Dell's Journey

Chapter 18: There Are So Few Days In Our Life

 The blazing sun was sinking, and the atmosphere was

just right for a beautiful sunset. But a sunset had always

given Dell an ambiguous sensation, a paradox of joy and

despair.

"Why," pondered Dell, "do pleasures dissolve?"

1. The sunset would disappear.

2. The rainbow vanishes as some of its water particles

succumb to gravity, and the rest to the

transformations of heat.

3. The song draws to a close. The sound of the violin

wanes to levels no longer detectable by the human

ear.

4. The flavorful delicacy is swallowed and begins its

esophageal descent to the guts.

5. Women grow old and their skin becomes heavy and

inelastic.

Beauty was so transitory it could hurt.

"And why must it be?" Dell wondered, thinking bad

words.

"Because of the second law of thermodynamics. But

wait a minute! That only describes the condition, not the

cause."

Dell remembered little scraps of things he'd half

memorized in church long ago. Things about how youth, firm

muscles, and firm breasts were utterly fleeting. From what

he could piece together, these were more than sober

observations of a mechanical world. They seemed to be just

barely obscuring something incredible behind their folksy

wisdom. Dell squirmed in his seat, a visceral attempt to

attain a sacred mystery.

"Why can't I accept the world the way it is? Why do I

recoil at the world of decay? I haven't been offered any

other experiences, have I? So why do I wish for one that

is impossible to have?"

Now Dell had learned a few things in his short years.

He had discovered:

1. No one could please him

2. "Experiencing life" was a cliché

3. Staying up late, drinking beer, and making-out with

girls were not magic keys that opened the gates to

eternal bliss

4. Romantic poets did not enjoy their lives.

5. Nothing can make you happy forever.

And yet here in the clammy backseat of the bus, the hair on

his legs beginning to feel mangled by three-day-old socks,

he found himself being led somewhere, quite beyond his

control. He was floating to a bizarre place where all good

things did not come to an end. Where was it? It was not

certain. It could not be. Certainty had gone out the

window.

He drifted beyond the dull insignificance of

frustration. He drifted beyond the futility of reason.

Am I delirious?

His body was becoming rather see-through.

He stumbled into the Garden of Pleasures like a

heedless dog trailing its master. Etched in gold, the

writing on the gates read, Enter, all ye who are weary, and

I will give you rest, and, At Your right hand are pleasures

forevermore.

Was he going out of his mind? Was this a vitamin

deficiency? Was it the heat? He could look right through

his hand now and see the pale orange of the bus seat in

front of him.

Maybe his thoughts were more than blips of biochemical

activity. Perhaps his ideas were more than the random

impact of a pebble in a pool, dislodged by the careless

paws of a wandering muskrat. Perhaps his thoughts were

real.

My thoughts lead somewhere that looks like a dead-end

of futility. I sit down to bemoan my luck. But then I see

that they have merely led me to the edge of their domain,

like servants escorting me through their kingdom. They

have led me up to the border where their jurisdiction ends.

Reason dwells within a walled city. But from their roof

tops, the inhabitants of the city glimpse lands beyond

imagination.

Was this a spiritual vision? Was it something he'd

eaten at the authentic taco-cart? He could still vaguely

see Pet breathing peacefully on the seat beside him, but it

was as if from a great distance.

Dell had floated into a world of insanity where his

thoughts were actually real. He was able to apprehend the

physical world as it truly was. Such a place was beyond

the wildest dreams of anyone born in the 1980's.