Thistle's Chapter 6

Something new.  Not improved necessarily, but new in the sense that the page was blank, and there were no previous ideas which shaped or biased what was brought to the page at the moment. 

The page existed in his mind.  He had spent so much time sitting in front of pages, hoping for immaculate inspiration, that he eventually just created a page in his head, gave it a pen, and instructed it to write down any inspiring events as they occurred to him.  Then he got up and went out into the world in search of inspirations.  If they wouldn't come to him, he'd go find them.

As Thistle continued to walk away from the restaurant, he tried to think about the man whose life had ended.  He wondered just how much he had had to do with the end of the man's life.  He had seen the future, the bridge where the truck overturned, the strip of highway.  He just hadn't come up with the explicit time context.  Was that a morning sun or an evening sun?  And where was the bridge?

The bridge.  The bridge, as a metaphor, was an icon in his past.  He could remember riding across one in the Chevy pick-up, his father's belly bouncing beneath a striped t-shirt syncopated with the rhythm of the bridge's undulations.  That same bridge had become more of a symbol of conflict in his life as a teen; it seemed that every time he came to the start of one side, the struggle began between forces wanting to get to the other side and forces wanting to try another side.  Should he, once again, follow the path of so many others, crossing safely over the river, passing on to the next thought and action of routine?  Or could he find a different path, one hidden underneath the bridge somewhere?  He would imagine his vehicle prying through the guard rail, gracefully arching over the side and down, into the shallow river.  He imagined himself still behind the wheel as the car patiently filled with water.  He imagined the questions he would be asking then.

This was not that bridge.  This bridge had arrived uninvited, unannounced; had breached the gap between existence and non-existence.  Between Life and Death.  He would cross that bridge when he came upon it, too.

Why were these scenarios so dominant, so prominent in his thoughts while he was an adolescent?  When he was five, it didn't matter what clothes he was wearing, how much he weighed, if he'd ever fall in love, if he'd get married.  He didn't think of what it would be like to die.  He didn't think of how to die.

For some reason, he was still alive, whether he thought about it or not, whether he thought about death or not; He continued on, along with the questions.  Which ones were the most important?  Which ones could he realistically hope to answer?

There were answers to some of the questions.  Some of them just took a long time to explain.  Especially if you start off in the wrong direction.

And there was no way to really know if you were going the right way.  Or if you were getting anywhere.  That perception could only prove itself with time. 

So he tried not to think about it.  He looked at what he had done with his life and saw an outline to a vast, ornate work of art.  He saw that it would take many hours of organization and scrambling and unscrambling to get it right.  Could he bring forth the discipline to get the job done?

Could he tell a story with his life?

Thistle's Chapter 5

It wasn't anything new-- people not listening.  He had become hardened to it, as the med student does to the routine of cutting the skulls of cadavers with a hacksaw.  It was inevitable that Thistle would run into people that looked to him as though they could use a story, but that didn't mean that they would agree with him.  That didn't mean that they'd want to listen.

He didn't always tell a good story, either.  Sometimes he was distracted by the events of the day, or by a meandering attention span.  Sometimes he'd drift off in the middle of a sentence and forget what he was talking about.  That tends to undermine your credibility. And since he moved around so much, there wasn't much time for credibility checks anyway.  Not enough time to undermine something that hasn't been built yet in the first place.

But today...  He had seen that man sitting there, reading the newspaper, looking like he was just living out of sheer habit.  The same news, the same old breakfast.  The same old company.  Thistle knew this guy could use some enlightenment, a little anecdote, something...  And he had tried to tell him a story, tried to get it across in a small, easy to swallow capsule.  And he felt like he was connecting with him, like there was a genuine fiery curiosity in the man. But something had made him pause.  Something had held his tongue.

He had thought about telling the man how he had felt that he was insane for quite sometime, but that he felt differently about it now.  He wanted to tell him about how he could see many things at once, that he could imagine in several dimensions. But he couldn't speak.

Thistle sat and watched as this man, a static pattern, a person who had existed in this manner with little variance for probably the last ten years or so, walk out of the restaurant as he had probably done so many times before, with the same, bland, "back to the grind" attitude he had held for years.  And he had watched as the man drove away, and watched as the man's life came to an end.

Thistle had foreseen the event that ended the man's life.

But the real weirdness that had stood out to Thistle that day, what had really turned his mind over, was how strong an impulse he had had to get up and stop the man from leaving.  He had nearly broken out in a sweat, deliberating over it.  Many years had passed since he last had a similar impulse.

Ultimately, of course, he didn't act.  He had thought about the potential to be hospitalized (even institutionalized) if he was too ambitious, and how hard it would be to convince the man.  No credibility. 

So he had drank his water, imagined the flow of time and events, envisioned the interstate.  Soon, out of fear of truth, Thistle had to leave, to just be moving.  "I need a transition," he told himself as he pushed through the door in the wall and walked through the space, the door swinging closed behind him.

He cleared his mind and walked steadily down the road.

Thistle's Chapter Four

Like an old television warming up, Thistle's mind eased its way back into the present, his eyes focusing on what looked like a very agitated person.

"Well," said the restaurant patron, finishing his coffee in a hurry.  "I believe that's not too good of a thing.  I gotta get to work."  He was talking to cover his discomfort. He put on his coat as he was walking out; his eyes caught the eyes of the waitress that had served him and communicated macros.  Keywords. "Wacko." "My Tab." "Later."

Thistle's eyes settled into the impression in the vacated restaurant nook.  What had he said?  It was questionable what had come from his mouth.  He remembered what he was thinking about, but not what he said.

He must have mentioned insanity.  That would make sense.  Another person, frightened by the mention of insanity.  It was funny to think that the same man who's heartbeat raced at the thought of sitting across the table from a "nut case" with no publicly displayed physical dominance would probably go out into his car and drive along on an interstate highway and have no second thoughts about fear for his life.  “Phew!” he’d exclaim.  “That was close,” and then he would drive along at sixty-five miles an hour, and even if he saw an accident, as he passed, he might think for a second or two about the horror, and shudder with imagined pictures of gore, but soon he would be barrelling down the interstate again, inches from a concrete surface which would tear his soft skin and mince the bones in his body if he were to suddenly come in contact with it.

And actually, the odds of being killed in a car accident were greater than being killed, maimed, or even attacked by a lunatic.  So what should have been of greater concern for the patron wasn't.  That part was somewhat humorous to Thistle.  But he didn't laugh.

Because it was also ironic.  For not even ten minutes later, that same restaurant patron, the one who had arranged to pay his tab later with a glance at his waitress friend, the one who hadn't stayed long enough for Thistle to catch his name, the one who seemed so interested in his safety that he couldn't endure the tumult of an elder's recounting of a story, was thrown from his vehicle because he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt, and rolled almost a hundred feet before coming to his ultimate resting point, in the fast lane of the highway.

And Thistle had seen it coming, and had watched it pass.

Can’t a man pause long enough, ponder long enough to save his life?  thought Thistle.

Thistle finished his glass of water, slowly rose from the orange bench seat, and with a small wave to his waitress, left the restaurant.

Thistle's Chapter Three

Once Thistle had his water, he sipped and swallowed, and then began breathing slowly.  In through his nose...out through his mouth.  Repeatedly.  He found that if he tried to talk without relaxing, the words tended to fight with each other over who should come out of the mouth first. 

Synthetic creaking rose from the nook as the restaurant patron adjusted himself in it.  His right eyebrow arched high into his brow while the left one was stabbing at the bridge of his nose.  But he was focused, interested.  Listening.

"There was a house," said Thistle.  " It was a simple house; two story, late 19th century construction, painted all-purpose white, perched on the hint of a slope in the middle of a pocked and gopher-infested one acre lot.  It had come under general misuse in the past twenty years.  Downstairs held as its tenant a Vietnam war veteran who had to drive out of town in order to go drinking, because all the local bars had thrown him out one too many times and, as he put it, "can eat shit."  The upstairs was rented out to college students, and sustained the life of at least two and as many as six people over the course of a semester, depending on the quality of the drugs.  It was a very metaphysical, psychologically transcendent location, and so it had a grand effect on the minds that played there."

The restaurant patron watched Thistle pause and sip his water. The glass was half-full.  (Or half-empty, depending on your perspective.)  The patron was fixed in his condition; same perplexed expression, arms propping up his head, elbows matted in with his placemat.  He thought about stopping the old man to clarify things, make sure they were understanding each other.  Who could know where he might go with all this?  Maybe the answers to the questions would come without them having to be solicited.  His breathing was slow and continuous; circular.

The more than empty and quite less than full glass of water settled down into the meniscus of condensation waiting like a primered gasket on the waxy finish of the restaurant nook's table.  Thistle wiped the dampness transferred from the glass to his fingertips onto the tips of his mustache and spread it down along the sides of his face; thumb, finger, and excess moisture converging at his chin.

"It was at this house that I learned just about everything I'd ever wanted to learn one day," he continued.  "I had arranged for the day off from work so that I could spend it with my friends.  They wanted to do some LSD."

The restaurant patron leaned back.  "LSD, huh?" he offered, intimating his discomfort, eyebrows spreading wide.  His breathing became tensed.

Thistle's mind began to reel with remembrance and formulation.

His breathing was slowed, somehow louder, like wind being funneled.  But the thoughts were racing, and his eyes closed.  Visions and consciousness began swimming, treading in a thick, dark sea.

Thistle's world was rocking now, between reality and the imagination.  He was still talking, he knew, but he wasn't sure to whom, or exactly where he was.  His vision faded to shadows, his voice became monotone and muffled.  He was remembering too much.  He was treading water in an ocean of thought.  But this ocean wasn't like any of the large salt-water arrangements found on earth.  This was more like a stew-- there were all kinds of things floating around with him.  It was full of things bobbing up and out of the surface, and he took note of them, distracting his attention.  There was a television, the old wooden console kind from the 1960's, it's screen spitting fuzzy lines jaggedly across itself horizontally as it swam in the liquid.  There were large vegetables, like uber-tubers from space-age future farms.  The water was eerily warm-- hot, even, like bathwater.  Or Broth.

He thought about the sensation of floating in a large stew.  About the sensation of being cooked.  His mind being fried to a crisp.  He thought about death.  About escaping the stew.  About what was containing the stew.  A large cauldron?  Yes.  A pot.  If  he could reach the edge and jump over--

 

The cauldron was particularly hot and rough that day.  It was inflamed.  It looked the same as on any other day.  But that was surface judgement.  Inside the cauldron, there was action like never before.

Something was stewing the stew.  Cooking.  Mixing ingredient with ingredient.  Chemical with chemical.  Chemical reactions between essential oils of garlic and apple skin and tumeric were bubbling nonsensically.  Who put that in the stew?  No matter.  It boiled on.

Thistle had decided that just this once it was okay to call in sick.  To get the day off.  He didn't want to be sloughing drinks for the aristocracy at the country club anyway.  This time was his, for him.  He wanted to live his unrestrained life.  Just this once.

"Well, you finally did it," went a voice in his head as he spun through cobwebs and vines of fear and unknowing.  "Just one more time, you had to push the limit, had to explore the unexplored, chance losing your grip.  Well, congratulations, man.  You're insane.  Not a damn thing you can do about it now."

It's the End of the World as We Know It

Welcome, friends, to the new year.  2012, the year that the world ends.  Again.  Yet another prediction for catasrophe.  Or maybe not-- maybe we'll just be swooped up and carted off to a new, totally new reality.  All things different-- thoughts, language, perception.  It could happen.

Perhaps that's what happened to the Mayans-- they were "raptured" into a different dimension, plucked from earth as we know it and transformed, somehow, so that they now exist on a different plane.  Maybe that's what happened.

And, maybe not.  We'll see what 2012 brings.  Eventually.

I think there's a lot going on right now that we aren't noticing, because we're so focused on things that are superficial and unimportant.  So many people spend hours watching television programs about things that matter so little.  It's a wonder to me.  I am intrigued by documentaries and biographical movies and books, but I don't watch "reality television" because I think it's an oxymoron.  And it doesn't entertain me a bit.

So much of our perspective here in the world of American influence and perception is caught up in how we are perceived, if we are "cool" or "stylish" or something like that.  Do we have the latest and greatest gadgets, do we act accordingly, do we "belong" to the "elite" group of the day...  I think there is a transformation coming, and higher thinking will be required to adjust perspectives and perceptions to the paradigm shift.  There are signs of another way, another possible truth.  And thinking will bring it forth and into fruition.

The imagination makes it possible, brings it forward, starts it rolling.  If you can visualize it, you can realize it.  Somebody once told me that.  And so that is how anything becomes reality-- it starts with a thought.

Here's another link a friend offered the other day: "real issue" that approaches the same subject...

Something is coming, I don't know what.  Could be the end of the world, could be the start of a new one.  Maybe both.  Time will tell.

Thistle's Chapter Two

Continuing with Thistle's journey.  Chapter Two.

 

Thistle could take the past and move it forward.  He could see the trends of the now, study the trends of the past, and advise for the trends of the future.  He held the ability to make a killing on the stock market, if he desired.  But he didn't, as you might have guessed.

 

He wasn't like anyone that you might know for the assertion of one’s individuality.  He wasn't a Kurt Cobain or a Jack Kerouac. 

He was not as much of a storyteller as he was a talker.  He was not as much of a drifter as he was a wanderer.  He was not as much of a philosopher as he was a thinker.

He was not Gayatri Spivak.  He wasn't a Feminist Marxist Deconstructivist.  Oh No.  Thistle was more like the guy that they used to let pump your gas for you until it became more economical to do it yourself.  Not someone you would expect to be able to map the future. 

But the fire that burned in the belly of the body that encompassed a self concept identified to other self concepts as Thistle Penn was not a raging, acre scorching blaze; it was more of a pilot light.  Hard to blow out, some of those pilot lights.  And they just keep burnin' right along at an even, balanced pace, getting the job done, stepping ever closer to their destiny, ever closer to the doorstep of fate, where all becomes evident, and everything makes sense.

At this point in his life, Thistle didn't concern himself with his ultimate fate.  He wasn't too worried about making sense.  He was more worried about Speed.  He had memories of a time in his past when Speed was very important to him.  Not the speed that you ingest for its narcotic effect, but the concept of Speed.  Take the Type A personality.  Speed is important to this type of person.  He lives life very fast.  Efficiency means getting a lot of things done in as little amount of time possible.

There was a time when Thistle was very adamant about being efficient.  Obsessively.  As I said, Speed was very important to him.  He wanted to learn and solve and create and construct.  To experience the lifetimes of centuries into his own, to transfer the work of thousands of theorists and philosophers and scientists and wise men from all the cultures and societies of the world to the clay tablet of his mind and sculpt something even more dynamic, more controversial, more innovative, more genius than had ever existed before him-- that he could call Thistle Penn.  That he would be known for and identified with. 

The Thistle Penn Universe.

But that was in the past.  That was years ago.  That time was lost.  Thistle now thought mostly about the moment just before the water in the glass that he tipped towards his lips touched his tongue, and then the feelings as it swished in his mouth.  He didn't analyze why it swished or how it swished or even if it was a good or bad feeling.  He just swallowed the water.  Then he would set the glass down on the table.

It used to be coffee.  Espresso.  The name even implies speed.  Express.  Fast.  He used to have a coffee maker that could have a piping hot pot of coffee ready in five minutes.  And the rush-- caffeine was much more motivating than beer.  Or water.  Just a cup or two and he was out of his seat and doing things.  Mailing letters, typing resumes for friends, making lists of book ideas.  With coffee, sleep became a secondary need.

He used to be able, on one pot of coffee, to type a twelve page research paper in one day-- composing as he did the research.  And that was after a night of drinking beer and wine and smoking pot until two thirty in the morning.  He'd get up at ten or eleven and start the coffee, and by the time he had his books set up, the first cup was ready.  Top of the mornin' to ya.  Better than Cornflakes.

Now he liked to mellow more.  He didn't think quite as much as he used to.  He quit drinking coffee.  It was important, he felt, that he had drank coffee for that period in his life (ah, youth!).  And as far as drug use goes, from what he’d heard, it was a lot easier habit to break than cigarettes.

So water and the non-smoking section for Thistle.  He didn't want to chance getting roped into that vice.  He had wondered at the plight of the smoker a lot when he was pounding mugs of java.  Now, he saw the smoke, and sometimes he watched it trail up around the ceiling fans and out restaurant windows, filtered slightly by the dusty screens in the summer.  Other times he smelled it and tasted it along with his wheat toast or the first drink of water.  But rarely, anymore, did he really think about it.

A Thistle's Beginning

This is the first part of a work of fiction I started about 20 years ago that features a main character by the name of Thistle Penn.  I have a huge file of gobbledygook and nuggets to be mined in the next phase of editing, but this open is pretty good.  Well, at least, I think it is.  You tell me what you think.

 

It was all episodic; all coincidental.  It didn't matter what choices were made; all actions were in the flow, and you did them and just forgot them because you couldn't change them, you couldn't do it differently. The moment had past.

  

Begin at the beginning.  That's what logic says.  Commence.  Embark.  Meaning begins with a single thought.  The Big Bang.  Pow.  The cogito: I think therefore I am.  Voila.

But one finds that with anything one begins, there is an inevitable turn back to view what you have accomplished.  Along with this craning of the neck and refocusing on recollection come hopes of acquiring more inspiration to continue and foreclose the ideal.  Bang!  You're here, and you're doing, shaping, thinking.  You formulate goals and ideals towards which you strive.  Then those are measured, noted, and thrown back into the grinder to be broken down further into even finer bits.  One inevitably begins again and again, each time at a different ground zero, refining the original vision into another.  The ultimate is re-evaluated, the infinite redefined.  In turn, a dream is resuscitated, reborn; it steers clear of the stale, static square box and blooms into yet another circle. The whole experience of "reaching for the stars" (as Kasey Kasem would have put it) can be likened to dropping a pebble in a puddle.  The waves reach out in all directions, ripple upon ripple, circle upon circle, expanding the sphere of existence to encompass more of the imagined.  One circle is created, and another pops up right behind it, from the same point of origin, moving the same speed as the bigger circle in front of it, and the smaller one that jumps up behind it. Eventually, the ripple spreads the length of the water's surface to encompass the experience, bank to bank.  Or the ripple reaches a point where it starts to wonder if there are any limits that it can reach...

"What?" said the man, folding his newspaper down to reveal a frown of disbelief.

Thistle inventoried his recollection.  He wasn't sure what he had been saying, exactly.  He was just trying to make conversation, make the task of sharing a table with a stranger a little less cumbersome.  He often had experienced an uncomfortable reception that he likened to his slovenly appearance.  But this was usually dismantled with a little practice of social skills.  "Well, I was just asking if you were done with the sports section," he said, guessing.

The newspaper was folded and set down, no longer the first priority of attention.  "You say that you can see into the future?"  The man who asked the question seemed to have, deep below his rough, razor-burned and pocked complexion, a desire to believe Thistle.

"I don't want to frighten you," said Thistle, recovering his thoughts.  "I just kinda talk.  Like to.  Don't do too much.  But talk."

"That's mm-nice," said the restaurant patron.  There was a sense of discomfort in his expression. Thistle empathized with him, not only because of the known discomfort of the average restaurant nook, but because of the hints being forecast in his own mind that his vertical hold on the reality channel was slipping.  He could barely grasp the remote with the feeble fingers in his mind.  Yet he summoned the strength to point his sights directly at his subject and continued searching for the button that would enable a connection between the minds involved in this conversation.

Thistle’s mind crackled with potential.  He sensed that a well told story could be of great worth at this exact point in time, if only he could find the right hook that would enable his audience to suspend their disbelief beyond the greatest unknowns that the collective imaginative universe withholds.

“You see," Thistle said, "I've had a lot of pain. Rejection.  Ridicule. I've lived through much persecution to continue talking.  And so I should, in accordance with all national and state regulatory policies, exclaim all appropriate disclaimers and require my listener's consent. It's against my nature, but it seems to save a lot of trouble."

"I'm listening," said the restaurant patron, settling into the orange vinyl nook with sounds of amplified flatulence.

"First," said Thistle, "I need a glass of water."