Segue To a Life

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “AN UNSUSTAINABLE LIFE – The Book of Darwin”

Chapter 7: Segue To a Life

Darwin and Vincent are more than brothers, they’re best friends, as inseparable as mustard on a Chicago dog or wind blowing in on the North Shore from across Lake Michigan. They grew up with mom playing second chair cello in the philharmonic so frequently attended large concert events and small intimate recitals. Dad was a psychology professor at Northwestern way more interested in planning his next adventure than mentoring graduate students or furthering his research, so Darwin and Vincent spend most holidays and school breaks off doing something interesting. It always seems, but is never really discussed, that Vincent leans toward being close to his mom and her activities while Darwin’s more naturally aligned with his father’s zest for adventure and willingness to explore anything along a road less traveled.

Because their parents were high achievers, the boys spend a fair amount of time on their own, which doesn’t justify the frequent mischief they get themselves into but does, in some small way, explain it. Like when Darwin is ten and they ditch school to ride the train down to Saint Louis to catch a Cubs game. Everything goes as planned and would have been fine had they not boarded the wrong return rail and wind up in Wisconsin somewhere around Green Bay and don’t find their way back to Chicago until well after dark. As they both enthusiastically tell and retell the tale to anyone at Saint Stanislaus’ School for Wayward Boys who will listen, they ventured victoriously into one enemy territory before invading another.

Overall, their mischief is minor and their ill-conceived adventures are not outside the bounds of boys living a mostly normal life, especially relative to their fellow classmates at the brickyard. In some regards though, it’s a bit of a miracle they turn out okay since they never work until after college, always have more money for mayhem than they need, and are never really given responsibilities other than having to be home in time for dinner; an absolute from which there can be no transgressions. As the boys grow up, dad adamantly believes they should enlist after high school, which military branch doesn’t matter, he just feels the rigor, structure, and discipline of military training prepares them for life on their own. Mom passionately disagrees and wins that argument by suggesting the boys go to adventure camp every summer where they’ll be subjected to military-like hardship. Mom also prevails in the child rearing argument about work; dad feels very strongly that young boys need jobs involving hard labor to learn about respect, commitment, and responsibility, mom counters by saying the two of them work hard so their kids can have a fun childhood, besides, they both understand that after college, it’s forty years of grinding out a life with only weekends and holidays to feel good and purposeful.

When Helen marries Byron Olinski, she’s introduced to his many family traditions, most derive from Byron’s Polish heritage, but others are unique to his family. At first, she likes that his family celebrates Christmas Eve so she can spend Christmas Day with her family. She is, however, never fully on board with their annual Christmas Oplatki ceremony but does look forward to the white borscht they eat every year after Easter mass; it’s an acquired taste for sure but once you’re initiated, you actually crave it. The one tradition Helen really struggles with is how children’s names are decided, she’s never certain if it’s a Polish tradition or Olinski obligation but either way it’s something Byron insists on. He first explains it to her while they’re dating, it’s during one of those full-discloser conversations people in love have that neither really pay attention to. She thinks he’s just joking but once Darwin’s born, she finds out how adamant Byron is and how nonnegotiable things are. Helen feels they should at least agree to a compromise when it comes to naming Vincent but is wrong on that score as well.

Naming Olinski children is a complex process based on how pregnancy goes, what’s revealed during labor, and of course first impressions with the new born. Naming a baby is a critical precursor for the direction the infant’s life takes, it’s the one element of a person’s existence where fate allows parents to play a part. According to Olinski family lore, naming a child before it’s born condemns them to a life they weren’t meant to live. Darwin drew his name from the naturalist Charles Darwin because all the parameters used in the naming process pointed to him being a thinker who would spend important moments of his life alone in nature. It’s equally clear from the parameter formula that Vincent’s on a different trajectory. While Byron never comes completely clean with Helen, his baby naming parameters point to poor Vincent being destined for a tragic ending, which is perhaps why Byron always seems to go a bit easier on Vincent.

Sammy Sosa doesn’t win the home run batting title, which means Darwin wins his bet. Technically, Darwin doesn’t name Issac so much as point out that given the parameter values in the naming formula, his nephew’s more likely to be an engineer than writer and what better name for a future engineer. From there it’s up to Vincent to decide, and of course, to convince Ilene, who like her mother-in-law before, does not believe the Olinski naming tradition is serious even though Helen warns her multiple times that not only is it real, it’s also something Vincent won’t waver from. The reason Ilene doesn’t take the tradition seriously is because she can’t believe Byron, an educated university professor, actually believes his family legend about their great grandfather Erik immigrating to America because of a curse some old gypsy puts on the family. The gypsy tells Erik’s parents immediately after birth, to name him after the great Viking explorer, Leif Erikson, because he’s destined to be a wanderer. Failure to follow her directive, she warns, condemn Erik to a life of unsatisfied frustration. No one in the family is willing to say if Erik immigrates to American because he’s a wanderer or because he wants to outrun fate, either way, this legend has passed down generation after generation since and no one really knows if the curse’s been broken and no one’s willing to take that chance.

Issac Joseph Olinski is born the day Darwin takes delivery of the Shovelhead Harley he gets from Lenny after winning their wager, which Darwin decides is a sign from God it’s time to fulfill his namesake destiny. That’s when he reaches out to a realtor with a simple set of criteria, he tells her he’s looking to find a plot of wilderness land to build an off-grid house. The plot should be large enough to grow food to sustain him year-round he specifies and being near water would be nice. He further stipulates that forested surroundings are important but even more important is isolation, no nearby neighbors, and his property should not be on the road to anywhere. He tells her he doesn’t have an upper price limit, and the place shouldn’t be too close to any towns.

Darwin isn’t sure what kind of response to expect from the realtor but an entire mountain in the New Mexico wilderness seems a bit beyond the pale, although it does meet all his criteria and what the hell else is he going to spend his blood-money on. One advantage to this property that he hadn’t considered is that it comes with an abandoned hacienda at the base of the mountain. From the photographs the realtor provides, the hacienda is in serious disrepair and likely needs to be torn down so something more structurally sound, ecofriendly, and having better off-grid capabilities can be constructed in its place. The hacienda does have an amazing kiva fireplace that probably should be salvaged and a super nice sunset courtyard. While not fully convinced he’s ready to pull the trigger, it is worth a look-see and since he’s got a new motorcycle and the nearest airport is two hundred miles south of the mountain, he might as well take a road trip.

Much gets said about the nature of decisions and the unintended way they cascade through someone’s life. Lofty scholars present lectures full of pompous pretense believing their opinions are more profound than those of a lowly drunk at the end of a smoke-filled bar arguing based on evidence that it’s kismet rather than freewill responsible for their demise. We can all look back on now obvious moments when key decisions were handed down like death sentences, not as the beginning of a journey but rather the end of a consequence. These are not stirringly momentous moments that arrive with obvious fanfare, rather, they’re life altering decisions built up from seemingly inconsequential segues that mostly go unnoticed. It’s sort of like the way an innocent drop of rain falls on Lost Luck Mountain and is joined by other displaced drops to eventually form a flow that slowly drains down the Lost Luck watershed until emerging halfway down a meadow one mountain over. Before joining forces with Kincaid Creek flowing down the Marquez Mountain watershed, Lost Luck waters meanders gently in no hurry to reach the valley floor thousands of feet below.

Once Lost Luck dumps into the faster flowing Kismet Creek at the base of the aspen grove where Calvin Kincaid built his homestead, it quickly follows gravity from the lower edge of the meadow’s northwest quadrant down the mountain in a series of cascading waterfalls until splashing onto the valley floor beside the abandoned hacienda where it widens out and gently pushes toward the Rio Grande gorge to cautiously contribute to class five rapids bursting through the Taos Box on their way to Española where they hook up with cold Colorado runoff pouring down the Chama river.

The thing about water and its relationship with nature is that through so many different stages on its journey to suburban faucets, it’s easy to overlook the drop of rain or flake of snow that starts it all. In a similar context, it’s just as easy to overlook the way cascading momentum builds over time from missed moments in your life that are filled with decisions you either conscientiously or subconsciously make or are made on your behalf with or without your consent or acknowledgment. And the thing is, it doesn’t really matter because in the torrent wall of upheaval representing your life, the tiny drops of decisions you make can’t in any way be controlled into a desired outcome. For the majority of people living their quaintly quiet existence, all they know about water is that when they turn the tap, it’s cool refreshment is delivered in a consumable form just as all they appreciate about their life choices is that no matter how bad of a shit show their living through, things can always be worse.

However, for men of purpose, men of substance, men connected to nature who value each drop of rain, the flow of water along a creek is as vital as blood cursing through one’s veins. Men of purpose and direction recognize the way drops of decision build and while they may not always know how to act, they recognize when to act. The wise ones know to ride the waves of momentum to wherever it is fate’s taking them while the more adventurous are willing to detour now and then to keep things interesting. Darwin’s decision to leave California is clearly a recognition of his need for action and as Newton so eloquently points out, once an object’s in motion, it tends to stay in motion until acted upon by an equal and opposite force.

Take this morning for example, do you sleep in because you chose to linger too long last night or is last night simply a predetermined fait accompli? In Darwin’s limited exposure to such experiences, he’s come to believe life lies somewhere in the void between freewill and fate, where pre-set decisions get governed by fate while cascading consequence is left to chance. The problem is we never really know where fate ends and consequence begins. Is our decision to turn left down a grocery store isle where we meet our soulmate a matter of fate? Probably not, it’s hard to imagine kismet cares how we shop and randomly bumping into your soulmate probably has more to do with the law of attraction than anything else, especially the law’s adjoining corollary about the present always being perfect. Unless of course perfect is something that happens in the fresh produce isle, which for Darwin is meeting the woman who came before Becky, someone he still sometimes remembers when left alone too long with only his thoughts.

Was Cesar crossing the Rubicon simply the act of a narcissists Emperor or was it manifest destiny? While that’s a question best left to philosophers and historians, what impacts Darwin as much as the drunk at the end of the bar is, do mere mortals, we immeasurable specks of dust in a vastly large cosmos, have the audacity to control fate? Is it possible for the simple act of being born on a certain date, under certain circumstances, or being given a certain name, flow the cosmic elements of fate down different water sheds of life? Could it be we’ll are born with a pre-defined destiny rather than the chaotic randomness of a marble bouncing around a Plinko board?

This is the uncertainty driving Darwin down the back roads of what once was Route 66 as he heads through Missouri hoping to make Oklahoma but sunset. So far, the Harley’s holding up and the cold is manageable, but one can’t start their ride too early in the morning or linger at all past sunset or they run the risk of frostbite. Darwin’s still undecided about tonight’s accommodations, his sense of adventure tells him to camp along his way to the wilderness of Northern New Mexico but his desire for a cozy bed and hot shower tell him otherwise. Regardless, the one thing both sides of the argument agree on is that after a hard day in the saddle, he needs a strong bourbon at the diviest bar in whatever town this is.

While hours alone on the road provide an excellent opportunity to overthink the causes and consequences bringing Darwin to this moment, he’s not in any way trying to impress his future self with the profoundness of what he’s doing. If anything, he’s trending toward Vincent’s assertion that he belongs in a mental institution, which would be a funny thing to say had their dad not ended up there after becoming obsessed with his need to create the perfect poem for Helen. What starts out as a romantic gesture ten years ago becomes an unrelenting obsession to find the words to tell his dying wife he loves her as if in some irrational way Byron believes a perfect poem can save Helen. Doctors refuse to document if it’s exhaustion caused by lack of sleep or the accompanying liquor induced episodes that cause his affliction, Darwin and Vincent choose to believe it’s the all-consuming love for his beloved wife of forty-two years. Byron and Helen don’t die together but close enough to have their funerals coincide and what everyone attending fails to fully appreciate is that the coroner should have declared that Byron Olinski literately died of a broken heart trying to write the perfect poem for the woman he couldn’t bear to live without.

This dual tragedy occurs while Darwin’s in the final stages of preparing for his dissertation defense and Vincent’s wrapping up his residency; both brothers so immersed in launching their successful lives they fail their parents at a moment of critical need, something neither talks about but can’t let go of either. This is part and parcel of the shit Darwin spends his day over-thinking, shit that’s carried past his first bourbon and deep into the second where it provides a segue for his current crisis with Becky. It’s hard to say if his life is a function of being Polish or a byproduct of a generations-old gypsy curse, but Olinski men have a profound tendency to love too strong and care too deep for their own good.

If Darwin ever found Aladdin’s lamp, he wouldn’t wish for wealth, or fame, or power, he’d ask Genie for the ability to shut his mind down whenever it starts wrapping itself around some axle; boy what he wouldn’t pay for a little of that magic right now. And of all the crazy things he could do in this moment, of all the uncharacteristic things he could say to the pretty woman smiling at him from across the bar, Darwin does what Darwin has never done before, he reaches into his backpack resting on the empty bar stool beside him and pulls out the journal he bought that cataclysmic day at Berkeley when his life went to shit.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he apologizes to the bartender, “I’m not some big thinker trying to impress anyone with the profoundness of my wit, just got a few thoughts I need to jot down.”

The bartender, not wanting to be embroiled is Darwin’s drama, shrugs his shoulders and walks to the far end of the bar without saying a word. It’s one thing to whip out a journal and pretentiously scribe in almost any California venue, but here in the cold windswept wasteland of Oklahoma, that kind of behavior can get the crap beat of ya. To make his outlandish behavior even more obscene, without forethought or malice, Darwin pulls his antique fountain pen from its protective backpack pocket and opens the journal. At this point, even the drunk at the end of the bar who’s pretty convinced fate’s the reason his life’s gone to hell, is watching cautiously, uncertain how this drama’s gonna unfold.

Below the date Darwin previously scribed in the journal the night he arrives in Chicago; he adds today’s date then slides his hand over to the section of the first page where he should begin writing. As he hovers in position, it becomes a beacon of barroom attraction so bright even the cowboys in the back of the bar playing pool stop to watch the spectacle of this out-of-town drifter attempting to write in his journal. The room draws quiet as patrons watch Darwin struggle to push pen to paper as if he’s attempting some Olympic sport where the goal of the competition is to overcome some invisible force trying to prevent your pen from making contact with the paper. As tension escalates it becomes clear to everyone that something’s gotta give and just as the final seconds of the final round of a heavy weight fight that’s seen two pugilist bloody each other beyond recognition, Darwin tosses in the towel and taps out; he slaps the journal book closed without making an entry thus ending the most drama this bar’s seen all season.

“Writer’s block?” The bartender nonchalantly says returning with a fresh bourbon.

Darwin looks up unaware of the entertainment he’s provided. “Ironic,” he stoically states, “the way the mind can be so full of things say while the body knows better than to say them.”

The bartender sets the fresh bourbon down next to the closed journal with the antique fountain pen resting on top. “This one’s on me,” he pauses to pass along the kind of visual reassurance bartenders are valued for in times of emotion distress. “Seems to me you earned it.”

“Thanks,” Darwin says forcing a flatline smile, “It’s certainly been a journey and while I do appreciate your kindness, let me get it, and while you’re at it, send one down to the guy at the end of the bar, I somehow think we’re dancing with the same demons.”

“I hope not friend,” the bartender compassionately composes, “that dude’s been lost to a dark place devoid of light for a helluva long time.”

Darwin’s drifts back to the isolation of his thoughts and the ironic way he knows the mechanics of every step; each and every obstacle and barrier that brought him here, how he can ride all day on the open road that provides an abundance of time to sort through all the “this” and “that’s,” and filter out noise and confusion, and yet, still not have a clue what the hell he’s doing in Oklahoma on his way to New Mexico. But so, what, aren’t ill-defined outcomes something to embrace, even to depend on? In the multitude of micro moments defining one’s life, how many chances for alternate endings did we have and not see, how many optional outcomes were available but not taken, outcomes that may have led to better consequences? That’s what Darwin wants to know more than anything, that’s the second wish he’d ask from Genie. How much of who we are, what we’ve become is a product of possibilities left unexplored?

Would his life be better or worse had he said no to the Chinese patsy that disastrous day at Berkeley, would he still be with Becky, would he still be trapped in a Silicon Valley life working to exhaustion on the next big something that ultimately contributes to the downfall of humanity? Hard to say and who can know, which is why Vincent has always been the wiser of the two; he believes “this” and “that’s” don’t matter because your train’s pulling into the same station regardless; the only variable open for freewill is whether or not you’re on board.

The reality is, like in all things; to gain a proper perspective we have to start with first principles. For this Darwin falls back on Occam’s Razor, otherwise known as the Law of Parsimony; a simple truth first postulated by a thirteenth century Franciscan prior to being excommunicated for practicing science. Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanation to any dilemma is the most probable. Take Darwin, or the drunk at the end of the bar for that matter, both know damn well how they wound up where we are, the only thing separating them is the degree to which they allow themselves to admit it. But to the extent that explanations exist, the best and likely most precise one is the one simply stated.

Darwin accepts that the answer to his dilemma may or may not lie in New Mexico, but the simplest way to find out is to go there and see for himself what’s what.