Monday, March 22, 2010

"I am Living Proof!"

A true tale of Chaos...

When I was about to enter 8th grade, I did a lot of swimming in our lake. I call it our lake because we lived there, but also because my grandfather and his father owned land there when few others did. It should have been our lake. The days were hot, and the water cold and deep. I and many friends and acquaintances who never made it to friends, played water tag on a floating platform in the 20' deep water. I would usually dive very deep to avoid them. That probably caused the swimmer's ear which in turn caused me to miss many of the first days of 8th grade. I had been in Mr. Schultz's class, but when I returned, I had been transferred to Mrs. Bradway's class. I sat toward the back, by the poster of prominent authors. Authors I still have yet to have read.

Fast forward 38 years, as I approach my fiftieth birthday.

By that age, there had been a time when my life had been dictated by chaos. It led me here, pointed me there. Introduced me to people who both absorbed and radiated chaos. If you are reading this, you are most likely one of them. It seemed like my life was really a character in someone else's book. Things worked too well (or too poorly). Like Forrest Gump running through the jungle, bullets which would have killed me, merely splattered mud on me. Ok, one bit me in the ass.

One of those moments occurred when my landlord decided that 'now' would be a good time to sell the house in which I paid copious rent. He asked a paying tenant to leave. I did. I immediately secured a sublet in Ann Arbor. Then, he realized that perhaps this was NOT the ideal time to try to sell a house. In fact, it was the worst time in history: May 2007. It was the worst, not because it was the worst. The worst was yet a few months away. No, it was the worst because if he had acted a little sooner, he might have succeeded.

And so it goes.

Anyway, because of the blunder of my landlord, or his chaos, or the whim of HIS author, I found myself in a place in Ann Arbor, recently abandoned by students. This meant they left (figurative) mierda in the apartment. Amid the figurative guano of a U of Michigan student was a library copy of "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. This author had been one of those listed on the poster in Mrs. Bradway's class. The book also. It had sat on my shelf since I was 46. As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I went on my vacation, a period of glorious chaos following the 3 years of order, I grabbed it on the way out. In case I got to read while roaming the beaches of Florida. Of course not. But I DID read it on the ride home. When suddenly, on page 209, I found this...


There were times that I felt as if I were a character in someone else's book. To this day, I do not know for fact that I am not, but if I am, it is CERTAINLY a Vonnegut novel.

Epilogue:
Reading Vonnegut reinforces in me The One Rule to Ring Them All in writing a novel:

There are no rules.

1 comment:

L.5immons said...

Finally just reading this. Nice epilogue-One rule to ring them all.

BOC-I love that book! Bad chemicals, man, who here doesn't suffer similarly.
And I love what his point is there, if I understand it. I agree, the, albeit archetypal, 'leading man and woman' order does mislead. It's when we step outside the dichotomy and see the trinity of life, that things make sense. Well to me at least. And so it goes....