The Garden and the Ocean

“This place, however much he had studied it, however much he had rehearsed his part in it, was so incredibly alien--the feeling, now that he could feel--the feeling was overpowering. He lay down in the grass and became very sick.” –Walter Tevis

I’m back. Wow, what a thrill to see your child enter the world, and no less amazing than the first time. Thanks to all for the well wishes. I’m in love all over again. Okay…

He sat in a darkened room, curtains drawn so long the dust would fill the room were they to be pulled back once again. Against one wall a large collection of 78s. Against the adjoining wall a small, vaguely generic electric guitar plugged into a small amp. A third-rate three-piece trap kit faces the guitar. A single mic hangs over the kit and from there plugs into an ancient reel-to-reel.

The man perched in the unassuming chair across the room sits silently, holding a coffee cup in one hand and his chin with the other. He thinks about money, the trade of trading it, the ways in which it can be pliable, malleable, and fluid. He is amused at his ability to work the flow of currency as though playing a game. He is planning a great trip, an adventure that will change everything and also change nothing. He thinks about the impact this trip will have on him, about the meaning of such a venture.

In the room, there is little décor to speak of; a small lamp (undoubtedly decades old) sits atop an equally ancient corner table, the thick dark green wall of curtains over the window, and not much else. From the interior, it is the home of modesty. The façade of the building belies a different story. It is a very contemporary townhouse in a row of similarly designed homes. In fact, from the look of the place there is no reason to suspect anything unusual about this particular home. In fact, the black Cadillac parked in the driveway does little to hide the affluence of its owner.

He wants people to see him as a common success story. It may have something to do with his upbringing. Perhaps his parents failed to provide for him, or some other sob story. Perhaps he has other motivations. Only he knows this. He is familiar with almost no one outside of his work and the trivialities of his life. There are the few close friends whom he keeps near, a small contingent of professional acquaintances, and a growing army of admirers he will, by design, never meet. This is something he has cultivated. There is so much, or maybe so little, to protect.

And cultivation is something he knows well. He is a man who loves to makes things grow. He is a gardener. Away from the home that is there for all to see he owns a smaller property in a town both easy to reach and yet far enough away to give a semblance of distance and isolation. On the grounds is a small, but meticulously maintained garden. Seasonal flowers intermingle with herbs, ornamental grasses, and masterfully trimmed hedges. His weekends are reserved for the labors of his creative mind and also for the labors of his natural urge to nurse the silent, empty vibrancy of his beloved plants. That he gardens dressed in pressed coveralls over a faded but impeccably maintained dress shirt does not escape the neighbors that pass his garden on their way to their farmhouse. City foolishness never ceases to amuse them and in their minds the man brings this in droves. But insofar as he is hardly of the city, he may as well be from another planet. As it goes, he may have fallen to earth from parts unknown on a voyage whose purpose is long forgotten.

He also happens to be an infamous cultivator of his creative work. From this very living room has come the sound of his inner workings. While it is near impossible for him to express himself to others directly, through his music has come the anguish of being so ultimately beyond the pale of what is known. It is as though the faintest outline of what is known as music has taken hold of his mind. For those who bear a listen, the sound is on the outer edge of comprehension. Something about it is consistently unsettling while being simultaneously familiar. Again, the perception is of one who is not of this world, but an astute observer, looking in from the outside, yet doing so while walking among us. This monumentally alien music could be a way of making a step towards the rest of us all, like the great oceanic planet in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. This is the same planet, which over countless measures of time existed alone without anything for which to compare itself, functioning as an immortal god, without peer. The planet that when faced with the other, does what it can to first recognize the very concept of other, and somehow reach out to communicate, to make a sort of music of the most rudimentary nature. And make this music in a way that compels while it terrifies.

And so it went for years and years, the music flowed without impediment, the public life of work and finance flourishing beyond even his own imagination. And with time came confidence. The ways in which things take on a life all their own made its way over his work, and before long this all blended together to open doors that were for decades nonexistent. He may have lifted the finger himself, or he may have sat back and let it all unfold against his will. Either way, it happened, is happening now, and he is not wont to get in the way even if he could.

And so he sits in his room, and thinks about what lies ahead, a great trip abroad. A trip so much like many others, but this time there is a difference that threatens to tear it all down. This time the veil of comfortable distance and carefully guarded solitude will be lifted, at least in part, and the very face of reality exposed with all that encompasses it. It is a time of fragile hope, and a possible time of tragic downfall. To never get back that which has served so well is an uncomfortable feeling. But all that could ever be done in the first world has been done, and that which holds promise from the next lies ahead with opaque resolve.

But it’s time.