The Trouble With Life
He stood up to reveal that he was a six-footer-plus
with shoulders reminiscent of a thick crucifix’s crossbars; his face was both
puzzled and puzzling. He scowled, dipped his chin, looked down at his shoes,
then peered silently at the shoes of everyone else who was there, one at a
time, as we continued our chatter. When he spoke his voice was a powerful
rumble that arrested everyone’s attention.
“That’s the trouble with life, y’know,”
he said, “a person can only live one at a time.” He ran surprisingly short,
thick fingers through his wavy, chestnut-coloured hair.
“I mean, it’s possible to alternate –
y’know, to be an artist on alternate days or weeks and a business operator on
the others, or to be a kindy teacher during the day and a sex worker at night –
but that’ll wear the person who’s doing it down, the contradictions will
triumph sooner or later, and then comes shit-or-get-off-the-pot time.” He
inspected our footwear again, smiling sadly, then looked up and stared into the
middle distance.
“Then, of course, it’s possible to
live different lives sequentially, as I’ve done, and first be a prole grunt,
and then a rock-and-roll roadie, and then a waiter, and then a salesman, and
then an advertising jerk, and then a cabbie, and then an intermediate-school
teacher, and so on, and to go from relationship to relationship, but that robs
life of its continuity – not to mention identity – and makes it impossible to
experience any one life completely.” His eyes went to each of us again, this
time inspecting our shirts.
“Also, of course, we’re forever
getting too old for some kinds of lives, and we can never go back.” He
shrugged.
“I suppose,” he continued after a
moment’s thought, his face sadder and yet more resigned-looking than before, “that
that means that I haven’t lived a life – or any lives – at all.” He made a
brief, explosive ironic-laugh sound through his nose. “Just a series of mildly
entertaining stories.”
He shook his head slowly, sat down,
and gazed at the ceiling. “Like a highlights mashup instead of a whole game,
let alone a whole season, and nothing at all like a satisfying career.”
A clear-eyed, earnest-looking,
thirty-something woman in a long, colourful dress inspired by or copied from
the traditional attire of some attenuated peasant culture (Slavic? Southeast
Asian? Andean? – it was hard for an untutored eye to tell) adopted a consoling
tone of voice and assured him, “Don’t worry.” Her hair was relentlessly
straight. “By acquiring deep enough wisdom in regard to the quantum space-time
continuum you may still master the pathway through cosmic worm-holes into
alternative realities and enter into different lives without losing your memories
of the one you occupy now.”
“Even lives contemporaneous with the
serial life I’ve had so far?”
She lay her hand on his arm. Her
fingers were long and slim and her nails flawlessly manicured. “Of course.
You’d be able to make your journey a spiritual one, unlike your superficial
thrashing about in this life.”
He paused to consider this for a
moment. “Yeah,” he rumbled from somewhere far away. “A whole different life,
knowing what I know now.”
“With enough spiritual focus you can
do anything you choose.”
He stared off into the middle
distance. “Yeah.”
Everyone’s eyes remained on him.
“I could learn the necessary skills
and then get my stepfather to start backing me in property acquisition and
development in Surfers Paradise in the early sixties.” He took a deep, wistful
breath, unaware of the horrified expression on the woman’s face, his own
expression otherworldly. “Yeah,” he whispered, his voice trailing off dreamily. “Spitituality.
I’ll do that the next time around.”
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