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The
Great Mundane
There’s
a ragtag band of misfits and private-militia maniacs headquartered
in the Army-Navy store down the street from my office, and
they’re plotting their revenge even as we speak—that’s why
I don’t have a cell phone. Oh, plus, the No. 18 bus drivers
(8:52 and 9:12 AM) would get lonely.
I’ve got nothing against the cell phone, mind you; honestly,
it’d come in handy. I understand its utility and often wish
I had one. I’d return home with the proper groceries, true.
I’d know when my friends changed plans at the last minute
and left one bar for another. But think of all I’d miss. I’d
be tethered to the home broadcast, in traffic jams and idle
moments I’d be connected to the network of my routine and
its benign dictatorship: Don’t forget the baby wipes; we’re
going to the matinee instead; what’s going on with you, here’s
what’s up with me. . . . And I’d have been bent over my phone
rather than scanning strangers, sidewalks and storefronts
while stopped at red lights. I’d have missed the sign in the
window of the Army-Navy store that tipped me off to a secret
war.
Taped over a lengthy jagged crack running from one corner
nearly to the other was a cardboard sign scrawled with an
angry legend: “First we fix—then you pay!” Can you picture
them, the proprietors, rifling through their stock, gearing
themselves up in surplus and souvenirs—jodhpurs, night-vision
goggles, side-zip boots, bayonets—readying themselves for
some freaky A-Team vigilantism? I could. One of them—an
ectomorph with a valiant attempt of a mustache and a limp
(from a childhood accident, he’d always been a clumsy kid,
or maybe he had a club foot)—would be the leader, just by
dint of his passion. No one fucks with the Fox. He’d make
diagrams, and maybe devise a secret handshake—or, better yet,
a mathematical cipher for encryption that no one but no one
could break. He’d done so much research.
Then the light changed.
Or, I’d have been busy making plans for lunch or after-work
drinks when I boarded the bus, and I’d have missed the driver’s
question: “How old are you?”
“Uh,
I’m 34,” I responded, a little tentatively, wondering if I
had to sit in some special section of the bus reserved for
Gen-Xers, an irony-and-Simpson’s-quotes zone in the
back.
“Yeah?
Thirty-four, huh? So, how’s that going?”
It was like a scene in a bad film. In a movie, that kind of
obvious setup for explication would ring false: It’s either
too convenient if the explication actually follows or too
purposely odd if it doesn’t. A scene like that is never believable—but,
in this case, it’s nevertheless true.
That’s the great beauty of wandering without the link back
to familiarity, without the implicit dramatic throughline
of your own life’s details. In a film, if there’s a guy with
an eye patch, an outrageous accent or an unlikely prosthesis,
you want, you expect, to be told why: How does it serve the
plot, how does it advance the story or contribute to our understanding
of the character? Then someone like David Lynch comes along,
refuses to play the game in accordance with its conventions,
includes details gratuitously and is hailed as some surrealist
wunderkind. When, in fact, life—daily, boring, lived life—is
odder by far. If we pay attention to the unexplained, the
peripheral, the excerpted life of others—even, or especially,
at the most mundane level—-the world around us becomes mythic
(and that’s what myths are anyway, right? Colorful and engaging
explanations in the face of an overwhelming and ultimately
unknowable reality). There’s no difference between metaphor
and reality; the plausible trumps the true.
The guy at the magazine racks at the bookstore, the seemingly
windburned guy with the overstuffed duffel bag and the soaking
wet and frayed pant cuffs? Is he just killing time waiting
for an open washer at the Laundromat? Is he a traveler, a
hobo? If he is, what magazine will he pick up? Which will
he eyeball more hungrily, Maxim or Car & Driver?
What if it’s Granta or The Paris Review? You’ll
have to switch gears—and stories—midstream.
What about the girl at the end of the bar applying for the
job that she’s already been told by the bartender doesn’t
exist (let’s not mention your insider’s knowledge that her
paychecks will likely bounce). Is she a flat-broke student
living on Ramen and generic cigarettes? A single mom recently
transplanted to the region to escape a bayou-bred husband
with a penchant for zydeco and cocaine? Is she doing it to
fulfill the requirements of her unemployment? Is she a gas
huffer? Is she a Barbara Ehrenreich wanna-be sniffing around
for exploitative work environments?
And the guy leaning crookedly on the liquor store door, howling
at the peace-rally marchers, “Go home, you commie motherfuckers!”
What’s with that guy? A veteran from a time when it was a
love-it-or-leave-it America? Or, was he left by his Korean
war bride because of his binge drinking, and now, in Grapefruit
Mad Dog-inspired fits of displaced anger and externalized
self-reproach, he voices his venom at the slightest provocation?
Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men
and women merely players.” Montaigne said, “Each man bears
the entire form of man’s estate.” The Roman playwright Terence
said, “I am human; nothing human is alien to me.” That’s what
I’ve been told, anyway. But, honestly, that’s just stuff I’ve
read. This I know for sure though: The guy teetering in front
of the liquor store yelled, “Go home, you commie motherfuckers.”
Really, what’s with that guy?
—John
Rodat
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