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 just run 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 bourbon while you were gone.”

“Good.” Vincent joins Darwin in the living room. He flops down on the avocado-colored couch and sighs. “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 finds a comfortable position. “I think it 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 all worked up like that.”

“Fair enough. I didn’t think what I was saying was that frightening, but I guess 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 probably pass out.”

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

“Was it Adventure Camp?”

“What?”

“Was it because of Adventure Camp that you didn’t pass out the first time you saw someone all 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 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 all quiet and all. As we stare down at the deer, and I lift up his head to count the points, dad asks how you feel. The first thing out of your mouth is that you’re hungry.”

“Oh. Yeah. That. I try to forget about that. My first deer messed with me a bit. I only said that because just before taking the shot, I’m thinking about how we’d been in that blind for hours and I’m hungry. The shock of watching you play with head had me just regurgitate the last thought I had. Keep in mind, I was only twelve and it was my first deer.”

“Dad certainly never let you forget it, did he, too much entertainment value he said. He’d always be joking about how that was the moment he knew you’d be a medical doctor one day. Anyone that indifferent to death, he’d say, 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 readjusts 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.”

“I’ve never been, but 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 and 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 making 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 one more day. 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 at this vagrant in ironic bewilderment. 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.” Darwin looks around before continuing, given Ilene’s unnatural way of just appearing he wants 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 a metaphor for 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 his remaining bourbon. “I’m not sure why I said that, talking to you is the same as talking to myself, so I guess 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 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 here 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.

“I doubt that dude.” Vincent interrupts. “That’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. Make 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 soft embrace of technology’s subtle seduction would be just fine. 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. You know me well enough to know 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 recalled a Thoreau quote that seems apropos for the moment. Let me see if I can remember it, 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+ 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. He certainly learned not to mess with Father Jan in January though. 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.”

“I don’t know,” Darwin counters. “Things are different when you’re in the wilderness. For one thing, every little crisis that comes up has to be dealt with on your own. 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’ll have more to say about that later, but at this moment when I’ve just made this life altering decision based on my homeless 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. 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 store and yet, he somehow 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 seems to be about philosophy, but Thoreau’s not to be found. I stumble on a section that’s sort of on travel but he’s not there either. I pull a seemingly out of place book from the 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 related. I leaf through the book, it’s old, like two hundred years old, and worn. I gently placed the book back and slid further 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 him building a cabin, but it’s not to be found there either. As the shopkeeper hurries down the center isle with a customer in tow, I ask for help. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, as he flies by ‘do you have a copy of On Walden Pond?’

“The shopkeeper can’t be bothered because he’s deeply focused on his current customer. Several steps later though, he stops. Turns around. Keenly sizes me up. ‘Been awhile since anyone’s asked me that,’ he says. Slowly, he comes toward me, stopping a 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 in trouble for doing. His presence is so intense I’m forced to step back. ‘Not many people are 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 whose kind of scrawny he 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 heard he never got into seminary. Kind of a shame, he was very devoted. Makes ya wonder how God picks the players on his team.”

“Not sure I can answer that any better than find my book but 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 says ‘You’re probably wondering what Walden Pond has to do with edible plants. 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 today, I’m 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 us and he starts laughing. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he says. ‘I get off going Yoda on people.’

“Without even looking, he steps into my row and pulls out an old hardbound book from the exact spot I just searched. He hands me the book saying 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 players he tackled. Before I have a chance to fully examine my treasure, he 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 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, how the hell does he know anything about where I’m going? I pick up one of the books anyway 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 dude 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. After that little bit he pauses for effect before continuing. ‘Every once in a while, 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 all 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. 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. He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out an antique, stoically stares at before he carefully unscrews the cap. ‘Nobody uses these anymore,’ he sadly says mostly to himself. ‘Seems if a man’s gonna fill journals with thoughtful wisdom, he ought to use a fountain pen.’ He then 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 them 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.’

“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. I remembering 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. For a fleeting moment Vincent, 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 no longer question 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 a minute then says, ‘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 I should trust his travel advise. ‘You’ve got a weird sense of geography,’ I tell him. ‘Sort of in line with your book ordering system, random to the point of informed logic.’ 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 desert,’ 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’s self-sustaining philosophy 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.

“I couldn’t bring himself to 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 and me alone.

“I was up most the previous night trying to explain to Becky why I had to leave California, but she isn’t listening. The thing is, I’m not certain if it’s because she doesn’t care or isn’t interested and if the two are even 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. That’s pretty much how things end between us. As I head out of town, her last words still echo in my heart, ‘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 on the taxi ride to the airport, ‘lost and alone. Not knowing where I’m supposed to be or how I’m supposed to go.’ In all the ways that matter, the way things ended is how they were always eventually going to end. If I didn’t know that all the way back at college, I wouldn’t have studied Thoreau in the first place.”