I awoke that morning a little late. Still sleepy, I sat up
drowsily and pushed the pillows behind my back. I sat like that for a while
collecting my thoughts, then decided to get up, but the farthest I got was to
sit on the side of the bed, my feet on the floor. I reached over to the night
stand, took a cigarette and smoked it, just looking around my shabby apartment.
In thirty years of life this is as far as I had gotten; a shabby room, a
tedious job and a pack of cigarettes.
After a while I stood up, walked to the window and looked out at the world
outside. Down on the street a few people were walking about, a few cars motored
by, the sun was shining; it was a typical Sunday morning.
I was a little hungry, but felt too lazy to make breakfast, so I just made some
coffee. I drank the coffee, again sitting on the side of the bed, and smoked a
few more cigarettes. I didn’t like Sundays, they always began the same. I
thought later I‘d go for a walk, maybe to the park. There was a nice little
park a few blocks away where I usually spent my Sunday afternoons, sitting
alone on a bench watching the scenery.
I think watching is my major occupation, my only real interest. Seeing people
drift by and imagining what their lives must be like takes me away from my drab
existence. Although they all seemed to be involved in life, their lives are
probably quite similar to mine, different only in the details. I like my life,
dull as it may seem. It’s an easy and simple way to live without all the
typical worries and disasters that continuously befall others of more
conventional behavior.
I was down to my last cigarette, so I dressed, gave one more glance around the
room and left my apartment. I walked down the grey flight of stairs, out of the
building and onto the sidewalk. The sun shown brilliantly on the pavement,
hurting my eyes, but I was used to that, too.
I strolled to the tobacconist and bought more cigarettes. The shop owner, grey
and shabby as I was, hardly looked up at me.
Outside the shop I turned and walked the two blocks to the park where I sat
down on my usual bench. I sat for a while smoking a few more cigarettes, just
looking around at the grass and the trees and the few people strolling by.
After a while and a few more cigarettes, an older, well-dressed distinguished
looking man appeared in a grassy area not far from where I sat. I kept watching
him because he seemed to be looking for something. He wandered here and there,
peering behind trees, shuffling the ground with his foot, gazing up into the
branches, looking up at the sky.
I watched him for about five minutes. Sometimes he’d wander
off out of sight, but always to return to my area of vision, still looking. As
he paused thoughtfully one moment standing not too far away, I called out
rather loudly, “Have you lost something?”
He turned suddenly as if he had not noticed me before. “Oh,” he replied in a
good natured way, waving a hand in my direction, “not really. That is to say I
haven’t lost anything; I’m trying to find something.”
Not sure I wanted to intrude on his search, whatever it could be, nevertheless
my interest was aroused by his odd statement. I asked, “What exactly are you
looking for?”
“Oh, nothing of great importance, sir,” he replied, still standing in the same
spot looking at me. “It’s just a little thing, really. Of no real significance
to you.”
I thought, well, it had to be of some importance for him to have spent the last
half-hour looking for it. “Perhaps I can help you,” I said, “if you tell me
what it is you’re trying to find.”
He hesitated, then walked over to my bench and stood facing me. “I think not,
thank you,” he said. “You probably wouldn’t recognize it if you found it.”
I didn’t quite know how to reply to his statement, so I said, laughing a
little, “I think I could recognize anything in this world. I’ve seen so much
from this bench and from every other bench I’ve ever sat on, nothing would be
unrecognizable to me.”
The man laughed a little laugh, too. “I see,” he said. “Well, do you mind if I
sit for a minute on your private property? I’ve gotten rather tired from all my
searching this morning.”
A gave a welcoming smile and replied, “Not at all. Sit down and rest, you do
look a little weary.”
He smiled back and sat beside me. “It’s a beautiful morning,” he said, looking
around at the park. “You would think in this bright sunlight nothing would
remain hidden.” He then turned to me. “My name is Mr. Roberts. I’m new to this
city, having lived so many years abroad.”
“I’m Edward Blake, very nice to meet you,” I offered, reaching out to shake his
hand. His hand was boney, with long, slim fingers that wrapped themselves
around my rather stubby fist. “Would you like a smoke?” I asked, offering my
pack of cigarettes.
“No thank you,” he replied. “I never smoke cigarettes. Occasionally a pipe, but
it’s been difficult to get my tobacco lately.” He then sat back and surveyed
the park once more. “Everything is so random around here,” he
said. “It’s hard to understand anything.” He turned his head and
looked at me. “Have you ever felt that way?”
wasn’t sure just what he meant, but I replied by saying, “I
suppose it’s true, the random part. I guess you never know what’s going to
happen next, but for me it’s usually the same all the time. I live a pretty
certain life. Nothing changes much.”
“Oh, I don’t agree,” he said seriously. “Everything is changing all the time,
and so rapidly it’s very difficult to keep up.” He looked over the park again
with an anxious look on his face, as if some momentous transformation was about
to happen any minute.
I looked at the park, too, but all I saw was the same old park in which
absolutely nothing had changed in all the years I had been coming to it. “Well,
this place never changes,” I said.
“Oh, no, you mustn’t say that, my friend,” he replied with an earnest look.
“There are great changes occurring all the time, almost every second. Nothing
can stay the same for very long.” He shook his head as if it contained some
private, profound knowledge. “The interval of perception causes you to think as
you do, not the actual rate of alteration.”
I looked out into the park again, taking a moment to think about what had just
been said. I came to the conclusion that this man, Mr. Roberts, was either a
little crazy or perhaps some scientist or philosopher talking the gibberish of
his profession. The University of this City was rather famous for
its scientific discoveries. I had never actually met a scientist or philosopher
before, but I had heard how odd and obscure these genius’s could be.
“You see,” he continued, seemingly speaking to the park around us, “stability
is what we’re all after. But it can never be so. We’ve tried that, but it
requires too much energy in the stabilization process. It’s against the laws of
nature, my friend. Transience rules, and its gaining momentum,” he said with an
expectant smile, as if telling some private joke of which I was an accomplice.
Noticing my unresponsiveness, his smile faded to a look of slight
embarrassment.
Returning his gaze to the park, “This is why things become lost and are so
difficult to find, the randomness, I mean. The constant change. It’s a sort of
uncertainty principle, or you might say a conservation of momentum.” He turned
his eyes upward, as if remembering something from a distant past. “Or a
transference of momentum in some unexpected and obscure way, the theory is
incomplete. ‘What is hidden is easily found, but what is obvious before the
eyes is often the most difficult to comprehend.’”, he said, turning to me.
“That’s an old saying in my country. You see, what I search for is the obvious,
it’s here everywhere.” He spread his arms out to include everything. “That is
why it’s such a difficult problem. It’s evident but still hidden,” he
concluded, a far away look now in his eyes.
Suddenly his eyes cleared and he stared into my eyes with intensity. “Did you
know that when you’re not looking for something, the probability of what you’re
not looking for not being found is great, but conversely, the very act of
looking increases the probability of finding something. We find this a
conundrum and of a perverse nature, both evident and obscure at the same time,
a mystery of the most profound and fundamental nature.” He then leaned back on
the bench, peering out into the park. “This may seem obvious to you, my friend,
but there are subtle consequences of this unpleasant phenomenon.”
After some thought, again he looked at me and continued his
commentary. “For instance, you find me here looking for something that has not
been lost. This is the appeal of the search. In all this world there are many,
many things that have not been lost from the very beginning, yet are so
difficult to find. We search and search, but their discovery occurs very
rarely, almost by a peculiar kind of fate it seems. This is a quandary we must
face every day of our lives and somehow manage to live with.”
He paused for a moment. “It is like a great secret no one knows.” he said
earnestly. “Yet the secret exists. You see, it’s not so much where to look, as
how to look. That is the key. One must know how to look” He peered around the
park again. “I listen for these secrets to be whispered,” he said. “One must be
alert at all times if you wish to hear them.”
He suddenly straightened and turned his head slightly, as if listening
carefully for some distant elusive melody. I listened, too, but all I heard was
a gentle breeze rustling through the nearby trees. Just as quickly
he relaxed again. “You see, my friend,” he continued on, turning back to me.
“Finding such a thing as I speak of, something that has not been lost but is so
difficult to find, is of such importance, that spending one’s entire life and
energy in the search cannot be foolhardy. For such a discovery would add at
last a finality to life, a profound and unique meaning to one’s existence, a
meaning that could never be gained in any other manner.”
The man then looked away, but I caught a glimpse of sadness and even anguish on
his face. We sat in silence for a while, then I said, trying to ease his
anxiety, “And here I thought I had seen everything!” I smiled at him as he
turned to face me once again, his face relaxed into a similar smile of
comradeship.
“Yes, my friend, some of us have seen everything, and some of us almost
nothing. It is all a matter of perception.”
He then got up from my bench and stood for a moment with a thoughtful look. “I
must continue my search now, my new friend,” he said kindly, looking down at
me. “Perhaps one day I will discover what I’ve been looking for all these
years. If by chance or by destiny I do find it, or part of it, I’ll return to
this bench, as I now know you will still be sitting here, and tell you of my
new discovery. I will tell you the whispered secret I have overheard, and only
the two of us in this whole wide world will know of it.” He smiled and shook
his finger in front of my face. “You must tell no one, however. Secrets are not
for sharing except between comrades in arms, so to say. We must then keep this
secret to ourselves, for to divulge secrets is a betrayal of the highest
order.” He looked out into the park again. “And besides,” he said, “I think no
one else be we two would ever understand.”
He then winked at me in a peculiar way. I wasn’t sure if what he had said was
meant as a joke or a matter of the most serious consequence. Then he simply
walked away down the path from my bench, following its winding ways and disappeared into the foliage of the park, I supposed resuming his earnest search
for something that had not been lost.
Several years later, becoming tired of my tedious existence,
I packed up and moved to a different city hoping to improve my situation in
life. In the interval I have often thought of this odd and gentle man, and
wondered if he ever discovered what he had been so earnestly searching for. And
if so, returning to my solitary bench to tell me his exciting and extraordinary
news, had found my bench empty. Perhaps he would come back several times in the
hope that I would be there as usual, but of course I never would be. I feel
some guilt for this, and if he did return, his disappointment at my absence has
always lain heavy on my conscience, as if I had betrayed his trust and his
faith in me.
Oftentimes I dream that I am once again sitting on my private bench in that
little park, and suddenly Mr. Roberts appears before me, a bright and excited
smile on his face. He has finally found what he has been looking for these many
years, something that hadn’t been lost from the very beginning. He sits beside
me and eagerly tells me of his marvelous discovery, of the wonder of the thing
and of its enormous significance and breathtaking consequence. I am amazed at
his narrative, and am deeply moved to have been chosen to receive such
wonderful news. We rejoice together in his success, we embrace in secret
comradeship, tears of joy flowing freely from our eyes.
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