Chapter 12 — The Monk
Rufus describes the importance of faith in art.
Followed by Chapter 12 —— The Monk, in which Saskia slips back into her distant past.
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Hello Friends,
A couple of weeks ago I talked about feeling nervous about the schedule I’ve set up for this podcast. Today, I’d like to talk about something related: the notion of faith. And, notwithstanding the title of today’s chapter, the faith I’m talking about is not a religious one.
Rather, the faith to which I’m referring is the type required when embarking on a long project of uncertain outcome. The type early explorers no doubt possessed when they set out upon the seven seas——though, perhaps many of them were guided just as much by the thrills they anticipated, or simply the love of journey. As a creative type, I can testify that enjoying the process is no small element of my own relationship to writing.
In any event, long projects require faith. That’s kind of what it means to be a big commitment. And I do have faith that the story I’m writing really is good. Partly I know this because I enjoy it whenever I go back and read some for you. Partly, it’s because the story ahead still tickles me. And partly, it’s just about having faith in the work I’m putting in.
In the context of believing in my work, it occurred to me many years ago that even the most acclaimed artists produce but a handful of really great pieces across their entire lives. I adored Catch-22 when I read it, but I’ve yet to get absorbed in another Joseph Heller novel. Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” is transporting, and not just because it always reminds me of Bruce Robinson’s cult classic film Withnail and I, but I challenge you to name another of their songs off the top of your head.
It’s not just the proverbial one-hit wonders though. Even the most prolific of creators have limited output. Christopher Nolan’s defining works, for instance, amount to small handful of projects; his lifetime’s work absorbable over a week.
Another fascinating aspect of this is that, as often as not, the artists themselves aren’t, in the moment of production, sure which pieces were the really special ones. That’s not to say that artist spend time working on projects that they don’t believe in, though I’ve certainly heard it said before that some of the greatest artists were surprised by the public reception of their greatest works. But I’ve also heard of writers or filmmakers or whoever being completely engrossed in what they were making, only to later discover that the public did not share the feeling when consuming the final product.
The bottom line, for me, is to just keep doing. To have faith.
One final thought before returning to Saskia and her trip back to the present: I implore you, too, to keep the faith. Specifically, I ask you to keep trusting me. One of you asked a couple of weeks ago what the rules of my time travel are (there being many options; you can or can’t change the past, to list the two most obvious), and if, or rather when, I’m going to make them clear. As I assured that reader: I have made every effort to adhere to the rules I’ve set for myself, but I’m also not about to reveal the specifics, mainly because, were I the reader, I believe I’d enjoy trying to puzzle out the rules with Saskia. In fact, I’m actually enjoying exactly that experience right now, reading Holly Gramazio’s The Husbands. On top of that, the reveal of how my time travel works is intimately tied to some of the mathematics I’m going to share towards the end. The payoff feels worth it to me, and so, with trepidatious anticipation, I continue to patiently look forward to hearing your thoughts when we get there.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
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And now, without further ado, here’s chapter twelve in which Saskia returns from her trip back to the beginning.
— 12 —
The Monk
Sitting in her shed, making her marathon effort to slip forward in time to her present, Saskia reflected on the dimensions of her travel. Here she was, fixed in her three physical dimensions and, though her body was racing through the fourth dimension, it was her mind that was really moving. It was in another place altogether. Skipping and hopping back through her memories, it landed on an interaction she had had with a Buddhist monk on the streets of Berkeley, years ago, when touring possible universities to study at.
He’d started by asking a question, both innocent and abstruse: “Why are you here?”
She was eighteen at the time, and such questions had naturally had real pull. Many late nights had already been spent with her senior classmates chewing on kindred existential uncertainties, and the delight of an orange fabric-wrapped man with a bald head putting one to her in broad daylight tickled her. So, she had engaged.
It was a scorcher of a day back then, in decided contrast to the last gasps of the LA winter she was living through now; the dank shed that she found herself cloistered within. The hustle and bustle of passers-by energetically dodging and weaving down the sidewalk, were the antithesis of the lonely rake and shovel that leaned quietly against the wall in the darkest corner of her current surroundings. Her own restlessness then had also been different from that which she was now living. But her mind’s vigor was similar.
It struck the teenage Saskia that here was a monk, sitting in the same spot for hours on end, a far more significant commitment to their shared geographic circumstances than she had made——and yet it was he asking her why she was here. Latching onto that thought, Saskia had shot back: “Why are you here?”
The monk had smiled at her. “We are always where we should be.” Saskia had pushed back that that was a cop out, but the monk held firm. “The universe has a will of its own.”
If the monk’s claim back then had truly been the case, then perhaps the meaning of her present excursion had less to do with seeing herself first slip in time, than it did, creating an environment to jog this memory free. And then another tumbler fell into place: Saskia suddenly recalled asking the monk how he could possibly sit in one place for so long. His reply had seemed odd at the time, but in retrospect——he’d told her that it didn’t feel that long to him.
Saskia considered the possibility that the monk had not in fact been sitting there nearly as long as it had appeared to her and the other passers-by. If she could slip in time, what was to say others couldn’t? She considered the idea of physically relocating to San Francisco. It was an interesting thought that the monk might still be there, watching the world slip by at high speed. Giving himself a view over centuries.
But she dismissed the possibility as quickly as the idea had bubbled up. There was no chance that over a decade later the same monk would still be sitting there on University Ave. Even monks aren’t that patient.
