Dear Grasshopper,
The rational mind is designed to make fetishes of closure, consistency, symmetry and economy. These prejudices have put us in good stead in understanding our shared world of experience, but are these virtues in one regard hobgoblins in another? Or is our desire for a “unified theory of everything” an allusion to something fundamental about our predicament?
Hume said all inductive arguments are finally unprovable. Popper told us theories could never be proven conclusively true, only false; Lakatos said theories could never be proven conclusively false, either. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem states that mathematical systems of any complexity presuppose axioms not supported by the system. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says you cannot simultaneously measure both a particle’s position and velocity with complete accuracy.
To use reason to check the scope of reason is to engage in a curious form of self-contradiction, yet whether one pursues a super-symmetrical or an inelegantly piecemeal explanation of total reality, what is found is only what can be understood in concepts, or contrived to fit in them. All concepts and theories require fashioned tools, and all tools, queerly and consistently, take on not only the shape of the thing they touch but also the mind that made them. For those who believe man is the measure of all things, this is a distinction without a difference; for the rest, it is not a question of knowledge, but the enigma of understanding itself.
It is fashionable in Natural Selection to explain how evolution, by its unguided blindness, did not prepare our mind to understand reality completely—if at all. It only wants us to survive so we may procreate. At one level this is apparent; but what is not apparent to the evolutionist is how evolution itself may be one more incomplete understanding. Thus, the evolutionist confronts the uncomfortable truths of quantum mechanics and plays the only card he has: Because it was the accidental sons and daughters of doltish apes that acquired this knowledge of limits, it is by extension of this limitation that their apishness is reaffirmed.
All men will be Puritans, even where God and metaphysics are rejected. Daily the unbeliever rises as readily as the believer and builds his convictions around an axis of habit and pretty cathedrals pews. Humility, for him, is the pride of inverse conceit, for he comprehends more in his sympathetic movements than he concedes. ~Omar
A continuing power outage confronted Aiden on his return to the house. He nevertheless set up the borrowed video equipment at his bedside for later use. In the interim, he was eager to take advantage of the remaining daylight so moved to his studio without further delay or excuse. A CD of Schubert’s piano impromptus was cued in the portable player, and he began preparing his materials for work.
The painter did not fully embrace the idea that he was an artist until he entered college. His undergraduate work was a hodgepodge of approaches, which reflected what he was exposed to in his art history survey courses. He cross-pollinated styles and epochs, first by reverse-engineering Dali, Caravaggio, and Ingres, and then combining this knowledge, in Dadaist assemblages, with Pollack’s dripped paint technique and Oldenburg-inspired cloth sculpture. It was not until his last year of graduate school that he settled into the role of “serious” oil painter, although he was never interested in current trends in contemporary painting.
Regarding his mature style, Aiden liked painting unconventional monsters. These monsters were an inspired updating of the composite style portrait created by the Sixteenth Century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo portrayed his sitters as being made out of everyday objects like vegetables, books, flowers, or fish. By comparison, the skins of Aiden’s monsters were composed of small toys, flattened egg cartons, crushed plastic bottles, or anything with a descriptive surface.
This sensibility carried over from boyhood, where early drawings of monsters evolved in the manner of elaborate maps. As his creations grew, additional sheets of paper were taped on. This desire for greater detail made his initial canvases as a young painter claustrophobic and impenetrable, which was not improved by his tendency to violate eyes, or omit them entirely. It was a challenge for the artist to balance the brain’s need for templates with his capacity for invention.
His destination as an artist proceeded from a knack for pareidolia: i.e., seeing recognizable images in circumstances where none are intended. Consequently, an associative way of thinking informed his creative pursuits. This led to a range of outcomes, both adroit and absurd. Except for connoisseurs on either end of this spectrum, it was esoteric work that attracted few admirers. Moreover the audience in one medium did not translate to another, and with each laudable reinvention of himself, the number of people who could potentially appreciate his accomplishments rapidly dwindled to one: him.
He had experienced this firsthand in the cool reception of his résumé, where his disparate achievements made him both overqualified and under-qualified for any career he should entertain. Apart from writing his own job description, there was no job to attach to what he did.
By late afternoon, daylight began to fade, but the painter’s new creation had enough foothold in the world to merit a sense of accomplishment. He returned downstairs after cleaning his brushes and spotted his calendar still lying on the kitchen table, in want of a nail. While he contemplated where to hang it, he realized, with consternation, it was his nephew’s eighth birthday.
His balancing act between unequal spheres of memory, namely between remembering items of his leisure and those of his responsibility, meant the latter was often left off. Were he to excuse himself, the forgetful uncle might blame his move from Chicago for taking him out of his routine.
Dinner required him leaving the house, so a decision was made to call Aaron from the payphone up the street. Gathering momentum, Aiden entered the dimming living room to find Brae standing in the middle of it. A dark cerise dress, like a Duvetyne curtain, had concealed her presence.
The child held up a paper sack and, with a calculated look, informed him, “I got no holes for eyes.”
The startled neighbor looked over the contents of the bag, which contained a plastic-wrapped bed sheet. Assuming Brae alluded to the makings of a Halloween costume, he concluded, “So you’re wearing a ghost suit, huh?”
Her moon face and large blue eyes hit their mark.
Prodded by a seldom-tapped paternal pang, Aiden was cajoled. “I think we can manage a couple of eye holes.”
The would-be couturier was not sure in which unpacked box he would find his scissors, and with no patience to guess, he charged to the attic to retrieve a utility knife from his toolbox. On his return he smiled affably while negotiating the bounding folds of white cotton. The fabric’s immensity made him scrutinize, belatedly, the discarded wrapper.
“Brae,” he fretted. “This is for a king-size bed, and more sheet than a little girl needs.”
The sweet child stood at his knee and watched him make two rough holes with uncritical appreciation. He pulled the cover over her head to align the holes before dropping to the floor to trim away excess material. Returning to the sofa, he playfully yanked down the eyeholes and twirled her around; Brae fumbled about before falling on his lap in a burst of giggles. It was only with her leaning forward that a bleeding cut above her ankle was noticed.
The neighbor pulled the sheet off her in a gasp. “Did I do that?”
The girl said nothing.
Aiden returned from the bathroom with a Band-aid and rubbing alcohol. He patched Brae up with effusive apologies, though it was clear she was not going to make a fuss over the injury.
Still seeking forgiveness, he left the room a second time and returned with a box of crayons kept back from childhood. They were placed on the coffee table, along with a piece of paper and a lit candle to chase away gathering shadows.
Twilight was soon on the windowsill, but Aiden was so completely under his neighbor’s vespertine spell that he did not budge. He was hard-pressed to explain what he felt, although it resembled contentment. After a while, concern over seeing the child safely home roused him from their shared company; Brae was reluctant to put down her crayon.
The host examined her drawing. “What is it?”
“An angel. I saw it in the window,” she explained.
Aiden did not press her on specifics.
Brae pushed into his leg to eye her masterpiece. Without premeditation, he reached down and pulled her into his lap in a fatherly way. She unfurled in his arms to cuddle, and he was both overwhelmed by the boldness of his move and the tenderness of her embrace. The child looked down over her knees to the bandage, feeling a natural fit in the curve of his body. Confused, he relinquished the unguarded moment and let gravity reclaim her.
He stood up with an adult’s tilting gaze, and grimaced. “It’s almost dark. Let’s put your drawing on the refrigerator.”
His new friend was escorted to the refrigerator for the gallery installation of her artwork, and then to the backdoor.
The reticent child paused in the doorway. “Can I come over in the morning and watch cartoons?”
Aiden thought on it. “The electricity may still not be on.”
Brae seemed set on the idea.
“I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”
She was satisfied.
The last of the Sun squinted through trees running along the western façade of the property. The lowest branches resembled lead solder between panes of stained glass in how they separated deepening shades of madder and lapis lazuli. The effect was one of hastening an anxious nightfall.
With Brae’s hand in his, the pair walked the leafy path to another dark house in the Quadrangle; she stepped on the stoop and pushed against a heavy unfastened door. Engulfed by shadow in the entryway, her crimson pleats glowed and drew off the bloom from her cheeks.
Aiden looked over the opaque, moribund windows of the house. “Are your parents home?”
No reply was given.
He could not account for his next question. “Is your Mommy or Daddy taking you trick-or-treating on Halloween?”
Brae’s shrug was noncommittal.
The confirmed bachelor cleared his throat. “If they can’t take you, I’ll take you. Okay?”
The girl nodded before disappearing inside the dwelling.
The neighbor backed away slowly, watching the door close and waiting for a light to switch on. When one was not forthcoming, he glanced at the mailbox. No name was on it, but a letter inside was addressed to The Caretaker of Willis Quadrangle. Brae was presumably Andrew Tommen’s daughter.
Seeing he did not know the situation of this latchkey child, he could not interfere, so turned back onto the leafy path.
Chapter Five, Section Two/ Back/ Contents Page
Copyright © 2007 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.