Purple Places

I’d become so engrossed in her shy outpouring that when the question was poised I sat a minute, mind-numbed, wondering what exactly she wanted from me, why I hadn’t anticipated this, then I blurted out the first riposte that came to me.

“You ever heard of a hide-in-front?”

I studied her, measuring the tilt of her brow, glanced to the old man reading the newspaper on the bench across the way, then back to Jordan again, her eyes half believing, half suspicious, and I thought it over a moment. She gave me a long stare, a gaze that all but said aloud: nope. There’s no hope for this poor old ninny pooper.

“Is it having to do with something spooky, professor? Sounds spooky. If it is, then don’t tell me, otherwise I won’t sleep tonight.”

“No, no, not particularly. What I call a hide-in-front is more like the reality of the world hiding within a façade of what we normally consider the world to be.”

“I’m sorry, professor, but just what’re you on about? And what’s a hide-in-front got to do with your one long dull story?”

“You see that old man over there, the one reading his paper?”

“Yeah I do. You know I do.”

“Consider for a moment the act behind the seeing of that old man. Normally we consider vision as the reflection of light off the objects which we view, how that reflection impinging upon our retinas allows us to see the world. Does that sound about right?”

“I suppose, yes. I can’t say I ever thought about it much, though, professor.”

“Sure, sure. And I appreciate that fact. Still and all, if you don’t mind, stay with me just a moment. When we look at that old man, or anything for that matter, we’re not actually seeing him with our eyes. What we’re seeing, or rather what we take as seeing, is a reconstruction inside our mind. Does that sound about right?”

“I guess so. Honestly, though, professor. I’m looking at that old man right now and I’m doing it with my eyes. Not my mind. I see him. I do. I know I do.”

“Ah. Exactly. I agree with you wholeheartedly. On the other hand, science tells us how the light waves impinging upon our eyes at this moment are in fact being transmitted to the vision center deep within our brains by way of the optic nerve. Is that correct?”

“Well, I guess I learned that in high school, sure.”

“So then, does it stands to reason that nobody has ever directly seen the light of the world?”

“But I’m seeing it now. Right now. So are you, professor. Don’t go saying you ain’t.”

“In a sense, yes. That’s right. Still, I think it’s worthwhile considering that what we’re really seeing is a hide-in-front of the world, not the world itself. That and we only see what we’re conditioned to see, things we know, our agreements with each other, if you will. And if you pull back the curtain to look behind that façade, attempting to see that hide-in-front, you’ll discover how reality is whatever we make it. That’s the essence of the hide-in-front.”

“I thought you said it ain’t spooky. You’re starting to give me the heebies, professor.”

“I suppose sometimes knowledge can be scary. Sure. Maybe that’s why so many people tend to shun learning new things. Why they would rather cling to their old ways. It’s frightening, understanding the world as it is rather than as we think it is.”

“I’m not afraid. It’s just that when you get to talking like this, it creeps me out. Makes me start to think what I know isn’t really so.”

“Ah. Yes, I think that’s the essence of it, of learning, and of teaching too. It’s all a back and forth, you know. Teaching. Learning. If you open yourself up to it, that is. It’s been my experience that too few of us are capable of that, of realizing that back and forth flow of knowledge. Instead, we tend to see teaching, and learning, as a one-way enterprise.

“It’s the same with seeing that old man sitting over there. We never stop to consider all the nuances that go into that act. We take for granted our cultural grooming which makes it possible for the two of us to look at that man and see the same thing. Say, for instance, we were to somehow surreptitiously transport one of the members of that lost Amazonian tribe to this spot, would they see that same man that we see?”

“Why, sure they would.”

“But they’ve never seen a newspaper, never seen a person dressed thusly. They have no way of measuring what it is they’re seeing.”

“Well, seems to me like we start into talking one thing then before I know it we’re onto something completely different. I thought you said everything you ever learned isn’t all but one long boring story? Far as I can see, you ain’t said a word about that yet.”

“Yes, yes. Forgive me. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve worded my statement in quite that manner. I don’t mean to sound like a cynical old billy goat but that’s probably exactly how I’m coming across. Let me ask you, have you ever, when spring rolls around, gone out and picked up a piece of trash that’s been lying about in the yard all winter?”

“Well, yeah. Sure. My aunt used to make me do that come every April, soon as the weather turned halfway nice.”

“And what’d you see beneath it?”

“I don’t know. The ground?”

Maybe it was something to do with the way I sighed that inspired the girl to examine the question further, I don’t know. Could be she was working at impressing me, though one of the reasons I so enjoyed my conversations with Jordan was that she never did put on airs, not like so many of my students, obsequious to the point of bringing on the bile at the back of my throat. All of a sudden, though, a light seemed to blossom on her peach-fuzzed face and she broke into a smile.

“Wait. I remember. I used to hate doing that, picking up that trash. Oh, not on account of the work itself, but because I always felt like I was disturbing a whole world every time I lifted up a piece of paper or a snatch of cardboard. Every time. An entire universe. I always got the feeling I ought to put it back.”

“Ah. So I’m not the only one.”

“The only one what?”

“I like to look at the picking up of trash after a long winter as a metaphor for peeking beneath the facts of the world as we’ve come to understand them. How every time we lift one up, we spy beneath it a complete realm heretofore hidden from our view. Does that make sense?”

“Well, yeah, when you put it that way. So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Put it back, what you lifted up and looked beneath.”

“No. Yes. Well, in the beginning, yes, or at least I made the attempt to put it back, the hide-in-front. Yes. When I first heard of all those realities that came before ours, beneath it so to speak, I was fascinated. I gorged on books, demanded intricate answers from my professors, couldn’t sleep nights due to the tumult of thoughts cascading through my brain. But one day I woke up realizing everything I had learned, all the books I read, the lectures I attended, they ended up being just one long dull story.”

“But what story is that? Tell me. I still don’t understand. So the university is all a scam?”

“Oh. Wait. I apologize for misleading you. No, the university’s not a scam at all. See. I don’t mean to come across as cynical, this is just something I noticed along the way, is all, this story, the hide-in-front, if you will.”

“So tell me, professor. I want to know.”

Had I gone too far with the impressionable young thing? But then any truth gleaned by experience seemed at least to me somehow far more equitable than that borne on glib waves of despair, of unbearable loneliness made somehow sanctified not by any education but by the lack thereof. I nodded toward the pond.

“Just look, just look at all these geese, Jordan, listen to their hard-luck tales they squonk as they fly overhead. Their world is just the same as ours, just as real, you know, maybe even more so. Sun gold, sky blue. They’re closer to the source, though, more in tune with the winds, the seasons. Each day is different for them.

“Human beings on the other hand, all of us, from the time we’re born till the day we die, tend more toward constructing a world which doesn’t exist anywhere except inside our own minds, inside the minds of those whom we agree with, with those who’ve also suffered through long drawn out bouts of inculcations, indecent indoctrinations which eventually usurped all original thought and creativity, replacing it with a dull sort of repetition, more an echo than any true insight.

“I don’t mean this to appear grim, mind you. Could be the fact is we have no choice in the matter. None of us are an island. Even that jungle boy, oh, who was he, Bomba? I don’t remember now. Anyway, his name’s of no consequence. What I’m getting at is how even a feral human being, one with no contact with others of their kind whatsoever, still establishes a world of agreements. It is our intellect which separates us from the world.”

“What. Something like the tree of knowledge in the bible? Is that what you’re saying, professor? Like how Adam and Eve got themselves thrown out of the Garden of Eden for eating from it.”

“Yes, the tree of knowledge. Exactly. See. What I think I’m really getting here at is how there is no tabula rasa, no blank slate when we begin life as newborns. Rather than being born into the world at large as an empty mind just waiting to be written upon, we are born into an extant culture of knowledge. Once we bit into the fruit from that tree of knowledge we were forever separated from reality, expelled from Eden.”

“So you believe in all those old bible stories then?”

“I neither believe nor disbelieve, Jordan. Those are all part of it too, you know.”

“Part of what?”

“The same dull story.”

“Now you’re just fooling with me.”

“Oh no. Absolutely not. You can look at biblical stories as examples of the mythos which are oftentimes confused as logos, especially by those who believe in literal interpretations of the old tales. Consider how most all our biblical stories were handed down to us as symbolic representations based upon individual experiences, as indirect intuitive observations, but now that the logos dominates our Western culture we seek logical answers where there are none.

“Take the Garden of Eden myth, for example. These days, interpretations of the tale attempt to make literal inquiries into the nature of this tree of knowledge, but to those who handed down the myths to us that was an inconsequential part of the narrative.”

“But wasn’t it an apple tree?”

“Ah. That’s an interesting question, Jordan. Was it? Or is that an example of logos usurping mythos?”

“You must have really smart students, professor.”

“What? Why would you say that?”

“Because I got no idea what you’re on about. Mythos? Logos? What does all that even mean?”

“Oh, yes, of course. My apologies, Jordan. The fault rests with me, not you. Times are the horse runs way ahead of the cart. The mythos is the collected body of myths handed down to us while the logos is rationality itself.”

“Oh. So asking what sort of tree that was in the Garden of Eden is the wrong question because the story’s not talking about a tree at all?”

“Absolutely. But since the logos is so deeply engrained into our culture we cannot help but ask it logically. Same with the rest of those biblical stories meant as figurative rather than literal.”

“But why would they do that? Try and fool us like that.”

“Who?”

“Them that wrote the bible.”

“Well, you have to consider how at that time, people saw the world differently than we do now. Their culture was removed from ours both by time and by a lack of literacy. The stories that were told during those epochs were meant as oral histories to be embellished upon by those who came later, not in any way as literal interpretations.”

“So we’re the ones fooling ourselves?”

“In a sense, yes, though considering the ramifications of anyone being born into one particular culture rather than another, I’d hesitate to cast any blame. This too is all part of the same old story.”

“You keep saying that, professor. How there’s just one dull story. But why don’t you ever tell me what exactly it is?”

“Ah, yes. The existential question for the ages. I think, therefore I am. Sound familiar?”

“Umm…”

“René Descartes summarized his entire philosophy with that single sentence. He’s the one most responsible for the scientific revolution that’s come to dominate Western thought.”

“I do know that, professor. It just took me a minute to remember I know is all.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jordan. I don’t mean to pick at a purple place.”

“Purple place?”

“A purple place, an old bruise, an injury that hasn’t healed, a hurt place in someone’s past.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that. Should I feel insulted?”

“No, no. And please. Feel free to tell me where to go, Jordan. I keep getting the impression by us talking together how you’re quite possibly one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but you’ve never been offered the opportunity to develop that intelligence, how you carry that hurt with you but most times simply work at covering it up. That’s what I mean by a purple place. We all have them. I’m no exception. Things we’ve buried way down deep. Things we tend to hide from others.”

“What. You think something’s wrong with me that I never went to college? Is that it? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, no…”

“Ha. Gotcha, professor. You thought I was seriously pissed. But yeah, you’re right. And I think I’m starting to see what you mean now by just one story. You’re talking about our society, where we grow up, where we live. Ain’t that right?”

“Yes, yes. That’s what’s allowed our human culture to dominate the world, at least in my opinion, this one story. We’re trapped inside that which most times we have no comprehension of, sort of like the movie The Matrix, where that one fellow discovers his entire life is a computer simulation designed to keep him placated, oh, what was his name. Neo. Yes, that’s it.

“Maybe that’s what resonated with audiences, made the movie such a hit, how they sensed if even only within their subconscious minds that their collective existence is not dissimilar to Neo’s, how we’re all trapped inside a sort of simulation. Most people never notice it, though, or if they do, they quick start into doing something which might serve to distract them from such thoughts.

“Artists, though, yes, I think they’re the ones more in tune with these primal urges driving us all. Painters can touch upon it, poets too. Music resonates in ways other mediums have difficulty reaching. Then again, I think if I were pressed, I’d have to say that writers of literary fiction are most in tune with this one story.

“Hemingway saw it, so did Hunter Thompson. Zadie Smith is a prime example of what I’m on about, Alice Munro too, how this shared failure of the world transcends not only all our literature but is embedded in the mythology handed down to us from tens of thousands of years ago, even before the written word, stories of heroes, even gods, who were unable or perhaps unwilling to break the chains binding them.”

“So you’re saying how everything, all we know, all we can know, is just the same dull scene? So are we all trapped? But what about those same artists? The dreamers? There must be some people who really do create works totally original, all their own.”

I sighed, uncertain how to proceed. Jordan was one of those precocious girls easy on the eyes and quick on the uptake, I had no intentions of filling her head with nonsensical rhymes steeped in the abject horrors of Descartes yet I could see no other way forward. Perhaps I’d become mired within my own miasma, a sort of self-induced internal hatred. I hoped not, but perhaps. I hesitantly dipped a measured toe into the trembling waters of doubt.

“What I’ve come to believe is this: any truly new and original idea or work of art will be rejected out of hand. By everyone. Everyone that matters. Nobody of any consequence recognizes such a beast. It takes time for the world to catch up.”

“But what if it doesn’t catch up?”

“Then those artists and thinkers die in obscurity. Oh, thousands of them. Maybe millions. Did you ever get a chance to read that Victor Hugo book I gave you last Christmas?”

“Les Misérables? I did. But once I got through it the first time I felt like I had to go back and read it again. Like I missed something. So I’m half way through again now.”

“Normal, that’s normal. Anyhow. M. Mabeuf is I think of particular interest here. Remember him?”

“Umm…”

“The old man who studies plants his whole life. Totally devotes himself to meticulously charting growth cycles and all manner of data. In the end, though, he has to sell his books, one by one, even all his carefully detailed manuscripts concerning his study of botany too, sells them for pulp, sells them for pennies, in order to pay for the medical care of a friend.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude gets killed at the barricade. I think he was my second favorite character.”

“Second favorite?”

“Well, sure. Gavroche was my favorite. I get all teary sometimes just thinking about him. I have to remind myself he never even existed. Except in the mind of Hugo. Gavroche was just a character. Right, professor?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Hugo was a writer who used everything he saw, everything he heard, everything he read to construct his tales. He might’ve known a boy like Gavroche. Who knows? During the time Hugo was writing there were thousands of children like him, abandoned by their parents, perhaps orphaned. They even had a term for such children. The French were great at inventing names.”

“Gamin.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Wait. Why’d you have to tell me that? Gavroche was real?”

“No. Maybe. At least there’s a good probability a boy like Gavroche inspired the character. Anyhow. What I was getting at was how you could see Mabeuf as an artist, a man who lived only for his art, a man who probably knew more about botany than anyone else alive at that time, yet what happened to him?”

“He died penniless. Unknown.”

“You see the same thing over and again. Nicola Tesla invented an electric motor that nobody till this day has been able to improve upon yet he too died a pauper, moving from motel room to motel room, borrowing from friends, relying on the good nature of the innkeepers he happened across to sustain him.”

“But what about inventors like Thomas Edison? He was known. Recognized.”

“Edison stole his ideas from his employees. Did you know that, Jordan? Oh yes. The man was a thief and a scoundrel who preyed upon the real geniuses, those who had no notion what they were contributing, that their ideas, their works of art, really, were so profound they would one day totally revolutionize the world. Doesn’t matter, though, if nobody recognizes the import of their work, their labors die with them. In that sense, Edison was a facilitator of sorts. In fact, if Edison hadn’t taken Tesla’s ideas and made them his own, odds are this world would be very different. We’d’ve had to wait till some unknown tomorrow to catch up to Tesla’s ideas, to integrate them into the fabric of society.”

“But isn’t there always a sort of built-in promise somewhere, a promise of tomorrow, even if it’s unknown? Isn’t that what we all rely on? I know I do.”

“Sure. Sure there is. Look at it this way. Most all of us believe we have a limitless supply of tomorrows, that if we don’t achieve our dreams today, maybe we will do better the next, or the day after that. So what if today is a hassle? Put it off till tomorrow. Only tomorrow never really gets here, does it.”

“I don’t understand the analogy, professor. Now you’re saying there’s no tomorrow?”

“What do you think?”

“I think my alarm’ll go off at six tomorrow morning, I’ll get up, go to work, come home, eat, watch a little tv, then go to bed.”

I tilted my head slightly to the right, winked at her as if saying: see? Haven’t you just made my point for me? A slow-dawning look of horror started to blossom in Jordan’s gorgeous brown eyes, as she doubtless began processing what I was saying, that same feeling that must chill a wild animal when it first falls into the hunter’s trap, when it knows the end is nigh yet steels itself for one all-out final assault upon the enemy.

“But we can’t all just say chuck it, professor. Can we? The world would fall apart if we all went off seeking our own private oases. Right? Civilization would collapse.”

I sat waiting, knowing how the girl’s mind was churning, how if she kept going, she’d see. She hadn’t moved from her seat on the park bench but her expression had changed, probably wondering what this over-educated nut sitting next to her was really getting at with his smug complacency, his morbid despondency. She pretended to snort, looked me in the eye.

“Well, either way, no matter what you say, I’m fairly certain my alarm will ring tomorrow. That I will be waiting tables all day long. That I will come home after, footsore and tired, and collapse in front of the television. Just like today. Just like yesterday. The world’ll just keep spinning and me with it. Until I’m not, that is. Then the world will sail merrily on without me.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right, Jordan. Maybe that’s what keeps us whirling along on the merry-go-round. But let’s say, for instance, the Donald comes home one day after a tough time of tariffing the hell out of China, of calling out Canada for the shysters they are, of sucking up to Putin and Kim, of having his tweets dissed. He walks into the Oval Office and discovers Melania humping in the rocking chair with Barry. That’s it. That’s the final straw. He reaches out, slams down his tiny fist that big red button, and poof. Annihilates half the world. Zap! That’s all she wrote, we’re right back in the Stone Age.”

“Is that it? Is that what you’re saying? Not being sure of tomorrow? Or is it not being sure of having that special somebody? I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”

Her face was raised, framed by the contrasting upturned collar of her black coat, blonde hair storming over her shoulders, snowflakes alighting on her cold reddened cheeks just for a moment before burning off, vaporized by that inner furnace she carried within her heart. Jesus, she was beautiful.

“You don’t go to the university?”

“No. Well, I take a class now and again. When I can afford it. My grades weren’t that great in high school so I didn’t qualify for any scholarships. I’ve applied at Starbucks down the street. They have a tuition reimbursement program. But no. I don’t go to the university. Not yet. Maybe someday.” She grins self-consciously hand over mouth doing her best at hiding her bad teeth. “Yes, my purple place. You’re right, professor.”

“We’ve all got them, Jordan. Me too. Here’s a for instance for you. When I was a kid my father was the sheriff in some small hick town in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana. We lived above an old jailhouse. He was out patrolling all day and off drinking and running with women half the night so my mother cooked for the prisoners. She didn’t like going down to those cells so she had me do it.

“I guess I got to thinking I was somehow way better off than some of them old boys in lockup. How I was free to come and go as I pleased. I guess I picked at them some, at their purple places, the bruises of their lives, where they’d been, the trouble they saw. Maybe one of them said something to my father, I don’t know.

“Anyhow, one day he sat me down and said how it might not be such a bad thing for me to try being a little more friendly with those men. Said how most of them were just drunks and derelicts, probably never would be much count, but you never knew who you might meet up with again on your own path.

“He was right. I got to listening to those men, how they came to be there in jail, what their dreams were after they got out, the sweethearts waiting for them, their families. One old guy I knew from around town. Well, I didn’t really know him, know him. See, he couldn’t hear, never talked. What we called deaf and dumb back then.

“I didn’t realize he could write, though. Had no idea. Anyhow, one day whenever I picked up his meal tray there was a folded scrap of paper on it, a note from him. Turned out his name was Paddy. By and by we got to writing back and forth to one another. I’d include my note to him underneath his plate, he’d leave his for me when I collected the dishes.

“Then my mother came into my room one night, sat on my bed, told me how she was onto me, how she found some of those notes from Paddy in my pants whenever she went to do the laundry, how maybe yes. I could fool Paddy, those men downstairs, maybe even my father, but not her. How all I was doing was picking at their purple places, making things worse than they had to be all the while patting myself on the back. And after I thought it over I supposed she was right too.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I stopped writing to Paddy. Not long after he got turned out and wasn’t but a month or so later I read in the paper where he died. The article didn’t say how, exactly, though a man his age I surmised he either committed suicide or suffered an overdose. I wondered for a long time if maybe it might’ve had something to do with me, if that wasn’t what my mother had been warning me about.

“Maybe that’s when I think I began to withdraw, to step back. What friends I had I ignored till they gradually quit coming round. I became all but estranged from my family too. See, Jordan? Sometimes I feel like I come off as standoffish, like I’m above the fray. I do like our talks, though, listening to your stories. Anyhow. You do see what I mean by a purple place, which is good.”

“Sure. I mean, yes, I see what you mean, but no. You aren’t really picking at one. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I mean doing here in this town. Yes, the university might’ve drawn me to Bloomington, but I’ve been here long enough I pretty much know.”

“Know?”

“That no matter what I do, I’ll never get my degree. Even if I do get hired on with Starbucks, time I work my shift I won’t have the gumption left to take more than one class at a time. How long will it take to graduate at that rate? Probably sixteen years? Then what happens after I meet him?”

“Him?”

“You know. The one. The guy I’m meant to be with. At least that’s what my heart’ll be singing. And we’ll promise one another how if I keep working and help him make it through college then he’ll do the same for me. Only then the kids start coming. Girls. Boys. Doesn’t much matter. And my guy’ll be working twelve maybe fourteen hours a day on account of us always being broke and it’s only later I discover how none of that is true. That he’s spending quality time with the receptionist. That the reason we’re always short of money is that he’s keeping her in an expensive apartment two blocks away. Then when I turn forty he’ll decide I’m way too old, that he prefers the twenty-somethingness of his little mouse. And poof.”

“Wow. And here I thought I was more than a bit of a pessimist.”

“You’re a man. You can afford a rosy more than us girls.” She shrugged her shoulders to one side, no more than a tilt of her pretty head, winked back at me, like her explanation made all the sense in the world. Which it did, of course. Funny how young girls know more than I ever will, how it comes to them natural.

“I’m still not sure she was right.”

“Who?”

“My mother. About me picking at their purple places even while I was pretending to be nice to those men in that old jail. I wonder if maybe that’s part of my nature. How even if I try not doing it, I can’t help feeling superior.”

“Your folks still alive? Do you visit?”

“No, no. Dad died in 1997, mother went a year later.”

“So you’re like me.”

“Like you?” Maybe I said it with too much incredulity in my voice. She looked at me and laughed.

“Oh, stop it. Don’t look so shocked. An orphan. I mean you’re an orphan too. Like me. See, I was raised by my aunt and uncle. So did it bother you much?”

“Did what bother me?”

“Your mother accusing you of feigning friendship with those jailbirds.”

“Well yes, maybe a little. I suppose it was one of those damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations. Sort of like my father making me feel guilty if I wasn’t nice to those prisoners, my mother saying how it wasn’t right to pretend, that I ought to tell them just how I felt.”

“I guess I felt like that too.” She didn’t seem much impressed with my diagnosis. “But the feeling never lasted long. Mostly I found out how my aunt and uncle being after me over one thing or the other really didn’t mean much, they were only using me as a go-between. That the real fight concerned them. Not me.”

“How so?”

“See, my old aunt, seemed like she was all the time on me about everything, didn’t much matter what. Like how she used to wear makeup. I tell you what, she’d layer it on too, like spackle, starting Wednesday, never wash neither, just slap on new over old. Come Sunday she’d peel it off like one of those masks. Go to church all fresh pink and shiny. Then she’d sneak around trying to catch me using it, making a big fuss over me even wearing maybe a little lipstick or a dab of eyeliner.

“I remember I used to think how maybe one Sunday she might forget what day it was, not peel off that old makeup, just layer on more and more and more until it got so thick on her she just became a statue. But she never did.” She stopped, yawned and stretched over her head, those lanky cowgirl arms of hers lengthening up out of her coat sleeves. “Say. If it ain’t prying too much, were your studies always so dull? I mean after you found out it was all the same old story.”

I sat thinking for a minute. I had the feeling she was reaching out to me for a lifeline, like maybe if I told her the right thing, I might’ve managed to shift her life to a better place. But then I remembered my mother telling me how she was onto me.

“I guess my time at the university might’ve been something like having the bends. You know, like if you’re scuba diving and come up too fast nitrogen bubbles form in the blood. Well. There are bends that form in your ego too, not just your blood. Hurts like dickens. So instead of hurtling so quickly through my studies, I learned to surface slowly. Rather than rushing forward, I began holding back, making a more thorough exploration. Thinking how maybe I might’ve overlooked things, important things, perhaps side streets leading off the main avenues.”

“And had you?”

“In a sense, I suppose. I discovered what I was seeking was not the side streets I overlooked so much but rather that there were subterranean tunnels underneath where ideas fell through the cracks in the pavement accumulating over time, that if a person delved below the customary levels there awaited a vast treasure trove of knowledge to be mined.

“There was a problem, though. No order. Everything that had fallen there was simply piled into huge heaps, like stalagmites, that to get at the base it was necessary to chip through thousands of years of sentimental hogwash, of veiled emotion, some of which, most of which, probably, might or might not be of value.”

“You were digging at purple places.”

“How do you mean?”

“Isn’t that what falls through the cracks? Things we don’t like thinking about? Sure it is. Things we hide from others, from ourselves. Sort of like the time just before my folks died. Me and my mom had a big fight over something I can’t even remember now. Maybe some boy, somewhere I wanted to go and she wouldn’t let me, I don’t know.

“Anyhow. I told her how much I hated her. How I hoped she’d die. How I wouldn’t even come to her funeral. How she had always made my life miserable. None of it was true, except maybe at the time I said it I thought it was, I guess. Then, well, the next time I saw her she was in that coffin. And I knew it wasn’t really my fault. At least I told myself that. But till this day, you’re the only person I ever shared that with.”

“But you did go.”

“Go?”

“To her funeral.”

“Of course. She was my mother.”

“Purple places, yes, that’s a nice analogy, Jordan. Early on I’d noticed in academia how lots of ideas that are floated end up wrong. No. That’s not quite right. They end up being judged wrong. Then they’re thrown out. Nobody wants to be associated with a wrong idea, nobody likes being ridiculed, made to feel stupid or guilty.

“Lately, though, I’ve begun to wonder where to draw the line, the line between academia and personal philosophy, if you will. How to keep them separate. Or if that’s even possible, especially if you’re engaged in the retrieval of resources which were long ago discarded as unwanted. All those ideas, they ended up in a jumble, so who is to say how to draw the line between them?

“Now I’m starting to think I’ve been wrong, that maybe those ideas ended up where they are because of what they represent, the darkness they bring, not in any sense illumination as I hoped. What’s there in those tunnels is not to be considered original at all, rather things too terrible to know, and me shining a light there will do no one any good, only bring sorrow and pain.”

“Now who’s being too hard on themselves?”

A high wind has come up, the snow is coming down more thickly now. Jordan’s chin is imperceptibly trembling with the cold. I want to suggest we move indoors, to perhaps continue our discussion over coffee, perhaps something stronger, but the feelings of inappropriateness stays my tongue. The bums who were previously scattered around the park on other park benches have moved off to wherever it is they go during inclement weather, though how they can sleep during the winter is a mystery to me.

“So how long have you taught?”

“Oh, a long time. Maybe too long. Let me see. I started lecturing in Chicago in 1983, just after I received my degree. Moved here in 1997 to take over the philosophy department.”

“So you still teach?”

“No, no. I retired a year ago. No. Two years now that I think about it.”

“What do you mean, maybe too long?”

“There were other avenues I wanted to explore. Teaching was comfortable, though. It afforded me the upper middle class lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to, and once I settled into the university scene… well, to be honest I felt like I was dragged under, like a rip current took hold of me, that no matter how I tried I couldn’t swim free. After a while, I just got tired of trying. Gave up.”

“What other avenues?”

“Now there. That’s the nub of it. What other avenues. I thought about all different means of escape. Maybe a move into the business world. Start somewhere small, a startup, maybe. Work my way up through the ranks until I became a CEO running a multibillion dollar business. Politics, perhaps. Schmoozing with all the other hacks pretending to run the country. The arts. Poetry. Literature. Maybe become the director of a museum. And oh, the sciences. Biology. Botany. Geology. Astronomy. Oceanic studies. Religion reared its head too. Buddhism. Taoism. Christianity. Judaism. Hinduism. On and on it went. Never could decide exactly where my focus ought to be.

“But I suppose when all’s said I fell into a rut. Which I find is not uncommon in the teaching profession. The whole endeavor is invigorating to the ego, really, and to let go isn’t an easy task. All those precocious uninitiated minds, all those freshly-scrubbed eager beaver faces looking toward you as you stride up to the lectern, scowl around the room, begin your tirade. Because that’s what it all becomes in the end, simply one long rant.”

“What did your wife think about your career choice?”

“Wife? Oh, no. I never married. No. No wife. No time for such nonsense, really. All my hours were taken up, I had my routine, you see. Things I had to do. My research. Well, in the end I saw I never had to do any of it, but at the time it seemed somehow important.”

“Nonsense? Really?”

“I thought so at the time. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“Aren’t you lonely?”

“I think being alone is as much a habit as being with others. You learn to compromise.”

“But what about all those couples you see walking round hand in hand. Don’t it set your heart to aching? I know it does mine.”

“Maybe there was a time it did, sure. But then one day you wake up and realize you’re past all that, that you really can go into a restaurant, sit down, eat alone, without that accompanying ache. You even begin to cherish those times you spend alone. At least I do. But even so, sure. Comes times when I do wonder if things might’ve been different if I’d’ve done that instead of this, maybe asked that pretty girl to the dance instead of hanging back letting some other fellow do it.”

“Now here I’m the one doing it too. Picking at your purple places. I’m sorry, professor.”

“Oh no. Don’t be, Jordan. Don’t be.”

“You gotta tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Why did you have to be so old?”