INTRODUCTION
“A universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind capable of understanding it.” ~John Barrow
The way out of animalism was arduous and, ironically, it was still in an arduous age, before the industrial machine assumed his labor, that Man achieved his fullest liberation from it. The prize was self-awareness itself: of a mind that was coextensive with the Universe it envisioned and indispensable to its existence. Therefore, a pinnacle of understanding occurred early on, when essential truth was sought in firelit caves and bore the character of a firsthand acquaintance.
The way out of animalism was arduous and, ironically, it was still in an arduous age, before the industrial machine assumed his labor, that Man achieved his fullest liberation from it. The prize was self-awareness itself: of a mind that was coextensive with the Universe it envisioned and indispensable to its existence.
Therefore, a pinnacle of understanding occurred early on, when essential truth was sought in firelit caves and bore the character of a firsthand acquaintance.
Explanations were born of a need to master monsters, even though few monsters were left as threats. The fear was nevertheless residual and deep-wired, and like the weapon-making reflex, still in the memory of the hand if not the hand itself.
In nightmares—of falling out of trees, or being awakened by tigers where dying embers of a campfire lose their power to deter—the cave came to revisit the dweller who once inhabited it.
Salted clouds encroached on the yellow-pink light of December. Shadows of the late day, in places, resembled trenches or open graves, and merited wary examination where the pedestrian happened upon them unprepared.
The singe of whooshing torches and clang of cowbells preceded him to the city square. He looked through dissipating smoke in the direction of a commotion and saw a raucous procession of twisted horns and cloven feet gallivanting from curb to curb.
A lissome Saint Nicholas, attired in crimson robe and miter, officiated as grand marshal over a noisy Krampus parade, and provided the only splash of color that was not of incendiary intent. He waved his scepter approvingly at “good children” gathered along the sidewalk, while his entourage of shaggy demons stoked their cart-drawn cauldron and taunted those scions deemed naughty.
Like the ballast of a swinging curtain, a trailing spectator cleared the intersection and left a second Santa (one of a rental variety) alongside a Salvation Army kettle. A light snow (or dandruff) peppered the sleeves and shoulders of his red felt coat.
The traveler winced at his slicing bell.
“Look at that skinny Santa!” the man howled (referring to his gaunt counterpart carried along by the costumed cortège). “No one is paying attention to him! He’s a backdrop! It’s all about the Devil and his minions! The Christians took the solstice away from the pagans, and now they want their holiday back!”
A Bible crammed with gum wrapper bookmarks was spotted in one of the fellow’s fleece-lined pockets.
“What are we celebrating, anyway?” the ruddy-cheeked preacher bemoaned. “What happened to ‘Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men’? Instead, we are giddy over demons, as if, by embracing those who would roast us on a spick, we sufficiently poke God in the eye! It’s like the mindless daughter who dates the motorcycle thug because her daddy disapproves of him!”
Liam dashed unmolested up the street, and was soon warming himself under a ceiling furnace in The Blue Thistle Cafe.
With a cup of the house brew in tow, and a bearing, a stool overlooking the street was sought. There he sipped his drink coarsely while his thoughts skated distractedly over the sizzle of thick-sliced bacon and barely audible Chopin behind the register.
He was not long in contemplation when a peculiar gentleman rose from a back booth. By his costume, it was thought he was part of the holiday proceedings outside, but intention emanated from his movements when he stopped halfway to the door to fling the flap of a redlined cape over his shoulder. This action exposed the cuff and cufflink of a formal black jacket. His hair was streaked white at the temples, which provided contrast to his dusky complexion.
Sharing a view of the street, he commented, “You did not anticipate the sea.”
“Sea?” The traveler, having repeated the word, looked to his shoe on feeling the man’s cane tap its toe.
“Those topsiders will not work on the sandy shore,” he explained.
Prodded by caffeine, the other veered into the conversation. “I am not a tourist.”
“A pilgrim, then?”
This description merited eye contact.
“Unpreparedness strips one of pretense,” elaborated the questioner. “A genuine seeker of forgiveness leaves everything behind.”
The listener fidgeted, thinking this intruder on his solitude another proselytizer.
The polished knob of the walking stick rose and gestured at a clock above the two men; it was missing an hour hand. “That clock has been like that for as long as I have frequented this place,” the gentleman declared. “When you get to be my age, the hands fall off one by one. First the hour does not matter, and then the minute, and finally… Well, one learns to get on without much regard for clocks.”
There was suddenly less light along the street to direct shadows, like those of Druid stones, to some purpose. The traveler guessed it was coming on five.
“Are you an artist?” the interlocutor next asked.
Perhaps a splatter of paint on his shoe betrayed this detail of the painter’s life.
“Your napkin,” blurted the sleuth. “It has been assiduously refolded around the impression of a coffee ring. Eight folds are as many as one may reasonably put in a napkin to accommodate the outline of a circle.”
The napkin was half-hidden under discarded packets of aspartame sweetener. Two corners of it were visible and suggested, in its remainder, a completed octagon. The artist revealed the coffee ring that had supplied the template, and confessed, “I am a portraitist. What’s your profession?”
The sinewy man looked to a nearby bulletin board. A poster tacked to corkboard announced the presentation of a renowned hypnotist at the local municipal auditorium: The Great Redolfo.
“Are you a mind reader, also?” seemed a reasonable question.
“One more likely reads body language than minds.”
“Then you cannot tell me why I have color on my mind on such a grey winter’s day?”
He was informed. “I have deuteranopia, which is a form of color blindness where one confuses green with red and yellow.”
The painter wondered at this simple confession. “I am not color blind,” he reported, “but isn’t it uncanny? I am having difficulty distinguishing a range of colors, and the first person I speak to on the subject is color blind. My running into you is a ripe coincidence.”
“I do not believe in coincidences,” countered the hypnotist dryly.
“If it is not coincidence, then what is it?”
“I would name it design.”
“Design?”
“Fate,” the man hastened to add, “if you find that term less disagreeable.”
“Design implies a designer,” quibbled the other. “Isn’t every conspiracy born of the need to anthropomorphize the unknown?”
“Is the tendency of intelligent creatures to seek intelligence mere conceit?”
The traveler rejoined, “We quickly forget the parts of our experience that don’t add up, and concentrate on the bits that fit. We all like a good story.”
“This is true,” answered the hypnotist. “However, among the incongruent parts that don’t add up is how the other parts do. For example, if gravity were stronger, or weaker, by even a few degrees, then stars could not form. Planets could not become trapped in stable orbits around them to produce life—even life that comes to reflect on its uncanny good fortune.
“I do not deny the appeal of uncanny occurrences: Omne ignotum pro magnifico.”
“Ah!” the gentleman chortled, translating the Latin. “Everything becomes commonplace by explanation. Or, to put it another way, where one is unable to imagine chains of explanation, the miraculous is inserted to appease a lazy intellect. However, because the diligent intellect sees demystification as its business, it rashly concludes that the unknown is as demystified as the known once nothing is left to productively occupy it. I would argue there is nothing more miraculous than what is taken for granted.”
“I don’t know if, in what you tell me, I should look for messages in the coffee grounds at the bottom of my cup. Must personality bear on it?”
The reply was swift. “Evolution is regularly reified and assigned intelligent motives where, as a blind process, it cannot form motives.”
“I cannot deny hypocrisy in substituting all-knowing science for all-knowing religion.”
The stranger smiled at this modicum of concession, but would not gloat. He spoke past his stare out the window. “Milton said, rightly I believe, that luck and opportunity are the residue of design. Luck and opportunity would be impersonal terms to characterize uncanny facts where one attaches no intrinsic value to them. Yet if one attaches value to anything, one speaks impersonally about nothing.”
Copyright © 2008-2022 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.