Sunday, December 25
David’s next entrance into Walton’s hallowed halls was heralded by the drifting of Mozart piano concertos throughout the entire sanctuary. The soaring and swinging note patterns cascaded like rivers through hills and breezes through trees. Single notes, solid chords, and pregnant pauses – they triggered the life patterns of one lonely New Hampshire country lad who had struggled amidst the racing of his own single breezes, solid rivers, and poignant pregnant pauses.
The one note that emerged most victorious from the swinging and soaring was the fluid energetic voice of an endlessly patient church custodian. Walton welcomed him back, and asked immediately, “Merry Christmas, young lord of the universal presence. Did you sleep well, if at all, last night? Did visions of sugar plum faeries prance through your trance?”
Ready to re-engage in the now-familiar lofting and wafting of words he had come to expect from Walton, he replied, “Ready to rock and roll, if it suits your royal soul, Sensei.”
“Then let us waste no time, my partner in rhyme.” Walton paused for a moment, perhaps ready to begin a very long speech about the nature of the world, and reality, and even greater topics. However, instead, he simply asked, “What is the difference between a word and the world?”
“You mean, other than the letter ‘L’, I take it?”
“Take whatever you’d like. But do better than the obvious, please.”
“Well.” David would use this deep word very often when requiring a few moments to pick a verbal direction. “Well, words are created by humans, and the world was not.”
“Not a bad start, I guess, for a farm boy, fresh from the fields. But I’d like you to consider both terms in respect to lessons, life lessons in particular.”
“Okay. Then words are tools that humans use to give lessons back and forth, and the world is just one big playground of lessons, waiting to happen with or without us being aware of it at the time.”
“We have a giant leap for mankind here, folks!! Quite a jump. So let’s progress: which is more useful to you, David? A lesson with words, or a lesson with the world?”
After the pause, David ventured, “The world lesson?”
“Why so?”
“First of all, the word lesson is limited by the ability of the word creator to express something. A stupid person can still talk, but who gives a rat’s tail what he is actually saying?”
“Good. Keep going.”
“But the world’s lessons are not someone else’s previous idea of what is important. You are out there, in that world, by yourself, getting hurt or feeling great, all by yourself, with no petty pundit playing interceptus interruptus on your brain. It’s all you.”
“And the lesson from this type of lesson?”
“You create the experience, and then you create the lesson, and then decide whether you got it or not. Close your eyes, and ‘oops, missed that one.’ Open them up to the world, and get a lesson a day. Or more, if you want!”
“So world-initiated lessons are more valuable than word-initiated lessons?”
“Yup. Sure enough.”
“Splendid. We are going to create quite a few world lessons over these next couple of days, I anticipate.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“I am willing to bet that the young, bright, head-strong college student hopefully predicts that he is going to match his half of a wit against mine this week, and come out of this experience with a whole 10-gallon-hat full of fancy words, with which to impress his friends and family. That is what college life does to you. It saturates your tiny brains with words, words, words, until you don’t have to really exist in any other way. The words become the world.
“But that is not even close to what I have prepared for you. Instead, I may throw lots of words at you, but I don’t want you to hang on to a single one of them. I toss them out, you try to hit them right back at me. Nothing I say, or ask, or teach, is going to make you better, or smarter, or more creative, or more intelligent. Intelligence is highly over-rated, especially in the halls of academia. Instead, I am going to find out if I can help you ‘un-learn,’ to grow stupider instead of smarter, to find simplicity instead of complexity. You may soon find yourself becoming as a young child, rather than a maturing smart-aleck. Are you ready to begin growing backwards? Or do you like the life you’re living?”
David already knew the answer to that one. He had spent the previous several evenings blathering on to Walton about his miserable existence and relationships and shattered dreams. He was ready, or hoped he was ready, to jump further over the cliffs of consciousness, if that is what it took to feel better somewhere too deep inside himself to face at this time.
“I am going to run you through a kind of program, like a training program for fools, seekers of simplicity, the court jesters of the kingdom. And the first requirement is that you become personally involved with this program. It is not for your eyes, or ears, only. It requires your total involvement.”
“That’s fine by me,” David interrupted. “All my previous appointments have been canceled. I am needed no where and by no one. Even the president of the planet has rescinded his personal invitation for me to spend the holidays with him and his family. So, like an endless field of corn and potatoes, I am all ears and eyes.”
“Well, dat’s just dandy, David!!” Walton’s rapid on-off smile still had a way of unnerving David, even though it could also seem so tame and meaningless.
“I’m going to present you with a simple set of explanations, examples, exercises, and experiences. Hopefully, these will help you gain and lose at the same time. You are free to gain greater self-awareness, or to lose all sense of self altogether. Either way, be my guest to become a ghost. Or something quite different!”
David waited, not knowing how to respond, or even if one was needed.
“If you truly choose to be here with me, you will get more of what you tasted last night, including the hot mocha chocolate. If, for whatever cockamamie reason, you choose to NOT be here, then go gladly into that great beyond and behind, and belong to your past, your future, and the trance in which you spend most of your present. Got it?”
“Got it. Good to go.”
“First, we gotta negotiate a price for this masterpiece of learning.”
“Price?”
“Sure, price. Everything in existence has a price!”
“What’s yours?”
“How much you got?”
“Remember the part about ‘poor country boy,’ on scholarship and loans?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what I got.”
“Why in tarnation does everyone and their lost uncle associate the term ‘price’ with money? That is just so plain … plain. You got anything else, rather than money?”
“I got time.”
“Good start. You got energy?”
“Sure, plenty.”
“Then here is your first pay-me-back. Take your time, and your energy, and this brown cloth. Apply a dab of liquid to it. Begin to rub it around the back of this pew, like so. That is called polishing. We’re about to do the same with the contents of your brain. This motion makes both your arm and your mind work a bit harder than they might be used to around your fancy dancy college. Pretend you’re training for some martial arts movie. Wax on, and so forth. Keep it up, and I’ll start my part.”
David began his chore easily, and continued evenly, as Walton looked around him. From the back of a nearby pew, Walton grabbed a small book, like a hymnal, or Bible, but not really either one of those. It was a dictionary.
“Why in the world is there a dictionary in there with those other books?”
“Oh, my goodness. We have a very highly educated congregation here, son. When the preacher gets to moaning and shaking about the end of times and the beginning of times, the whole crowd throws down the Word of God, and picks up the Word of Webster!!”
“Really?” asked gullible David.
“Naw. Just messing with you. The dictionary wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I just made it appear for our little lesson. Messin’ for the lesson! Like that?”
Again, “Really!?!”
“Naw. Just messing with you again. A group of elves all named Elvis put it there on the shelf when you weren’t looking. That’s all.”
David knew better than to repeat ‘Really,’ so he just muttered “Huh. That’s cool,” and returned to his washing and wiping.
“Cool, yup. And this is a tool, yup. Stop your rubbing for a minute, and stand beside me here.”
David complied, no longer caring much about where the lesson was going to go. Walton’s behavior patterns were not patterns at all. He was chaos incarnate.
“Open to any page, and pick any word.”
“Anything?”
“Yup.”
David’s first page and choice produced the word ‘sky.’
“What do you think of that word?” Walton asked.
“Sky? Well, I think most skies are great. Colors, clouds, images. Why?”
“Why did you give the sky that opinion?”
“Huh?”
“I’ll ask it slower, and try using different words. Listen. Why did you use the words ‘great, colors, clouds, and images’ to describe a sky instead of other words?”
“Because I like skies.”
“All skies?”
“Most of them.”
“Now here’s the neuron twister, Mr. Psychologist–wannabe. Where did your opinion come from?”
“My opinion of skies?”
“Move it along, Mr. David Hartland, the audience is already getting impatient with you. They are gonna change the channel any second now.”
Quickly, throwing caution to the wind, and his training down the tubes, he replied, “From my past experiences. From my life adventures. From the opinions of others. From my own creative nature.”
“And overboard he goes, folks! Much better. At least you are diving for the pearls instead of expecting the oysters to spit them into your boat by themselves!”
“Was I right with any of those answers?”
Walton paused, and stared a hole into David. “Who said there is a right and a wrong to this game? I just asked a simple question. Are you expecting a grade?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“We’ll soon see if you are sorry, or silly, my young friend. Let’s continue.”
Walton then had David repeat the same exercise with pick-a-word, and profess-an-opinion. He repeated this exercise almost one hundred times, using no special word pattern at all. Open the dictionary at random, point at a word, any word, and then discuss any opinions connected to that word. Do it all quickly, no need for time to think too deeply. Flip. Point. Pick. Opinion. Move on.
As he flipped through the pages, Walton grabbed words spontaneously. He included words from the eight parts of speech for the English language. Common and proper nouns, active and passive verbs, mild and exaggerated descriptive adjectives and adverbs. He even made up a few words, in David’s mind, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Each time David gave an opinion, Walton moved on to the next word. At the same time, Walton seemed to be counting something in his head, or keeping score. When the game was over, indeed, Walton would produce the final results. His intent in using such a list had nothing at all to do with the words themselves. They merely served as objective stimuli in this game. What Walton expected from David was his quick and varied types of responses. Good, bad. Ugly, beautiful. Right, wrong. Simple, complicated. Painful, pleasurable. Positive, negative. David’s responses gave Walton a panoramic overview of David’s life, his list of truths and falsehoods, the myriad colors of his belief system.
Walton’s word river ran thusly:
sky – kiss – monica – blanket – grass – hair – communication – wow – jogging – billy – government – lack – jesus – money – work – fame – car – summer – time – long – iraq – tree – peace – laundry – toaster – beneficent – october – california – scary – acid – tired – sports – fireplace – avatar – hot – suzanne – conjugate – stupid – astrology -rain – groovy – idiot – bus – kansas – pemdas – pets – lily – bible – butch – swagger – music – poem – babies – gay – computer – physics – not – prince – telephone – boundary – it – flower – rover – shoe – wisdom – lotion – rainbow – television – indian – alone – human – pests – slapadoo – washington – chakra – fence – valley – leave – ornopopulous – test – movies – love – minutes – relaxation – was – me – remote – sherry – body – texas – airplane – hats – stage – friends – random – pole – final – over – beyond – prevaricate – star – camouflage – hell – inside – horizon – twittering – one – specious – politics – and – trance
David’s five-seconds-or-less replies consisted mainly of “yes”, “no”, “I-don’t know”, “I-got-nothing”, “neutral”, “positive”, “negative”, “never-heard-of-it”, “who’s that?”, “huh?”, and a few more miscellaneous grunts and mumbles.
About half an hour later, Walton placed the dictionary back into the pew rack. And then he once again asked David, “No matter WHAT you just responded, WHERE did all of your opinions about these words come from? Out of all those words I threw at you, you had positive opinions for about twenty-five percent of them, negative opinions for well over half of them, and no real opinion, or knowledge, about the remaining few. The same percentage continued throughout the list of dictionary words we picked, as well as the other words I randomly tossed your way. So what do you think that means?”
David’s voice followed his ever-present pause. “Well, it means I like some things, I don’t like other things, and there are a few things I’ve never heard of?”
“Is your answer a question or a statement?”
“Who knows, at this point?” David sighed.
“Yes, that is a pre-enlightened response, David. Who knows at this point, at any point? Who knows anything anywhere, any time?? Good answer. And that is my opinion about that!!”
David waited a few seconds, wondering if Walton was going to share some further deep insight as to the results of his little experiment. When none was forthcoming, he ventured his own short series of questions: “What do we do now? More puzzles, or more cleaning, or what?”
“Let’s go with ‘what’ for now. I have one more present for you, and then I am sending you on your way back to your dorm room.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we’ve done enough cleaning for tonight, both of the church and of your head. Because the processes I am going to take you through in the upcoming days should not be rushed or wasted. Because I know what you now know, and I also know what you don’t now know, and I hope that you will someday want to know what I now know and don’t now know by the end of our sessions together!! Clear enough?”
“I guess.” David paused, lying politely.
“I am not particularly fond of using the words of others when I teach, but there once lived another madman similar to myself, who would be worthwhile the frequent read. Do you remember the name Henry David Thoreau from your high school English classes? Were you even partly awake in those days?”
“Sure! His sentences were pretty long, but his ideas were pretty simple, if you could get through all the verbiage.”
“Here’s my first Thoreau quote, reflecting on what we explored tonight: ‘It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair’s breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany.’ Can you connect to that idea of forgetting all our learning?”
“After tonight, I sure can. Everything you share with me has been ‘something totally strange’!”
“Excellent, Divine David.”
“Back at you, Walden Walton,” Then, shifting the conversation abruptly, he asked outright, “So what’s my other Christmas present?”
“Yes, of course, right back to the present. It’s right here.” Again, as if out of thin air, Walton produced a small book with a simple leather cover. No fancy wrapping needed. Walton was not the kind of person who was going to stand on useless or inefficient ceremony in the process of gift-giving. He handed the book to David.
“What is it about?”
“Best way to find that out is to open it, I reckon, champ.”
After thumbing through a few pages, David declared, “It’s nothing but empty pages. Is it a journal, or diary of some kind? You want me taking notes when we’re together? Are you another professor in disguise? Is there going to be a test??” His anxiety level rose slightly as he wandered through his maze of questions.
“Nope. No tests. No notes, unless you choose to take them. And we are all professors, when we profess to know something, and then desire to share that something with others. As far as being blank, is it really? Look very closely.”
David stared intently at a few pages in the very middle of the journal. “Yup. It’s blank, all right.”
“Well, my young challenge. It won’t stay that way, I bet. Wait a few days, and see what happens to your little empty book, your tabula rasa, your blank slate. Keep notes, don’t keep notes. That still won’t determine whether you really ‘get’ what it is you are writing down. Your choice. Always your choice. Take your time, David. You’ve created plenty of it for yourself.”
With these words, Walton made a very deliberate turn toward the altar of the church, waved a backward “good-bye” and muttered, “See ya, see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!!”
Slightly put off by what seemed a very curt dismissal, at first David wanted to mutter something himself, perhaps a little curse, a little wish, a little scream. Just the slightest touch of malediction. But all he found in his throat was a mumbled grunt. With that grunt, he too turned around, headed for the Sanctuary door, and wandered into the typically freezing Maine Christmas evening. As he left the crazy for the cold, he knew one sure thing. Walton had lied to him at least once tonight. During the next few days, or weeks, or months, David’s life was NOT going to be very simple at all.
*****