The Knowledge that We Dare Not Express
It’s shortly before noon when I step out into the intersection, breathing in fumes and listening to a tintinnabulation of jackhammers. I am a city boy at heart, so I suppose this is why I am here, in the middle of downtown, in a major city. This one is in Canada. It’s a teeming and modern metropolis with great restaurants and fabulous architecture. Its city planners have kept up with the latest trends. For instance, people here are permitted to walk diagonally as well as perpendicularly in the intersection. So—who said that progress has become impossible? Still, for the most part, this city could be any city, anywhere. You must still walk within the lines.
Everyone’s in a hurry today. Everyone has suitable attire. Everyone is staring fixedly ahead, trying to filter everyone else out. Everyone, that is, except me. I’m in jeans and sandals. I’m unemployed. I’m just down here wandering around. I have been idle, but not to worry. My mind has been hard at work. I’ve been thinking like crazy.
Mostly, I’ve been thinking about nuclear extinction. I find that it’s on my mind again these days. Well, I’m not actuallythinking about it. That’s not the right word. I’m sensing nuclear extinction. And there’s something else—I sense that you are thinking about it, too, even if you aren’t saying so. It is a thought that arises from deep within our collective unconscious. I experience it personally as a tightening at the back of my scalp; you may experience it differently. Regardless, extinction is all around us, and we all know it. We just don’t say it. It is in the air. It is a tasteless, odorless gas.
No, I can’t prove it! I just know it, that’s all! Extinction is a presence that surrounds us. And I don’t have to prove it—you already know damned well that what I’m saying is true! Each time any one of us takes a breath these days, we inhale death.
Though, then again—I suppose, I could be wrong. Right? I mean, judging from what I see all around me, there’s no reason to assume that everyone is secretly thinking, “My God! It’s Hammer Time! This is it! Global annihilation!” People are much too nonchalant. Everyone I see is hard at work, applying himself to the task. Life goes on. Right now in the enormous high rise buildings that tower overhead —“stratified living” is what the realtors call it—people are making love in cuboids that they think of as bedrooms, and babies are being conceived. Off in the distance, out of sight, a siren warbles and its sound ricochets down the concrete canyons of this teeming and modern metropolis with great restaurants and fabulous architecture. Somebody who is old is strapped down in it, probably. He is being raced to an emergency room. Or maybe it’s somebody not-so-old, somebody my age. This could be theoretically possible, I suppose, albeit extremely unlikely.
Somewhere, a few blocks from here, there is a courtroom, and in it a man is being sentenced to ten years. I don’t recall for what. Something very bad, though. Something terrible. Somewhere, in the shadows of a rat-infested hotel nearby, a prostitute is turning a trick. She is staring at the ceiling in silence, observing the progress of a bug inching its way carefully across a crack. Somewhere, someone is falling in love. Somewhere, somebody is trying to hire a hit-man. Somewhere, in one of these buildings that tower all around me, a puppy is ruining a new pair of shoes. Somewhere, a husband is beating his wife. Somewhere, a wife is about to stab her husband. Somewhere, somebody is listening to a debt collector scream at him on his answering machine. The voice is threatening him with ten years or more. Somewhere, somebody in a partitioned office complex has just shouted, “Wow!” The room has twelve people in it, all hard at work, all staring at computer monitors stationed on twelve gunmetal gray desktops. “Wow! I just made three million dollars!” he shouts again. Somewhere, somebody has just withdrawn the last two thousand dollars he has in his account; at least he showed the foresight to set aside two hundred bucks. That’s for the revolver whose chamber holds a bullet with his name on it.
Hey! What do you expect? Everybody is always telling me that I’m on one big perpetual downer, and the people who read my columns have come to expect no less. And what I say is true. I mean, that’s life for you in the big bad city. Somewhere, these things are happening. And everyone, I do mean, everyone, without exception, is pissed off. Everybody is angry about something. Everyone is furious. You can see it etched in their faces as the light turns green and they step out into the intersection going in one of six possible patterns. Everyone is pissed off, all right. It’s just that no one knows exactly about what.
That’s where I come in. I happen to possess ESP. Don’t envy me. It hasn’t made me a dime so far. It’s vastly overrated and I just end up with a pounding migraine at the end of the day from sensory overload. If you must covet at all, I’d advise you to secretly desire some other skill. But I will share with you what the vibrations this morning disclose. This morning happens to be very interesting. What’s intriguing is the absence of certain thoughts. Not a single person in this intersection—and there must be five hundred people—is thinking, “Any day now, any minute now, BOOM! There goes the entire planet! Hammer Time! Armageddon! Apocalypse Now! Come On, Baby, Let’s Do the Twist!” Whatever…
I have to be honest with you here. I’m a trained professional. I do more than just read minds. I am specially trained to sense what people are feeling in the backs of their minds. And let me tell you, this ability is ten times worse! Because, you see, I know the truth, and the truth is that behind the vapid ongoing stream of cognitive trivia that people call Life, everyone is suffering. It is a silent suffering that in a congested city such as this is very akin to that Edvard Munch painting, “The Scream.” In the blank interstices of silence and non-thought, everyone is screaming bloody murder! We are all suffering from knowledge, you see, that we dare not express. It is a very painful condition.
An ineffable solemnity has crept into the world. People aren’t really pissed off anymore. Not here. Not in Iraq. Not in Iran. Not in Chechnya, Not in Peoria. Not really. Everyone is just going through the motions. I mean, people have to do something. Right? But the truth is—there’s no longer time for such trifles as indignation and wounded pride (which are at the root of ninety percent of our anger and one hundred percent of our rage). What we are, if you really want to know, is terrified. Helpless and terrified. We just don’t dare say it aloud. What good would it do? So, we all hold our breaths, stare fixedly ahead, and step out into the intersection. The world isn’t angry. It’s holding its breath.
Well, so long, then, darling, it’s been wonderful ….It’s been great knowing you,brother…Good luck to you, Comrade!... Step forward, Prisoner 15673895 ...See you around campus…בטלהיים, אבי רצון, אביעד פוהורילס [1] … See you around the hood… المجانية من الإنجليزية إلى العربية على , [2] Sons and Daughters...©®™$,%,#@$, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board… and BOOM!
There! I’ve said it. Everyone is always saying that I’m on one big perpetual downer. Just don’t envy me the ESP, OK?
As the light changes, I see five hundred people living utterly hollow and futile lives stepping out into the intersection, and I know that inwardly they are haunted. We are all haunted now by what we know, but dare not say.
And so it occurs to me. This being the end and all, maybe I should call my son. I haven’t had contact with him in over five years because of a permanent restraining order. Maybe this is a good time. You know, I could just give him a little jingle from a payphone off an exit on the Freeway. There’s no way they could catch me, is there? I mean, what could possibly come of it, this close to the end? Maybe I could tell him that I never stopped loving him. There are those five “Happy Birthday’s” that I never got to say. I could tell him that he always remained in my thoughts and, deeply, in my heart. Hell, at least I could say farewell!
Sure enough, that’s what I’m going to do! The first thing tomorrow morning!
Then the light turns red and I come to my senses.
[1] Just letters that I made up.
[2] Just letters that I made up
David E. Reiser, MD
David E. Reiser is a writer and physician. His books and articles in the 1980s addressed medicine's urgent need to make education and patient care more humane. Along with others, he quietly changed the way students are taught throughout the world. The New York Times described his book, Medicine as a Human Experience, as a textbook that revived "a long-lost skill" in physicians--"compassion."
In 2000, David lost his only son to Parental Alienation Syndrome. "Before my divorce in 2000," he says, "I had never been charged with anything worse than a speeding ticket...They threw me in jail and dragged me into a courtroom handcuffed, weeping, and manacled to a chain. The proceeding required less than ten minutes. I never saw my son again... I'm no 'expert.' I'm just one more broken man. I hope to do something positive with what is left of me. My resume is one line long--I am a father who lost the most beloved person in his life--my son. I do what I can now, not because I'm noble, but because I have no choice. I try to do the right thing because I sense that this is my only hope. My ideals are all that, in the end, they couldn't take from me. I refuse to accept a world where hatred routinely prevails over love, and where the destruction of our children is viewed as simply the cost of doing business. I'm no saint. I'm dazed and terrified. I'm not sure what "God" even means, and I'm sure as hell no hero. But I will stand up to any legal system, hateful mob, or totalitarian regime whose code of ethics is built around cruelty, power, and lying; and whose only god is money."
1 Comments:
you said it brother.......:(
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