Eminem will someday be on the oldies station

Boston.com posted a link on its home page to yesterday's post on actionbobmarkle on The Sheltering Sky, which I thought was kind of funny because the post basically consisted of me copying about a page and a half from the novel. I wrote a little introductory paragraph talking how the passage nailed what it's like to be a traveler and how that is the pivotal moment in the book that gives it its title.

And that was it. Funny, that an editor over there thought that was worth sharing.

Or maybe not. I'm just guessing, or maybe hoping, that the editor decided that what I wrote about that particular passage is worth something. An appreciation for the art of the novel is waning, just as the art of making an album is waning because digital downloads now let us concentrate on acquiring just one or two songs, and not an entire album. But there is that one point in a novel--a good novel, at least--where the author pulls together for sometimes only a paragraph or two all the loose ends and clarifies why the novel is called what it is, and maybe even why he wrote it. And it takes a certain kind of mind to appreciate that. Appreciating that is like enjoying going into a museum just to see one painting, which I love to do. (If I'm in the area, I'll go into the Boston MFA just to sit in the Buddha room for awhile, or I would sit and gaze on Gauguin's Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? at least I used to until they put it in storage.)

Once, I absolutely floored Allison when she was maybe nine or 10 years old when I told her that Eminem would someday be on the oldies station. True. Someday, everything ends up on the oldies station. And I guess that's where we are with novels right now. With all the "new media" out there, readers are going by the wayside. I remember showing my blog to a very hip young woman at the ad agency I used to work at, and her first, very fast initial response was a reaction against all the words. Who's gonna read all that, she wondered.

Say this in your best old fart voice: These young kids today don't appreciate a good book. Or geography or history or painting or anything else, including that meanderings of the mind of a blogger.

Well, not true. It's all changed and morphed. The responsibility, I think, lies with the younger generation to not leave behind the art of the novel. Or of painting or the theater or any of the other cultural traditions. Move forward, but preserve the traditional forms, too. Time and society move forward, and by moving forward I simply mean in time, I don't mean to infer necessarily that things are getting better, they're just changing. Let future generations be the judges of the quality.

But as society moves through time, there's more culture to embrace and understand. Understandably, how can a novel that needs so much time and energy to read and comprehend compete with a movie or a video game or Facebook or the latest shenanigans of pop stars. But there is something inherently wrong with leaving it by the wayside. There is a beauty and a connection to today's world that shouldn't be lost because, and here's a huge cliche but it's true: You'll never know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

There always will be fear

I know this is going to sound a little weird, but hang with me. Okay?

I got this dog, okay? Now wait! I told you this was weird; just hear me out, that’s all I’m asking.

So, I got this dog, right? And like all dogs, he can’t see colors. But just because he can’t see colors doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Of course they exist, right? You and I can see them everywhere. His species just isn’t advanced enough to see them. Give dogs thousands of more years, eons, I don’t, whatever it takes for dogs to advance enough to see colors—or maybe more since they’ll have to stop a lot to pee on everything—give them enough time to trot down the old evolutionary pathway and eventually they’ll sniff their way to colors. Right now they’re Cro-Magnon dogs. But with a little luck and some Darwinian hocus-pocus maybe someday they’ll be Homo sapien dogs, capable of seeing colors, owning credit cards, and forming governments. So, my question to you is this: What if we’re the same way? You and me. People. What if there are things, just things, anything, like colors are to dogs, that we can’t see because we’re not advanced enough as a species to see them?

Okay, let’s take it a bit farther. Let’s say you’re a guy and I’m a guy and I see you coming down the street, unaware, happy, and defenseless? Maybe you are in love, and you’re thinking of your sweetheart and how you’re going to see her tonight. And what if, then, I grab you and drag you into an alley and start hitting you? What if I make my hand into a fist and punch you as hard as I could, right dead center in your face and break your nose, and then I hit you some more, harder and harder again and again so I blacken both your eyes and knock out your front teeth and break your jaw and make your ears bleed? And what if when you fall down from me beating you, I start kicking you, in the ribs, in the stomach, wherever I can reach you? And what if I keep going? What if I pick up a garbage can and empty it all over you. And when it’s empty, I throw it at you, and hit you in the head with it, knocking you out?

What if I did all that to you?

First, you would feel pain. Lots and lots of real physical pain, and probably for quite a while the pain would be a large part of your life. And because of the injuries I inflicted on you, you wouldn’t be able to eat, or smile, or talk or walk or move for a long time without being in pain. But you would heal, sort of, eventually. You wouldn’t look the same, though. Your nose would be bent, your teeth capped, scars would line and pucker the skin on your face. Maybe you could never smile quite right again—it might be slightly crooked, one side never really working because of damage to the nerve. Maybe you’d have an underlying, nagging pain in your hip every time it was going to rain. Or maybe you would be numb, and not feel the way you did before you encountered me. And you would be very leery about walking down the street alone, maybe for the rest of your life.

But thankfully, for this, I could be arrested and put in jail so I would be separated and not able to do this again to someone else, and I would be labeled a thug and a criminal because this is something we, this advanced species that we are that can see colors, have said we can’t do to each other simply because we are indeed an advanced, civilized species.

Now what about this. What if you’re a woman and I’m a man and you see me walking down the street. And let’s say you noticed I was a little down, a little depressed and so you smile at me to cheer me up. And then I smile back at you. And then maybe we started talking, just small talk, and found it was enjoyable, and one was enjoyable to the other. And maybe one night, a kiss was stolen, and then another and another. And at some point you told me you loved me and never wanted to leave me. And you told me I was the handsomest man in the world. That you’ve never met anyone like me. That you’ve waited all your life for me. And what if I believed you all of this? What if all of this was as real to me as the color red?

And what if you wrote me pages and pages of love letters, single-spaced, double-sided, no cross outs, and called me your love, and your darling, and your soul mate, how you wanted to walk with me hand in hand together for the rest of your life, and you sent these letters to me at my office so my wife wouldn’t see them, and saying all of that again and more in email, like what you think and feel when I’m with you?

And because of all of the things you said and did, for all that, I completely changed my life. I quit my job, left my family, moved to another city, and spent all my money to be with you, tens of thousands of dollars.

And what if, after me believing you, what if suddenly, for no apparent reason, you took away everything you had said and done. What if you strung me along for months, knowing how I felt about you and you not feeling the same but just continuing on. You’d mete out a little affection here and there. Just enough to keep me alive. But my soul, if you could have seen it, would have been just skin and bones. My heart barely beating.

What would happen? What would I be like?

You know what I’d be like. You would know because there’s a very good chance something like this has happened to you. Maybe not to this extreme, but something like this has happened to just about all of us. Every one of us has been beaten up emotionally, sometimes very severely. Every one of us has had someone treat us as if we were nothing more than garbage. Something that once was something good, then something to be thrown away.

Friends would tell me to forget about you, just like that, as if nothing ever happened. They would say, move on. Be a man. But you, you reader, you know I couldn’t. Because somewhere, some part of us we can’t see right now would look just like the way I left your physical body in that alley: hurt, broken, covered with garbage, left for dead. I would be feeling real physical pain, as much as you felt after the beating I gave you. I would barely be able to move. And I might heal, sort of, eventually. But I wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t be able to love the way I did. Or trust. Or feel. There are things that I might not ever be able to feel again. I’d never believe again. And there always would be fear.

But even though we can feel real physical pain and all the signs tell us that indeed there is something there that has been badly if not mortally injured, this is not deemed a crime because we can’t see physical damage of the assault. We still can’t see the part that got hurt just like a dog can’t see color. But just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean there isn't something there, some real piece of us, that got mortally wounded.

You would not be arrested for cruelty and brutality. You would not be considered a thug or a criminal. You would be allowed to wander among your fellow creatures and do this again and again and again. And there is a very good chance that you would continue to do this again and again, because just like the common criminal lives to commit crimes, beating people up emotionally is what you live to do.

I’m wondering if eons from now and with a little Darwinian hocus-pocus, if there will be a world where dogs can see colors, we’ll finally be able to see this part of us, and the likes of you would be deemed the criminal and thug that you are, and punished accordingly?

Who the heck is Action Bob Markle?

Bob Markle is the title character of a novel I’m working on. He’s an almost over-the-hill, almost jaded copywriter in the firm of Busby and Associates owned by Oliver Busby. Ollie was a writer, but his writing career was cut short when his father, the real Busby in Busby and Associates, up and died and left the whole shootin’ match to his son. Ollie actually brought the firm to national prominence due in large part to the creative work of Markle, whose cynicism and unwavering belief in his fellow human beings kept the firm honest and on track during its early years.