WALDEN POND

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “An Unsustainable Life – The Book of Darwin”

Chapter 4: Walden Pond

Vincent returns to the living room looking like man who’s somehow managed to finish the Chicago marathon. “Ilene sends her regrets but has gone to bed.” He walks to the glass top table in the dining room to fix a drink. “Get you anything?” he shouts while building his gin & tonic.

“I’m good,” Darwin answers. “Helped myself to a bourbon while you were gone.”

“Good.” Vincent joins Darwin in the living room, flopping down on the avocado-colored couch. “I’m not gonna lie, being with a pregnant woman is like riding the roller coasters at Six Flags nonstop for nine months.” He takes a drink then adjusts to a more comfortable position. “It’s best you don’t talk to her about any of the heavy duty shit you’re dealing with. There’s no upside to letting her get worked up like that.”

“Fair enough. I didn’t think what I was saying was that frightening, but then again when you live with it every day it just becomes part of your deal. Probably a bit like you seeing someone opened up and gushing blood all over. I’d pass out.”

“Most first year med students do. Those don’t are future surgeons.”

“Was it Adventure Camp?”

“What?”

“Was it because of Adventure Camp you didn’t pass out the first time you saw someone opened up? Ya can’t unsee what we saw there.”

“Be hard to say that wasn’t a contributing factor. Of course, all those hunting trips dad took us on helped a lot too, lots of blood and guts there.”

“I hope at least you diced up you’re first cadaver without getting hungry?

Vincent takes his time taking a taste. “Why would a cadaver do that?”

“You honestly don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“When you shot your first deer. We walked over to him lying in the grass at the edge of a corn field and we’re all excited for ya, only you’re understandably quiet. When I lift up his head to count the points, dad asks how you feel and the first thing out of your mouth is you’re hungry.”

“Oh. Yeah. I try to forget about that. I only said I was hungry because just before taking the shot, I’m thinking about how we’d been sitting in that blind for hours without food. The shock of watching you play with his head made me regurgitate the last thought I had. Keep in mind, I was only twelve and it was my first deer.”

Darwin laughs. “Dad never let you forget it, did he, too much entertainment value. He liked to joke about that being the moment he knew you’d become a medical doctor; anyone that indifferent to death has their profession predetermined.”

“Like I said, I was only twelve. But given we’re on the topic of moral crisis, I don’t believe you finished your mea culpa.”

Darwin takes a slow sip of bourbon and repositions himself in the sacred La-Z-Boy before restarting. “Eventually I leave the Faculty Club. It’s unclear how long I wander around campus in my quasi-comatose state. I vaguely remember passing the Campanile and sitting alone in Bancroft Library before making his way to Etcheverry Hall where I hope to find my friend and fellow Shadow Dancer. I’m uncertain how long I wait or even if I do, but the next thing I know I’m wandering aimlessly along Telegraph Avenue. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Berkeley or Telegraph Avenue but if I had been anywhere else, a good Samaritan would have interceded. There though, lost souls wandering in utterly despondent confusion is not out of the ordinary.”

Vincent laughs. “We got this dude in pediatrics who came from Berkeley. If everyone there is like him, I completely get what you’re saying. This guy’s somewhere between a surfer-dude and an extra in a Cheech & Chong movie.”

“Okay, clearly you get it. What I desperately need as I walk the crowded sidewalk is a moment of isolated solitude, only that’s not gonna happen on Telegraph Avenue. Instead, I wander into Rasputin’s record shop and mindlessly thumb through used vinyl until I eventually reawaken. I leave without a purchase and cross the street to a sidewalk café. You know the kind a place, the flowery fluorescence of fresh baked focaccia bread mingling with subtle lofts of exhaled cannabis and the constant hissing of espresso machines keep engineering students alert through one more project deadline. I’m thinking maybe a double espresso might restart my brain and I no more than sit down when a homeless man with tattered clothes, unkept hair, and a food-stained beard stops his grocery cart beside me and starts his solicitatory speech.

“Normally I give a couple bucks to those less fortunate but today I find myself staring ironically at this homeless vagrant. I mean here stands a guy with nothing, asking a guy who just made a ridiculous fortune to share an insignificant bit of whatever spare change he might have, not knowing the rich man just sold his soul. So, how can a guy who owns everything he has but has nothing, be asking a guy who’s just lost everything that matters for anything?”

Vincent takes a drink. “That kind of crap is the reason why I don’t want you talking to Ilene.”

“I get ya.” Given Ilene’s unnatural way of just appearing, he looks cautiously around to make sure there are no repeat performances. “This homeless man has become my metaphor although I’m not all together sure if he’s tied to my past or my future. All I know is that like him, I can’t go home. Can’t face my co-workers either. After what I’ve done I can’t ever share any of what happened with anyone, especially other Shadow Dancers. In fact, I told myself I wouldn’t even share what happened with you.” Darwin twirls his glass to fully blend melted ice with remnants of bourbon. “I’m not sure why I said that, talking to you is the same as talking to myself, so technically, I still haven’t ever told anyone.

“Anyway, there I am, staring at this homeless man feeling as utterly lost and alone as him, the only difference is I have no hope for absolution. That’s the moment I know I have to get out. There simply is no other option. To where I haven’t a clue. I can’t go to Boeing and it’s not because of Becky. Everything there would be too much like Berkeley and the outcome likely the same. I need more than out of Silicon Valley, out of California, I need out of technology. Out of access to anything that might ever make me responsible for anything ever again.

Vincent scoffs. “I doubt that dude. It’d be like me saying I should get out of medicine. You can change locations. You can change jobs. You can change pretty much anything about your world, except what’s in your soul. Mark my words, you can run and hide all you want, but you can’t escape being tied to technology. If you don’t find technology in your future, technology will find you.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just not ready to say you’re right. I consider my next move from a thousand complex angles. I could maybe wander the world with the lost and lonely. Live in Paris under an assumed identity. Build a boat to float from harbor to harbor never staying anywhere long enough to be remembered. Absolutely anything anywhere that keeps me out of the embrace of technology’s subtle seduction. As each scenario is assessed and summarily dismissed, the one quietly waiting its turn is the one that’s been in my queue since college; buying a beat-up old pickup and moving way back into the Rockies to live a Walden Pond existence. That’s a life I can rally around. It’s what motivated me to study Thoreau in the first place. He’s a guy who had plenty to say and he said it in the right ways.

“I recall a Thoreau quote that seems apropos for the moment. It goes something like, ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.’

“A plus for you,” Vincent teases. “I remember Father Jan teaching Thoreau. He was a strange old bird, wasn’t he? Hard as hell. Remember the time he made Lenny stand in the brickyard all afternoon in January for saying the Pope could make mistakes the same as the rest of us. I wouldn’t say he broke Lenny, don’t know that anyone could, but he certainly learned not to mess with Father Jan in January. The thing I’ve always wondered about Thoreau is, what’s the difference between his wilderness cabin and being in town. Okay, sure, he didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, but neither did anyone else back then. Seems like he was always hobnobbing in social circles, so he’s not really living in isolation either. I get the philosophy slant, but the wilderness part I think is overdone.”

“Things are different when you’re in the wilderness.” Darwin counters. “For one thing, every little crisis has to be dealt with on your own. I’m talking the kind of shit folks in towns don’t have to worry about. Thoreau kept journals that ultimately became, On Walden Pond. I don’t know about you, but I still carry my copy whenever I go camping or venture off to be alone. I have more to say about that, but it has to wait because at this moment, I’ve just made a life altering decision based on my homeless man metaphor. I’m manically moved to some kind of motivation. I hurry next door to a used bookshop where the musty odor or well-read books hits me like intellectual smelling salts. The store’s overstocked with random hard and soft bound thoughts wrapped in the wonderfully pungent presence of pressed paper pointing to the profoundness one feels when losing themselves in rows of floor-to-ceiling bookcases constructed from old world walnut and seasoned oak. A bit like the library at Saint Stan’s before they “modernized” it.

Vincent nods in agreement. “The guy who authorized that should have be excommunicated.”

“Right.” Darwin concurs. “I watch with wonder at the ease in which the shopkeeper finds whatever eclectic request a customer makes. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of order or structure to his collection and yet, he finds any book on any subject in a matter of moments.

“I take my time wandering up and down multiple rows on both sides of the center isle looking for Thoreau. I search through a section that presents as philosophy, but Thoreau’s not to be found. I stumble on another section on travel but he’s not there either. I pull an oddly out of place book from the travel shelf because it catches my eye, it’s ‘A 1001 Arabian Nights’, which isn’t literally about travel but in an odd Dewey Decimal sort of way, could be travel adjacent. I leaf through the book, it’s old, like hundreds of years old, and worn, like some old cowboy carried it in his saddle bag. I gently placed the book back and slide down the row to a section vaguely associated with home improvement thinking maybe Thoreau will be there since his book has a lot to do with building his cabin, but it’s not there either.

“As the shopkeeper hurries down the center isle with a customer in tow, I ask for help. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, would you happen to have a copy of On Walden Pond?’ The shopkeeper blows by me because he’s deeply focused on his current customer and can’t be bothered. Several steps later though, he stops and turns around. He takes a step or two back, keenly sizing me up and says, ‘been awhile since anyone’s asked me that’. Slowly, or maybe I should say hesitantly, he takes another step toward me, stopping one row short of contact. He glares deep into my eyes the probing way mom would do when she’s trying to figure out which one of us did whatever we’re both denying. His stare is so intense I’m forced to step back. ‘Not many people interested in what Thoreau has to say these days,’ he finally says. ‘But yes, I got a few copies.’ He points down the row I was about to search, and like it’s supposed to be obvious says ‘they’re in the section on edible plants.’

“Before I have a chance to ask him what the hell Thoreau’s doing in edible plants, he wheels around and heads back toward wherever the hell he’s going with his current customer in pursuit. For an old man this shopkeeper moves fast and with a lot of authority. Kind of like Brother Bob did when he played brickyard soccer with us during recess.”

“Wow.” Vincent interjects. “Been a helluva long time since I thought about Brother Bob. I don’t know if you know, but he never got to seminary. It’s a shame really, he was very devoted. Makes ya wonder how God picks the players on his team.”

Darwin drinks the last of his bourbon. “Not sure I can answer that any better than find my book. The thing about this bookstore is knowing the row and knowing the location turns out to be two vastly different things. It’s like being told there’s a treasure floating somewhere in the Pacific, good luck finding it. Anyway, I go down one side of the shopkeeper’s row without finding any copies of Thoreau let alone any books on edible plants. I’m about to try the other side when he’s suddenly back, ‘You’re probably wondering what Walden Pond has to do with edible plants’, he says. ‘I assure you, there’s a method to my bookkeeping madness.’

“‘I’m not seeing it.’ I tell him. Now I’m frustrated and given everything that’s happened that day, not in the mood to be messed with. So, he says, ‘That’s because you look with your eyes.’ My first thought is, what the hell kind of messed up shit is that? I stare at him all hard and grizzly like we used to do to those east coast kids at Adventure Camp whenever they messed with us. Well, he’s having none of that. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he laughs. ‘I get off going Yoda on people.’

“Then, without even looking, he steps into my row and pulls out an old hardbound book from the exact spot I just searched. He hands it to me and says all casual and all ‘if you’re gonna lead a self-sustaining life, you gotta know about edible plants.’

“At this point I know damn well he’s screwing with me and just as I’m about to say something, he again starts staring at me with mom’s unrelenting intensity before disappearing to the front of the store with his current customer. At this point he’s deep inside my head the same way Jerry the Jerk Jurkowski, would get inside the heads of opposing team players back in the day. Before I have a chance to fully examine my treasure though, the shopkeeper returns with a box of hardbound books and says, ‘thought you might like these.’ He stands there all quiet and all, like I’m supposed to be impressed by a box of books. When I’m not, he adds, ‘anyone asking about Thoreau ought to want these.’

“I take a closer look. There’s like a dozen or so books and they’re all identical, which leaves me wondering what the hell would I want with a dozen identical books. Here’s where it gets weird, he says back to me, ‘not Walden Pond, but you’ll need these where you’re going.’

“It’s a bit spooky the way this old man’s talking, I mean how the hell does he know anything about where I’m going? I pick up one of the books and flip through the pages. ‘They’re blank,’ I tell him and he gets this giant shit-eaten grin and says, ‘cause they’re journals.’ He stands there grinning for a minute then adds all serious, ‘Thoreau wrote every day. Kept a log of his time on Walden Pond. What he did. What he ate. What he thought about in his wilderness cabin at night. He documented it all. You seem like a nice enough fellow, a little lost but someone who knows the difference between what you want and what you need. What’s important and what’s just fluff, that’s the kind of stuff Thoreau was all about getting after.’

“I’m telling you Vincent, the more this guy talks, the more freaked out I get. All I can say to him is, ‘why would you say something like that?’ He again sizes me up ignoring my question. ‘They’re nicely bound. Acid free paper that will last generations. A necessary accompaniment to someone pursuing an unencumbered life.’

“By now I’m on auto pilot and no longer trying to make sense of what this old man knows or how he knows it and I say back to him, ‘what would make you say that about me?’

“He comes right back with, ‘your book choice for starters. I’ve been running this shop since before those Telegraph Avenue kids ever heard of Berkeley. I’ve seen the idealists, the communists, the socialists.’ He pauses before adding, ‘Ironically, not many capitalists these days. I’ve seen artists, poets, beatniks, men who will one day be wealthy and others who might someday be rich, and if you don’t already know the difference, these journals aren’t for you.’ You see what I’m talking about right? This guy is flat-ass weird. He pauses for a bit, and I start thinking we’re done, but then, he’s right back at it. ‘Every once in a while’, he says. ‘I see someone who intentionally ventures into the meat grinder of life and manages to survive enough to know they have to get out in order to live. You, my friend, have the look of someone who could do anything, be anyone, yet you’ve come to a crossroads where it’s suddenly clear, all you want, all you need, is a simple life. This box of journals is just what it takes to capture all the thoughts raging to come out. I can easily sell these for hundreds to people pretending to be philosophers and poets, no shortage of those on Telegraph Avenue. I’ll tell you what though, fifty bucks and they’re all yours.’ He grins sarcastically serious and all before adding, ‘cash of course, in small, unmarked bills.’

“At this point I feel like I’m in some bizarre Twilight Zone episode. Not knowing what to do, I carefully examine the journals. ‘Very well made,’ I tell him. ‘Stitched binding, leather bound, pages numbered, each book alone is worth that much.’

“Then he says, ‘life should be about more than extracting the most you can from the least amount of effort, wouldn’t you agree?’

“I’m so lost in his messed-up bullshit I just stand there like an idiot nodding, leafing through the pages to verify they’re empty. ‘Not sure what you mean,’ I finally tell him. ‘But I do like your journals.’

“By now my head’s clearing and I start considering everything he’s said in the context of where my crisis has taken me and the incontrovertible way my life needs to change and I tell him, ‘I don’t know if you’re a mystic sage or the world’s best salesman, but you have yourself a deal.’

“He just continues his esoteric bullshit without missing a beat. ‘When you know in your soul someone’s right, does it even ever matter who they are?’ At this point I don’t know if he’s talking about Becky, the Shadow Dancers, or himself and I can tell he doesn’t really care. That’s when he reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out an antique. He stoically stares at before he carefully unscrews the cap. ‘Nobody uses these anymore,’ he says mostly to himself. ‘Seems if a man’s gonna fill journals with thoughtful wisdom, he ought to use a fountain pen.’ He smiles slightly and hands me the pen ‘my compliments,’ he says. ‘Provided you write about me kindly.’ He hands me the box of journals and starts for the front of the store. ‘Got ink cartridges on the counter,’ he shouts. ‘They’re on sale and you’re gonna need a lot, get em while you can.’

“I stand there feeling less like an idiot than before but an idiot still the same. I watch him walk toward the front of the store struck by the parallax way the store’s center isle looks so long and shopkeeper so small relative to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. ‘Deal!’ I shout down the corridor. ‘I’ve always wanted a fountain pen.’”

Vincent finishes the last of his cocktail totally engrossed in story, accepting without question that has to be true. “Then what?”

“I set my box of books on the counter along with the copy of On Walden Pond and patiently wait for him to ring things up. He’s about halfway through when I remember I forgot something and dart back to the row of travel books to retrieve that copy of A 1001 Arabian Nights. I don’t know why I want it, but I do. Back at the counter I play with my fountain pen as he finishes ringing stuff up. ‘Pen’s got a sort of walk in the woods charm,’ I tell him. It’s hard to explain Vincent, but for a fleeting moment, the sight of the books on the counter and the weight of the antique pen in my hand makes me happy.

“After paying in cash per our arrangement, he ushers me to the door carrying my box of journals, my book by Thoreau, tales of 1001 Arabian Nights, and a lifetime supply of ink cartridges. As I step out onto Telegraph Avenue, I’m hit by the brilliance of the bright afternoon sun and the noisy bustle of naive students excited by the false illusion they’re free spirits. He hands me my box then gently places a hand on my shoulder, ‘may you write with purpose,’ he says. ‘And prepare a path for those who follow, like Thoreau did for you.’

“At this point I’m no longer questioning the crap he says and just say back, ‘I’ll first need to find my pond. It won’t be in California, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.’

“He takes his time before saying, ‘Stay away from the coasts. Too polluted with people confused about their place in the world. The South’s too placid and it’s too cold up north. New Mexico my friend, that’s a place where a man can still get plenty lost while being found.’

“I look at him uncertain, based on his cataloging system, that I should trust his travel advise. ‘You’ve got a weird sense of geography,’ I tell him. ‘Sort of in line with your hybrid Dewy Decimal System.’ I stand there on Telegraph Avenue with stoned students bouncing off me as I contemplate the notion of New Mexico. ‘I’ve never been to the southwest,’ I say. ‘Do they even have indoor plumbing?’

“Right away, he says, ‘that’s not the kind of question someone who intends to follow Thoreau should be asking, but yes, of course, in most places they do. Stay away from the southern desert though, you’ll get lost out there in ways you never get found. What you want to do is head north from Santa Fe and a little west. Don’t go east, you want to head west, only don’t do Taos, it’s trashy and touristy. Only thing you’ll find there is posers and ne’er-do-wells. Push past Taos until the Northern New Mexico wilderness opens into perhaps man’s last remaining paradise. The kind place a person who reads Thoreau can find what they’re looking for.’

“Four days later I make two stops on my way to the airport, one to put my journals in storage along with the other shit I’ll send for once I gets wherever the hell it is I’m going and the other stop is to buy a book about New Mexico, which isn’t as easy a find as I imagined. I put one journal in my backpack along with my travel book and of course my copy of On Walden Pond. Although I’m not sure why, I also put the fountain pen and some ink cartridges in the backpack’s front pocket.

Vincent gets up off the green-avocado couch to reload cocktails. “And what, just like that you leave California?”

“I couldn’t face my team after what I’d done. Instead, I send Tien an email outlining how the transfer to the new owners will proceed and attach a spreadsheet delineating my profit-sharing distribution that ensures each team member receives far more compensation than the previously agreed to formula provides. I send Tien a follow-up email profusely apologizing for the way things went down at Berkeley while trying to explain my need to disappear. I wish her well and write in protracted detail about how no one should feel compelled to stay at the company and no one should feel guilty for what happened. That enormous burden, I tell her, is all on me alone.

“The entire night before I fly here, I try explaining to Becky why I have to leave California. She’s not listening though. The thing is, I’m not certain if it’s because she doesn’t care or isn’t interested, or even if the two are different? When I try to explain how I’m at war with myself, she says fools and children go to war with themselves and she doesn’t have time for either.” Darwin gets up from the sacred Lazy-boy. That’s pretty much how things end between us. As I head toward the airport, her last words echo in my head, ‘you wouldn’t be having this crisis,’ she said with cruel finality, ‘if you hadn’t gotten mixed up with your radical idealists.’

“’That’s it’, I tell myself as the taxi drops me off at the airport, ‘lost and alone. Not knowing where I’m supposed to be or how I’m supposed to go.’” Darwin stares at his brother. “I know now, in all the ways that matter, the way my life unraveled is how it was always eventually going to go. If I didn’t know that all the way back at college, I wouldn’t have studied Thoreau in the first place.”