them after being crushed already, like the second time you step on a spider even though you’re certain it’s dead just because you hate it so much and hate the idea of it making a miraculous recovery, because then it could crawl on your face while you are napping, you stomp down harder the second time, you twist your ankle a little bit to rip it apart more and be sure, you grit your teeth, and also the way we are organized to take from the gullible because it’s statistically advantageous, to entice all those who don’t know any better, and because I am keenly aware of the stakes or I have a feeling someone, somewhere, will try to use that against me, so therefore no. I want what I can get. I like robbing, cheating. It—the thing, the incident, the stimulus, the vision, the event, the lightning—happened, I changed, my mind changed tremendously in a second, and I have never been one to believe in these moments that change people. I don’t believe in epiphanies. So there, you arrogant mothers! Did I have one? Unclear. I saw all the continents sliding apart. It’s physical. You know! Brain cells moved and twisted around. I’m the skeptic yet I’ve had what they call a mystical spiritual event and I don’t bel
ieve in them. Where does that put me? Crazy. Or them? Or you? I mentioned choice. A choice. One that made me happy about the writing so far. The choice is I don’t want dates as in our record of time. For me. I won’t try to force that idea on the world. The airlines would be in trouble. It sounds trite and twee. It sounds like a choice about the font. Formatting… design…pop-out planets…what colored paper…but it means more, which I’m sure you’ll see if you reflect for just a moment. I don’t want to sully the things I decide to write by locating them in our baby-human-sphere or on the plane (as in slice or layer or strata, not flying machine) that claims we control the universe, human beings trying to place themselves, over and over, on the map that is no map or on the diagram that looks strong but which has been initially sketched on a blank piece of paper that is no longer there. Remember our crestfallen nomadic wandering ancestors. That was also their situation as they spread out away from Africa, their hearts laden, walking billowing weeping sadness, each one walking east up through Asia like he or she were Frodo when he has that ring around his neck and it’s become heavy, not to mention a goblin and servant constantly adding stress to the situation. I feel so sad for those people. My god! Let’s put our cards on the table here and admit that all that’s happened to me is that I’ve done it, I’ve admitted it, while most don’t: we don’t know and we die. Wagner says yearn then die. Is it true? I walked out of that opera feeling Wagner was a child. But what does that mean? We don’t know and we die, we are here, rodents at best, we are asked to go forward, go down the road, be civil, find the right endpoint, be good, be all right, be calm, have skills, be alone, love some, die, nurse our mothers and fathers at death, stare at the toys of our mind—limited powers of perception, analysis, comprehension, imagination, flawed memory, susceptibility to toxicity, and (my favorite, somehow the most tragic, pathetic, embarrassing, real) susceptibility to skull injuries—go out, do your work, get through it, do a day, do another, we call that a week, a month, try to stay safe, just go do it, yes you’ll age, we don’t understand that, accept it, don’t let that stand in your way, you have places you will go, you have happiness to achieve, you have friends who will drink a beer or two with you, we can all go bowling every month, you have humanity to consider, you have primaries you have to vote at because your opinion gets used to decide important policy measures by proxy vis-à-vis the individual you elect, you have dignity to uphold and explore and trade away, sex to have, go do it, go down the road feeling bad, about which there is a song. We’re asked to do all these things. What are we told? Nothing.