The Star Fisher

by Christopher F. Mills

  She laughed, “But if you build Million Dollar Mountain and let people drive over it in cars, they might steal a piece of the mountain and eventually you would have no mountain left.”

  “Oh no. It would be unlawful to pilfer any part of Million Dollar Mountain; that would be strictly enforced on the honor code of persons ambulating across my mountain.”

  “Perhaps that would work.”

  “But seriously, I don't really have a great ambition for material things. I find it distasteful and excessively redundant. Most are far more ambitious than I. Most dream of power and riches. I dreamt of only one thing: the codifying of the wonderful. I thought it important to simplify all things to their essence. And I had only one true wish relative to my labor on this earth: to help wonder get along in the world. When I first dreamed of it I believed it would be a little less challenging than it turned out to be and as I went further along with it I came to wish I would have continued with the first average dreams I had. But it's all too far gone by now. As I look back on it all, I can't tell anymore what it says.”

  “I think it says some pretty great things.”

  “Well thanks.”

  “Do you dream of writing? How important is writing to you?”

  “I use sleep to take a break writing. Glad I don't dream about it. My writing is incidental. I do not live to write, and I only write so that one day I might live. Writing is a burden given to some few and a joy given to many others and something all the smart people use only as a means to some practical end. I do not need to write for writing's sake and I don't understand any who would. I write as a means to a bigger end. I can't tell you I like writing much. It is tedious, back-eroding, soul-stretching, mind-breaking work. It is lonely and impossible and all-around no fun. First you have to think too much. Then you have to write too much. Then you have to do it all again one-thousand times. And then it is thankless and misunderstood and not seen for what it is, mostly.

  “One great sentence requires a day to earn. One great paragraph takes a week. One great chapter takes a month. One great book takes the luck of the gods and a short eternity. A writer has to compress a clipped eternity into their years and that is what great writing is; a clipped eternity, set in story and word. The writer's work is a constant burden. There are no breaks or vacations. I would rather do other things and am seeking to finish the calling so I can enjoy life for a change in my retirement from writing. It is a given calling. The writer doesn't get to choose. The most bothersome thing about writing is never knowing if you have done the great writing. You believe you have made a great work but if it does not move other minds, it doesn't matter if it is great. Even the hack writing that people eat up is greater than the highest literature that nobody ever reads, for the hack writing moves minds. So most of the work of the writer is in vain. Except for a very few. But maybe everybody's work is somewhat like that. But at least they have fun and make money and friends by it.”

  He stood and looked out the window. A flurry of leaves swished across the pane. The rain and winds had increased. He said, seeming more to himself than to her:

  “I'll tell you what I am afraid of more than anything, at least relative to my work. I am afraid I am not cool enough to do any of it any good.”

  “Cool enough?”

  “That's right. For a work to do any good it has to know some measure of fame, and for that to happen it helps that the author be considered cool. This may be why dead artists have a better chance at becoming famous after death. Which is really a shame, because it isn't about the artist, but the art. Evidently there is something extra cool about being dead. People say, Look, this dead man left something behind, lets take a second look and see the value in it now that the bastard is dead. Look at Hemingway, the guy simply did not write so great as they say he did. It's all there in the words to be seen with clear eyes; but who has clear eyes about one as famous and cool as Hemingway? He could write drivel and it would sell. Same with all famous authors. Yet they called and call Hemingway great as much because it is just long now been a cool and authenticated-by-society thing to do as by any real or feigned belief that his writing was great. It was and is cool to like Hemingway, even though he was, without doubt, not very likeable and in the top tier of pricks. But they liked the persona of the man. Hemingway was cool. Could be his name alone. Ernest Hemingway. . . .

  “And it could have been the time itself. An age of pricks who liked bastards. And maybe we are yet in that age. Time will tell best exactly what it was and is. Whatever it was and is, with literature and art the cool factor is paramount and side-by-side with the writing.

  “So the cool factor is always a deciding factor and I am just not cool. And don't care to be, which is self-destructive. I should care. I raise hell about materialism. That isn't cool. Materialism is an acid for true things. And our world has become nothing if not materialistic and it always has been one mad scramble for materials. And they call the seeking of materials virtuous but calling something a name doesn't make it so. As it is done it is not virtuous but madness and vice. It is counterfeit and false. It is sham living. And everybody does it and I call it mad and I call people mad. In my words written and spoken, I call people mad and freaking insane. And that is not very cool. And it doesn't bother me one bit that I am not cool, but it can't be good for my works, which after I write them must still be bound to my poor, non-existent or uncool reputation.”

  He sat back down and she asked,

  “Well if it doesn't work out, what is your plan b?”

  “Plan b? There is no plan b. There is just the work, win or lose; success or failure. And I won't succeed or win by any standard of this world, but by my own. It doesn't have to work out. I just have to complete the work. It will work out when I am done with it. This is my great personal journey and battle; one I have tried to convert to some value. In the attempt at art, the riches, awards and swell sanction of critics are just extra. It would be nice to have but is not necessary. This is my work to do and not any others to say I have done it. This is my responsibility. No other can help me lift it or tell me when to set it down. I am on this completely alone.”

  “You are too hard on yourself. That's what I think.”

  “Perhaps. But I had a big thing to do, see. For the bigger truth is that I have been more a driller for oil or precious gems than a writer. All these years I searched to discover the greatest field in the history of the planet. I knew it was there. I could feel it. I studied the terrain and the mountains. I was a true wild-catter and did all the geology myself. I knew, somewhere on this earth there was the undiscovered mother lode beyond any earthly imagination and I was the one who was going to find it. I used all my earthly fortune to discover this great field.

  “But after a quarter-century of dry holes and eternal failure I have hit nothing but the biggest field of poor dirt planet earth has ever seen. Nothing but dirt. No gemstones, no oil. No field of wonder.”

  “I think you are the richest man on planet earth. Your riches are inside of you.”

  “Well thanks. But there might be some sheiks in the Middle East who may be richer. As most define it, I might be the poorest man on planet earth. I am as poor as I was the day I started. No, that's not true. I am much poorer—of material means—than I was then. I threw down the hole everything I owned of a material nature. And then I threw down everything of a spiritual nature.”

  “You are still young. There is much work to be done yet. Keep believing, no matter what. It will happen for you. Just keep believing.”

  The Dream of the Whale

  They went outside to sit in the swing under Mrs. Silver's leaves and watch the day die and the night be born. As the stars came out she remarked how bright they were and he said it was because of all the trees, which blocked out the city lights and gave the stars a dark shadow to contrast against. He brought up the earlier question she had asked about dreams and said,

  “I never dream about writing but I did have a memorable dream the oth
er night. I was at the bookstore and asked the sales clerk how many copies of my books had sold and she replied that 1.7 billion sold just yesterday alone and so I thought that was a swell day's work. That could start a bonfire of wonder, maybe. So I then bought a Honda motorbike and drove across country and not once did I have to stop for gas. I kept wondering if the gas was ever going to run out. I never knew a vehicle that got such great gas mileage. That was the second best part of the dream. The very best part of the dream is that I never once had to relight my Partagas cigar. I smoked that black beauty all the way across the country. Could you imagine a cigar that never smoked itself out? Now that would be a great dream. And I wasn't wearing a helmet, yet not once did I see a flying insect up close. Every person I met was full of wonder. You could sense it everywhere and in everybody.

  “When I finally made it to California I drove straight to the Pacific. And just like Balboa of five centuries ago, I climbed a hill and stood and watched the sun as it was rising in Hawaii or China somewhere and setting in California and there was a great ship on the horizon. Its masts were silhouetted against the sinking sun and then I dove into the ocean and immediately became a giant whale. I was yet seeing myself as if I was looking on the ocean from the hillside, but was also myself as a whale. I was a black whale. I thought I would show myself a fantastic thing. I swam very deep and then headed back up fast as I could and flew high out of the water and landed on my side, splashing the salt water of the Pacific over the masts of the ship and the image of the setting sun. And then I woke and wondered about it and thought, that was a mighty big whale. Black whales are good things to dream about, right? I like whales.

  “I wondered as I woke that maybe the truth is I am a giant black whale in a great and vast sea and I dream all the time of becoming a man and so this is the whale dreaming now. I am the dream of the black whale. Maybe that is why I am so enamored of wonder. For all its life a whale is lonely and all it sees is the same old sea. But in the dream of the whale there are such wonders to see as you and all of this.

  “Whichever it be; if I am a whale dreaming of me or I am me, dreaming of a whale, whatever the end of me may be, finding my way to land and man or finding my way to the sea and sight of ships and whales—I will not fear it much. It will be the completion of a work begun long ago. And then I will know who I am. Just in time to know who I was.

  He slid his arm around her waist and said, “And I hope come to know, in the end, who you are, too. It's a different answer for everybody. And that is the question I would like to know. Who are you?”

  She whispered to him who she really was and made him promise not to tell. He made a cross over his heart and zipped his lips. She knew her secret was safe with him.

  The questions of her

  eternally curious mind

  November, 1963

  She had planned to stay a few days and that became five and then she decided to stay into November. There was so much to see. The place bewitched her and she had never known an Indian summer, where the heat stays behind well into what are supposed to be the cool months. Here it would come and go, then come back again. And there were many questions she wanted to ask him. They met one morning at the bungalow during a wind storm when, she estimated, at least half a million leaves were swirling about. She found him sitting in the swing and sat by him. He said,

  “It's the first great leaf fall. The winds came through after the first light and tore the leaves from their billets and they are all falling now. It's beautiful. The best time of the year.”

  They sat in carefree wonder and watched the leaf storm. They were swirling in every direction and she noticed that a single leaf or many together would be caught in a slow motion fall. It reminded her of the same thing happening with clouds. She realized, of all nature's miracles, only the leaves and clouds can move in this natural slow motion, as if time is standing still a moment, unsure to go on into the future, sentimental about the year now passing. The buoyant leaves, rolling upon the air ocean's tides and stilled, in fits and starts, in their descent to earth was a harbinger of winter coming soon and sure sign the year was quickly dying. It was extra special to her.

  He noticed her dreamy-eyed wonder and said:

  “You are really enjoying this, aren't you?”

  She said, “The leaf must live its entire life on one twig and gets to fly but once, at its end, so the leaf fall is a glorious event in the history of nature and to miss it when it is so evident in its miraculous being, is to miss life itself. It is a celebrated day for a leaf, when it gets to fly to the earth one single time. And it then goes back into the earth to feed the tree that gave life to it. At least so in the wilds. In the cities the civilized take up the leaves and send them away, to molder in trash heaps. But I don't do that. I let my leaves lay where they fell. In the wild, which is the true civilization relative to trees and nature, they give back life to that which gave life to them. It's a perfect circle.”

  She was quiet a moment, then said, “This is a Claire de Lune moment.”

  He said, “Yes, it is. It is wonderful.”

  She said, “What is wonder? Tell me all you know about it.”

  “It seems to me an ancient memory—and the recognition—that life is a natural, cosmic miracle. And then it is the simplifying of cosmic miracle to graceful epitome. This is challenging to accomplish because we complicate our lives—not because life is complex but because we give meaning to tangled trivialities and betray simple miracles—we lose our chance at graceful epitomes. There is a great library of wonder and astonishment in every soul, but if we lose our chance at discovering our wonder to enjoy a tangled reality of triviality we are destined to go through and end our lives lost, baffled, bewildered, ignorant, unenlightened and unlettered—relative to the unread and undiscovered Library of Astonishment within us. As they waste the miracle of beauty, common men laugh in ignorance of this waste. They are proud of the wasting. The common are illiterate to beauty. They cannot read her prose and poetry. Their attention is not for beauty, but pleasure. The casual and common soul has no higher aim than what brings them easy comforts and the most profits easiest got; it is the low bar and one rule of the ordinary and average. So they know no real wonder.

  “I think a state of true wonder is the purest form of conscious energy. It is not the stoicism of the Eastern mystics, whose philosophy is to distance themselves above and away from all things. That way is emptiness. It is not the fatalism of the religious, whose philosophy is fear of god, devil and hell and seeking of society. That way is emptiness. It is not the pleasure of the materialist, whose philosophy is a cheap and easy cushion from harsh realities by direct physical and societal means. That way is emptiness. In true wonder there is only what is light; the light of the soul is unbusheled. In a pure state of wonder all that is possible to a soul is achievable. Without wonder, the simplest of achievements become challenging. Wonder is the state of genuine love and few achieve it because it is the most challenging human mental and spiritual state to reach and to keep. It is dependent on sublimity of thought and sentiment and cannot be found in the physical desires—otherwise all would be full of this rare astonishment. It is the marveling at life, and is dependent on the cosmic miracles.”

  She turned and looked at him and she was looking right through the outer layers of him to the core. He said,

  “Now you tell me what wonder is.”

  “You know when we are standing with our mouths open, looking at the stars, and full of thought about it all? That is us looking for the mirror at the end of the universe that shows all the possibility within it. Wonder is a mirror at the end of the cosmos. It's a long trip to wonder. Wonder is love in its pure state and the best of loves are like mirrors for each other, showing each the best within the other.”

  He smiled and said, “A mirror, huh? I really like that. I will tell you what wonder is, in a nutshell and in a practical way. A person goes to pick up the phone to call the one who loves them and who they love, above a
nd beyond all others. But they cannot remember the number, so to speak. They don't know that number. But the possibility of that number exists. In all the phone numbers in the world there is one single number they could call, if they knew it, to speak with that one person. When we want to speak with the one who truly loves us and who we truly love, but we don't know their name or number or anything about them? That is mystery. That is wonder.”

  He gave her a good idea and she jotted something down, then asked,

  “What are the cosmic miracles? How many are there?”

  “No man can know how many cosmic miracles there are. Perhaps a million years from now, when all the miracles within the universe are codified, then that list will be known. The cosmic miracles are all that makes life a sublime thing. The struggle to eke out a living has tainted the capacity to know the miracles in many of us and many become jaded by the blows against their egos during that struggle. We can't number all the miracles of the cosmos, too many yet unknown. The cosmos is a big place, after all. Most of it undiscovered. Fear is a cosmic miracle. Fear is the epitome of our own sensitive nature relative to this cosmos. There are two kinds of fears: those things to be feared and those things not to be feared. Fear is the means by which to go forward or to hold back. If we would step forward into our fear and not step back from it, we would find a new world and a new way of being. We would grow into our truest selves. Once fear has been gotten over and we no longer fear the things not to be feared, then is when we can best know and describe the things to be lived.”

  “Give me three positive cosmic miracles.”

  “There is laughter and love and. . . wonder. You get the picture.”

  “What is life? Tell me all about it.”

  “Maybe you should ask life that to know best what life is. To me, though, worldly life is space rarefied by the assemblage of matter. Being made of matter, life then matters; being made of matter is why life matters. This is why even the higher forms of sentient life, such as man, are mostly stuck in a material frame of reference to all things, even rarefied life. It is in the assemblage of the thing itself, this physical mattering. This gathering of matter gives life substance. It is how the thing is known by the one living the life. But to those who think deeper upon it, life seems to possess a supernatural substance to it; something preceding and proceeding beyond simple physical matter. There is a sacred charm and magic to life that the sum total of terrestrial matter cannot clarify or equal.