This is how it used to be

It’s seven o’clock; I have to walk around the block

It’s eight o’clock; I have to walk around the block

It’s nine o’clock; I have to walk around the block

It’s twelve o’clock and I still didn’t walk around the block

His head, his large head keeps swaying slowly, from side to side without haste and without respite, like an old pendulum lamenting time dripping away. Leaning forward, chin low over the chessboard, face shining, eyes narrowed, grimacing vigorously, Phesoj moves his pieces with crisp jerks of his wrist. He never looks at his opponent, never glances at the chess clock. In concentrated denial of the world, Phesoj plays chess every evening, year after year, at the same corner table, outdoors, on the patio of the same coffee house in Malo Danto, California. From time to time, he punctuates a rapid sequence of moves with a sip of coffee. A graceful glide and jerk motion returns the cup to its usual place on the table, away from the chess clock. Phesoj drums out the next sequence of moves.

In the middle of a chess game, at the time of greatest tension and confusion, Phesoj slows down his unrelenting pace. His large head stops swaying, his elbows come close to his body, his arms are firmly planted on the table, standing guard to his thoughts. His gaze, hovering high above the board, Phesoj savors the moment at the height of battle. On a good day, problems on the chessboard shut out the difficulties of his daily living. His mind sharpens into fighting posture. Like a boxer’s gloves, which resume the correct stance between blows, his mind soars high above the situation at hand, where details pale and strategies emerge. As he snaps to attention, Phesoj looks like a hunting dog, frozen in place for a second, with a front leg up in the air, ears perked up, sensing the possibilities, decoding danger signals. He feels young and quick again, he feels no pain, and he feels invulnerable and immortal. His large head starts swaying, again and again, as his wrist drums out the next steady sequence of moves.

These days, late in the day, Phesoj cannot stay in bed, cannot wake up, cannot sleep, and cannot remember his dreams. This isn’t a day, this isn’t a night; this is not right. He gets out of bed after mid-day, his bones aching and creaking, and his woolen motions in conflict with his rumbling stomach, his beard rubbing like sand paper against the crisp linen. Broken threads of thought, torn asunder into shreds, like the United Nations without a translator, still entangled in dreams he cannot remember, nudge him to summon his will, and start making sense of his life.

He knows that happiness is not a checklist. It is a form of insensitivity. He knows that counting his blessings doesn’t have the power to make him happy. He is hovering through the turns and twists of his life in search for clues, in search for a way to make sense out of it; without simply discarding himself as a mere victim of circumstances.

Phesoj learned early in life to roll with the punches. Born in Aipotu, the evil empire, in the wrong place at the wrong time—punch. At age eleven uprooted and moved to Ainamor another wrong place—punch, counter-punch, roll. Married to Omaira at nineteen, divorced at twenty-three—knife wounds to the heart, bleeding for ten years; crawled out of wrong places into a new life in Sirap—roll, tumble, roll. Learning to roll with the punches—if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. Survived in Sirap for a whole year by playing chess for money, money in exchange for love—punch below the belt. Immigrated to Wen Kroy at age twenty-nine—too old to shed the past, too young to pass up the chance. Treated as a beginner just because he was a newcomer. Rejected as a person, accepted as a software slave—grind, grind—squashed by the pain of boredom—punch after punch from hypocrisy, greed and stupidity—got up and rolled on. Moved to California, still believing that the best place is where he is not, still hoping to steal a bright future from life.

* *

If truth be told, and now it is, as soon as I was able to get out of bed, I headed toward my spiritual headquarters, a little café called Le Bab. In the middle of May, spring finally came, and, as I was sitting outdoors on the patio, I enjoyed the tentative smiles of the sun. Its cosmic memory finally pierced the sticky air of the city, and its cycles came around to give everybody a warm bath. A street musician was lovingly torturing “The Ode to Joy” on his flute. People were walking-by absent-mindedly; some overdressed for the spring weather that came at long last, others underdressed in their enthusiastic anticipation of warmth that wasn’t quite there yet. The same beggars walked up and down the street asking gently for spare change in all languages. They were the only people who already found their stride, because they never lost it in the first place. School children greeted the sudden onslaught of spring with their radiant faces and their loud hormones.

As the mid-morning turned into a full-blown lunch hour at Le Bab, all the tables around me started filling up. At first, I became aware of lingering droplets of Chnerf vowels, and then I caught the meaning of some shreds of conversation in the peculiar kind of Chnerf spoken in Ainamor.

The table to my left was filled by sounds a cat might make in a paradoxical state of control and submission; it was the hissing and purring of the sweet Ainamor tongue. An older Ainamor man was talking sense into a much younger Ainamor woman, likely to be his granddaughter. After every sentence or two, he would ask “Do you understand?” and then go on; only to ask again after a sentence or two “Do you understand?” I was tempted to suggest to him replacing his automatic rhetorical question with a real one: “What do you think?” followed by a long enough pause to allow her to answer. But I resisted the temptation, because I liked my status of fly on the wall, and didn’t want to put an end to my eavesdropping.

I rationalized away my underhanded presence by telling myself that intent is what makes the real difference between a lie and a fantasy, that eavesdropping on a conversation isn’t really stealing, that lusting secretly, unbeknown to the object of your last, has no consequences, just like an undetected invasion of privacy is no invasion at all. This kind of logic left me staring into space with my eyes burning and my hands shaking.

At a public phone on the street, right next to the patio where I was sitting, within my earshot, a fat Naissur woman was arguing with her son over his girlfriend. The mother was yelling louder and louder at her son, got out of her mind into a panicked frenzy, and finally slammed the phone. Her aggressive mediocrity was annoying. I understood that her son didn’t give in, and cheered for him in my mind. One more underdog who stands his ground, even if only temporarily, gives me hope for myself.

At another table, a young tall man with a sophisticated red hairdo was instructing an older friend of his in the subtleties of horse betting. They spoke Shilgne. The young man was articulate and persuasive. He had such a lucid grasp of horse betting technique that I wandered why he didn’t extend his selective lucidity to the entire enterprise, and didn’t give up horse betting all together, because of the overwhelming odds against him. “Bravo,” I thought nevertheless “another underdog who stands his ground.”

The street musician was rudely interrupted by the blasts of music coming out of a passing car. I comforted myself with King Solomon’s words of wisdom “But this too shall pass.” And indeed, the street musician resumed shortly his loving torture of the “Ode to Joy” on his flute, for the torture of joy in the name of love can only be interrupted temporarily, but can never be stopped.

A slight wind touched my skin as I noticed across the street the lazy swinging from side to side of the Ainamor flag. I felt a strong temptation to jump on my table, and yell to all the humans around me: “I know you. I understand you. I know your languages. We share the same secrets. We all share the same sun. If you don’t panic, you are not well informed.”

Instead, I asked at each table, in each of the languages spoken there, what time it was. They all answered, even though each saw that I had already had the answer. What frightened me was that the same answer came from everybody: “It’s twelve o’clock.”