The Annals

by Petronius Jablonski

  “Your girlfriend’s inability to bridle her animal passions was your problem. Please excuse my unfamiliarity with the dating code alluded to. Was I supposed to wait until you filed an Official Declaration of Separation with the Repository of Dating Intelligence, then fill out a permission slip in triplicate? I cannot believe you are still brooding over this. There are approximately three billion of them — two or three of whom might even endure your shortcomings if sufficiently inebriated. Who else is in this dream?”

  He barged out and I entered the bath and turned the hot water to a trickle and waited for the good part to begin. And waited, and waited, and …

  I awoke in the tent and rubbed my eyes. “That Viennese charlatan would say my unconscious is having a recession,” I said. Exclamations from outside summoned me. Sandy, Steve, and little Kelly sat around a fire.

  “It was the coolest dream I’ve ever had,” said Sandy. “It was so trippy. I was walking across a frozen pond on a summer night. All these weird colors and shapes glowed beneath the ice but I couldn’t tell what they were. I couldn’t see clearly through the surface no matter —”

  “Oh by the gods,” I cried. “You had my dream. That is the dream I was supposed to have. You slept on the wrong side and he sent it to the wrong person.”

  Sandy’s mouth fell open. “He? Sent?”

  Bringing characteristic clarity to the situation, Steve said, “Dude, what the fuck?”

  “What else happened?” I said.

  “There was this giant fish on the shore. He was flashing like a stoplight and he was crying for help. I felt sorry for him and I tried to help him get back in the —”

  “That was obviously a distraction, a red herring. How much clearer could it have been? The importance of that dream was beneath the surface.”

  They stared at me. The fire crackled. A bird cried for its mother. I lit a cigarette with a burning twig and tried salvaging what I could from my stolen dream. “What was under the ice?”

  “I couldn’t tell. It was like swirling mist. Some of the shapes were huge. Just as I was about to make them out they moved away.”

  “Did you put your face to the ice? Was any attempt made to break it? Was there a tool nearby, perhaps a shovel?”

  “Dude, your freakin’ me out,” said Steve.

  “Did you have any dreams last night?” said Kelly.

  “As a matter of fact, I did. I had Sandy’s dream. While she ignored a valley of jewels to help a red herring, I made awkward small talk with her cretinous ex-boyfriend. The candles surrounding the bathtub were such a romantic touch. Do you have this dream often, Sandy?”

  She burst into laughter. “You and Dave took a bath?”

  “No, I offered him some desperately needed advice. Now, did you attempt to break the surface?”

  “Please stop this. I can understand that you’re all freaked out because you took a bath with Dave, but that’s no reason —”

  “No bath was taken.”

  “Dude, it’s cool,” said Steve.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Kelly. “All men have fantasies like that.”

  “The hell we do. How did the dream end?”

  “A voice called me. No, it was a bunch of voices speaking at once.”

  “That is called a chorus. What did it tell you?”

  “I walked toward these zebras. I think they were the chorus. Then the poor fish started crying and I ran back to him and I couldn’t hear the voices anymore.”

  “Incredible. The herring distracted you twice.”

  • • •

  “He gets too excited sometimes,” I heard Sandy say while I stared at tire tracks in the dirt where we’d parked. The drums had dissipated to periodic thumps.

  “It’s cool,” said Steve. “No big deal.”

  “He has a lot of ideas that don’t make sense the first time you hear them, but then after a while you realize that —”

  “He seems real smart,” said Kelly. “Maybe he’s —”

  “Maybe that dream freaked him out,” said Steve.

  “We’ll get our stuff together and hopefully stop for breakfast before we see the trees,” Sandy said. “I’m starving.”

  “That’s really cool of you guys and all, but you’re not heading anywhere near Red Rocks and the sooner, you know, we hook up with someone else doin’ the tour —”

  “He’s fine,” said Sandy. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “We always hitch like this,” said Kelly. “You gotta look for a ride goin’ the whole way.”

  Sandy walked from the campsite and joined me by my car, waiting until my eyes met hers. “You’re scaring me. Do you have any idea what you sound like? Are you okay? This is all because you’re homophobic, right?”

  “I am aware this sounds a tad whimsical, but you must trust me. The precise explanation cannot be revealed until —”

  “Whimsical? You yelled at me for stealing your fucking dream. You’re totally freaking me out.”

  “Steve has made that point eloquently. Apparently you’re all freaked out. Duly noted. Now, what must I do to un-freak or de-freak you?

  “Stop talking crazy,” she pleaded. “This is the way your dad sounded before he —”

  I raised my hand but instead turned and slapped the roof of my car. “What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up. But you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

  “Tell those two lampreys it is time to find another host. We need to be on our way.”

  • • •

  The horrific music I permitted Sandy to listen to served as a fitting backdrop to my grave queries. Clearly, that was my dream. In the same way our bungling mailman delivers my copy of Chess Life to Mr. Burzinski by mistake, my dream was sent to Sandy. This hypothesis, though colorful, is perfectly rational. My mind is functioning normally.

  But what on earth does normal mean? Normal for whom? The rest of the drooling nebbishes stumbling across this dismal planet? To think normally in that fashion I would need to be contemplating the significance of the Bubblegum Killer’s poetry or reading a vampire novel.

  My thoughts are in concord with the way they usually are. They are normal in that sense.

  But if your thoughts are the measure by which you judge your thoughts and you need your thoughts to conduct the measurement …

  Can a ruler measure itself to see if it is twelve inches long?

  IX:

  The Ripened Fruits of the Mind

  If only Memory could be cleaned out like an attic, the important and treasured items restored and preserved, the rest discarded like the junk they are. How often must unmarked boxes fall off the shelves and bury us in knickknacks, few of which were worth anything when we first encountered them.

  While Sandy devoured a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, mighty tremors shook the cluttered storage in my mind, dislodging a cobwebbed memento of the day before our departure.

  • • •

  I paused before entering the ashen building to fortify myself with meditations on the insignificance of my Sociology seminar in the greater order of things. “A million years hence, no one will know of this day’s existence,” I said cheerfully, watching the bustle between summer classes.

  As always, I toiled to penetrate the topsoil of my studies, heading straight for bedrock, thereby enriching the learning experience for my professors and fellow students alike. Alas, my preoccupation with the Chosen Chariot and the impending journey constrained my labors, leaving me stranded in the limbo of mediocrity with the rest of the ciphers.

  Two fellow pariahs joined me outside, also consigned to the smokers’ colony by a collapsing civilization that bestows eminence upon life extension but not the pursuit of Truth, for which tobacco is an absolute necessity. (Have we not modeled our “culture” on the vain, greedy, and shallow Croesus, king of Lydia, who, when he asked Solon, the law-giver of Athens, to name the most fortunate man, was horrifi
ed to hear examples of ordinary men dying noble deaths, not rich men living long lives? All things in moderation, dear Reader, especially life.)

  Mysterious but not secretive, both girls were members of an exotic coven whose presence at school grew with each semester. They dressed entirely in black with matching hair, lips, and nails. Buzzcut entertained the ludicrous theory that they were nothing more than meretricious art students obsessed with vampire lore. As I fell spellbound against the wall, paralyzed by their macabre charms, I understood that his sneer masked the terror of a man confronted by powers far beyond his ken. Their dark allure presented me with the antithesis of Sandy’s wholesome beauty. Paying my discourteous inquisitiveness no heed, they seduced me with their indifference.

  I tore myself away and ascended the steps to the third floor, contemplating an ominous yet delightful vision of a torch-lit catacomb filled with the dark priestesses and the rest of their brood. Surely they do not hold their gatherings in the library. Fleeing enslavement and failing to suppress a part of me that yearned for it, I hurried down a long white corridor and stood before a heavy wooden door, bristling at the prospect of being engaged in dialogues whose subject matter had not been mastered.

  In a gesture of respect, not a posture of submission, I bowed my head and entered. The white speckles on the dark floor instigated soothing thoughts of the innumerable other galaxies and the consequent extraneousness of our Milky Way. As expected, silence permeated the room, the professor’s prohibitive measure against tardiness. I studied the nebulous swirls in the grain of the table’s surface, seeking consolation through reflections upon the enormity of time leading up to this moment and the eternity that would follow.

  Silence persisted. Having attained Quietude, I looked up. My fellow scholars sat around the table, but their heads had been replaced with giant blueberries. Faceless, they differed in size and ripeness. The leaves varied in length and style. As though performing a magic trick, the professor gesticulated wildly, punctuating silent words.

  My hand trembled before it explored the familiar topography of my face. I ran my fingers through my hair for further confirmation while my eyes darted around the table, finally settling on the student across from me. I identified Angie, who often sought my counsel after class, by the generous contours of her bosom. What would it taste like if I kissed her? I wondered.

  Feeling exceptionally visible, as though consisting of five dimensions rather than three, I opened my notebook with feigned nonchalance and glanced at the student on my left. Only slightly smaller than a healthy pumpkin and more purple than blue, with any careless handling his head would have exploded. The leaves were styled to stand straight. Due to the pungency of his cologne, I could not ascertain if he or any of the students smelled like blueberries.

  With tumultuous thoughts yearning to coalesce, I sat back and pretended to take notes, hoping to ward off the professor’s attention. Patches of gibberish emerged and evolved.

  This is what happens when each prodigal branch of inquiry leaves the mansion of philosophy: big blueberry heads.

  Perhaps I need more sleep.

  Maybe Dr. Ferguson was right. But those ghastly potions extinguish the fire of genius and, far worse, reduce the number of my conquests to that of a normal man. Call her in two weeks if ripened heads remain.

  Ripe fruity heads?

  THE FRUIT OF THE MIND IS RIPE!!!

  The significance invaded the territory of my mind. It was the sign spoken of by the Horned One, heralding the beginning of my journey. With thoughts in harmonious convergence, I looked up. With the transitory configuration of a cloud, my enlightenment dispersed. The professor’s motionless blueberry faced me, her hands dead on the table. Surrounded by a gallery of expressionless orbs, I had no idea what they sought. My episodic attendance left few clues of what we had been discussing in class. I had to say something. I would not cower from any intellectual provocation. I cleared my throat and reflected on the greatness of Cicero.

  “It has occurred to me,” I said, my voice a crash of thunder preceding the lightning of my analysis, “that the problem we have been discussing will parry all resolutions until we contend with a metaphysical difficulty undergirding all sociological investigations. The problem is that sociology, like most disciplines, has been erected upon a cockeyed foundation. As a consequence, it stumbles away from the truth with every step it takes. After re-aligning the base, we may confidently proceed, prepared to explore the new horizons it shows us. The issue in question is modernity’s debasement of polytheism. This grand truth has been replaced with a most baneful tale: the crass reductionism of monotheism.”

  I paused to catch my breath. I had no idea what we had been discussing but that scarcely mattered. This gambit had been successful in other classes. When faced with a discussion beneath me, I would declare the issue insoluble without the beacon of polytheism, thereby deflecting the focus from some ephemeral blathering to a question of eternal proportions.

  “As you know, monotheism is the preposterous doctrine that only one god exists. The main argument for this absurdity is based upon an analogy, which I will demonstrate points directly to the existence of numerous gods. If I took the class to the parking lot to behold the august beauty of my Fleetwood, only madness could compel us to believe that its miraculous inter-workings are the result of chance. Bumper to bumper it bespeaks a wise and powerful designer. Can the same conclusion fail to overwhelm us when we examine our world, with its slightly greater beauty and complicated machinations?”

  I paused and looked around the table, making blueberry contact with my audience. The juicy spheres sat motionless, enraptured by my presentation. I had no doubt the rest of the semester would be spent building upon this immutable foundation. I pretended to check my notes, a pause for dramatic effect. Then, with history’s preeminent delusion squarely in my crosshairs, I pulled the trigger.

  “But this argument is specious. My Fleetwood did not have a single designer; it had many. One group labored to perfect the five hundred cubic-inch engine. Another, learned in the sublime teachings of Euclid, toiled to produce the perfectly rectangular body. Another worked to establish the proper thickness of leather lining the interior. Now, when we behold our world with its many parts and layers, how can we propose that only one designer is responsible? Our very analogy suggests — nay, demands — the opposite.”

  Breathless, I paused. How is it possible that eloquence and profundity can join in such perfect concord? I wondered. Can abstruse philosophic ideas be expressed with any greater lucidity? A look of tranquil satisfaction spread across my face. Perhaps pride could be discerned, but not arrogance.

  “Furthermore, monotheists ascribe to their deity the moral attribute of benevolence. Even the most cursory glance at our analogy reveals the fatuity of this. When we examine my Fleetwood, the idea of a wise and good designer implants itself in our minds. But look, I beseech you, at the Cadillacs created after 1977. What remains of our judgment as we curse these monstrosities? In the same fashion, how can the horrors embedded in the fabric of the world proceed from the hands of a single, benevolent deity? The conclusion is obvious. Numerous gods exist, some good, others mischievous. I suspect most are as inept and indifferent as any of you. The exalted truth of polytheism, well-known to the ancients, I now bequeath to this seminar.”

  I looked up, prepared as a statesman of Truth to humbly accept the gratitude of my fellow scholars for their newfound satori. All the student blueberries were bent over the table as though embarrassed on my behalf. Seeking vindication I turned to the professor. She scribbled in her notes and slowly shook her blueberry: no, no, no.

  The room spun in a kaleidoscope of rage and disbelief. Like an activities director on a ship of fools, the professor wrote an assignment on the board. A gate deep within me opened. Fury escaped; pity entered. I departed before the end of class, abandoning them to their folly. I ran down the long white corridor and took the steps down three at a time like gravity was making an examp
le of me. Outside I leaned against the wall and lit an Oval and waited for my dark priestesses, prepared to submit to whatever vile rites they commanded.

  Concerning the Reader’s Puerile Criticism of My Thunder Metaphor in Part IX

  Yes, dear Reader, I have “noticed” how lightning is prior to thunder. I am not confined to my study (as though one could be confined to an oasis). On occasions innumerable Zeus and I have stood in the backyard and marveled at nature’s impetuous fury. The defense of my thunder metaphor will be binary. The second part is an appeal to common sense; the first shall allude to no less a giant than David Hume. (The appeal to authority is another unjustly maligned argument. A man who has been pulled over and fails to mention that his uncle is the mayor is a fool.)

  Now, when I wrote, “my voice a crash of thunder preceding the lightning of my analysis,” I implied nothing about a causal relationship between the two. To state “X is prior to Y” is not to insist that X caused Y.

  Assuming we stoop to a less austere conception of causality: Did the Reader not consider the possibility that in the metaphorical storm, a flash of lightning (which was not mentioned) occurred before the thunder of my voice (which began the sequence)? Am I prohibited from mentioning any series of events unless I provide a list in full? May I not focus on a mere slice of a sequence, graciously expecting the Reader to rouse his dormant imagination? Verily, his penchant for literality would bring to my annals the cadence and fiery rhetoric of an Applebee’s menu.

  Parenthetically, if the Reader thinks he can casually peruse my annals while his lady friend is in the room he is as grievously mistaken as I am appalled. The very sight makes me shudder. In censorious pursuit of brilliant metaphors he lackadaisically flips the pages. “Honey, what’s on the other channel?” he asks his “lady friend” (or whichever euphemism is preferred). “Are we all outta Boone’s Farm? Aha. This metaphor don’t look right.”