The Coffee Cantata

"So, beauty must be permanent?"

He shook his head. "Maybe ethereal is a better word? Or otherworldly?"

She heard a knock on the door, saw Doug come in and she wanted to turn away, sigh in relief.

"So, have you two solved all the world's problems?"

"We were talking about beauty," Bud said.

"Oh? What about it?"

"I think," she interjected, "I'm getting hungry. Anyone ready for dinner?"

And Doug looked at his son, then at her, and he saw the relief in her eyes. "Yeah. You know, I am. Bud? You too? Or do you need to get to work on something for school?"

"I need to go to the library, see if something's back on the shelf, then do some calculus homework. We have an exam on Friday."

"Okay, Lindsey, I guess you're stuck with me.

She felt so uneasy she could hardly eat, and he picked up on it almost immediately. "You know," he said, "Borderline Personality is a spectrum disorder, from mild to severe. I think he's in the middle somewhere, but I'm not sure. He doesn't understand boundaries, that much I do know."

"No kidding."

"He crossed a few today, did he?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

"Jesus. That bad?"

She shook her head. "No, but thanks for telling me. I wasn't sure what to think."

"He's fragile, Lindsey. Always has been. I found out a few years ago there were no boundaries between Bud and his mother."

She nodded her head. "I suspected as much. He seems very confused. He also seems afraid you'll abandon him."

"Oh? Well, I'm not surprised."

"Yes. Running off to Bhutan with someone seems high on his list. I would say if you did so after his mother passed, well, he might be in real trouble."

"I know. But the real trouble, Lindsey, isn't with Bud."

"Oh?"

"It's his sister."

"She's the one still in high school?"

He nodded his head. "Yes. Except she's not. She's in an in-patient psychiatric hospital, up in Ojai. Paranoid schizophrenic, and in very bad shape." He was looking away, trying to keep it together. "Some mistakes we never stop paying for, I guess."

"Where's your oldest? Did you say in Boston?"

"Yes, Andrew. Boston College. He escaped the worst of it, I think. Madeleine had perfected her technique by the time Lacy came along. Her psychiatrist refers to Madeleine as 'that monster' -- if that's a good indicator of disposition."

"I saw a good deal of it in Mississippi. Except there are no mental health facilities when you're broke."

"I know."

"They're lucky to have you, Doug. Someone to help pick up the pieces."

"There are no pieces to pick up where Lacy is concerned, Lindsey. She'll never get better than she is right now. They tell me as she ages things will only get worse."

"Is it that bad?"

"It's worse."

"Could I go up with you sometime, when you visit?"

He shook his head slowly. "I'm not sure. I'd have to ask first. Fragile doesn't even begin to describe what's going on with her right now."

"How about you, Doug? How are you coping?"

He snorted a little, tried to keep his irony in-check. "Me? I write the checks, try to keep the fires from spreading, life from spiraling out of control."

"And your mother calls you about your dad how many times a day?"

He shrugged.

"And now I'm just throwing fuel on the fire, aren't I? With Bud?"

"I knew it was coming. I should have prepared you."

"You can't do everything, Doug. If you try all the time, you might just makes things worse."

"I probably already have."

"Knock it off. The self-pity thing doesn't suit you. Keeping it together, keeping focused helps. Keeping me in the loop might help, too. Letting me pick up some of the load when you don't feel you can."

"I can't ask that of you."

"Okay, so don't ask. I'm telling you this right now: I'm here, and I'm willing to help."

He nodded, turned to look at her eyes. "I wish I wasn't so in love with you?"

"Oh? Why?"

"Because you have no idea how impossible this all is."

And she laughed. "Oh, is that right? Listen, one day I'll tell you all about impossible, but for now, please, stop with all the goddamn self-pity, would you? Really, you're embarrassing me, so stop acting like a two year old."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Good."

+++++

She began to listen to the people in the coffee shop after that night, to the miseries of affluence, as she began to call it, for she soon understood that the people of West LA were often as miserable as the people in poorest Mississippi or Appalachia, and frequently more so.

But why, she wondered?

She had gone on the assumption, twenty years earlier, that money was the root of inequality, that a certain lack of material affluence was the primary cause of human misery in poorer regions of the country. And clearly it was, in a material sense anyway, but what she was seeing now was a poverty of the soul, a depreciation of the spirit that had nothing at all to do with material prosperity. So, what she was witnessing was an entirely new, to her, anyway, kind of inequality -- and it troubled her.

Clearly, having money helps, she knew. Doug could get high quality mental health care for his daughter, while most people in rural Mississippi didn't even know what a psychiatrist was. Yet by almost any measure she could think of, Doug, and Doug's family, were miserable in ways very similar to the desperately poor.

So, she watched and listened, as she had twenty years before. To the customers who came in and out of a coffee shop in West LA, one of the most prosperous enclaves in one of the most prosperous cities in the world. People came into the place and thought nothing of spending five dollars on a cup of coffee -- an amount of money that could feed a family in West Africa for a month, or a family in Mississippi for, perhaps, a few days. She began to pay attention to facial expressions and the tones of voice she heard. To expressions of happiness, or anxiety -- and even to how people paid for their coffee, and how much they tipped when they left the shop. She took notes in a new journal, and she parsed her observations when she got home, tried to make sense of her day...

She remembered the studies John Calhoun conducted in the late 40s with rats, looking at population pressure and how increasing population affected species survival, and she wondered: could it be as simple as that? Did packing millions of people into cities like LA and New York, or London, Shanghai or Rio de Janeiro cause immense breakdowns in the ability to experience happiness?

And could this be the same, or similar to the dissolution of trust that spurred disparate monastic impulses two thousand years earlier? Was this, instead of being an aberration, more an inevitable component of the human condition? If Hobbesian capitalism lead inexorably to Malthusian population pressures, which seemed to be a common criticism from Descartes to Marx, where was the payoff to civilization? Where was the ultimate good? If being poor was bad for the human psyche, where was the payoff if being rich made you equally as miserable, if only in a different way? If the common denominator was money, what was it about modern society that allowed a medium of exchange to exert so much influence over emotional well-being?

Simple inequality?

She began to read more about experiments in guaranteed minimum incomes being tried in the Netherlands and Sweden, but there just wasn't enough data yet. She moved on to anthropological studies of almost prehistoric tribes discovered early in the twentieth century, in places like New Guinea and deep within the Amazonian basin, places where mediums of exchange were more primitive than had existed in China and Europe three thousand years ago, but all the data she found was inconclusive at best, more likely too speculative to be of any use.

She began to reread the works of C Wright Mills, particularly his work on the emasculation of the middle class found in his book White Collar. That work had formed the basis of her early research on inequality, so she turned to it once again, thinking she might find a new way to look at the problem -- but no, she was onto something subtly different now.

Maybe the problem was too obvious, she thought, to even be considered a 'problem' -- maybe the issue she had latched onto was more basic still, more like simple human nature.

But human nature is far from simple, she chided herself, then she spilled coffee on her hand, dropped a cup to the floor. "Damn!" she muttered as she bent to clean up her mess, and when she stood she saw Bud walking in the door, and an older man who stood by his side across the counter seemed to be with him.

"Hey, Bud," she said, wiping coffee from her wrist, "haven't seen you in a while. What can I get you?"

"Oh, the usual," meaning a two liter 100 octane jolt. "Lindsey, this is my sociology prof, Dr Portman, and after reading my research paper he wanted to meet you."

She looked at this man, this friend for so many years, and she tried to gauge his mood -- yet she thought of shadows, always shadows, when she saw him. Still, in his bow-tied way, in his round, tortoise shell glasses and chalk-dust-covered jacket, he was even now every bit the harried, ironic academic. "Good to see you," she smiled slyly -- if duplicitously, while holding out her damp hand. "Oh, piffle!" she added, wiping her hand completely before taking his.

"Yes, indeed. So, Peter tells me he interviewed you several times while writing his paper. I wondered if you'd have a moment to talk about some of the issues raised?"

Sara came and took over the counter, told her to go sit and talk for a while, so she took off her apron after she made their coffee, then went out and sat with them at Bud's favorite table.

And it was funny, because she really wasn't sure what the thesis of his paper was, only that he'd asked questions and she'd talked with him for hours and hours about her experiences in Mississippi and Bhutan. Beyond that, she was in the dark, and she told Portman just that.

He smiled, told her he understood. "Still, you see, I've used your book in class for several years now, and many of my students have, over the years, chosen to focus on that work, but none has ever taken the approach Peter has. He has found his way into the thicket, I think, into an intellectual conundrum, perhaps."

"Oh? Well, good for him."

"Yes, precisely. He seems to have stumbled onto something quite unusual, namely that a diffuse cultural dissatisfaction permeates modern life, but this anomie has left breadcrumbs through history, back to the desert fathers in Egypt and the Sinai."

"Oh, how interesting?" she said, trying to force calm into her voice, yet she noted how intently Portman peered into her eyes just then.

"Yes, just so, but no need to bother with all that just now. I simply wanted to meet you, and to thank you for your book. It has been a godsend, in it's way, over the years, and I wanted to talk with you, later, perhaps, about a few lingering questions I have. So...I wondered if you might have some time?"

"Of course. I get off at one, so if you want drop by then, and if you'd like we can walk up to my place and have tea."

"Excellent! Would this afternoon work out, by any chance?"

"Yes, certainly."

"Fine," he said, turning to Bud. "Well, let's not keep this young lady from her appointed rounds."

"I'll see you later," she said, looking at Portman, then she walked off -- livid -- and she was still simmering when he came by at the end of her shift. He slipped in and waited for her while she cleaned up and took off her apron again, then they stepped out into the sun and began walking.

"I assume I should have a talk with young Mister Peterson about plagiarism?" he said straight away.

"Perhaps I should first," she replied.

"No, from the look in your eye I fear you might strangle him, at the very least, or beat him over the head, perhaps, with a baseball bat. Best let me, I suppose, as anyway, it's my purview."

"Alright."

"A pity, still. I can see he's been quite engaged by this whole thing. I hate to throw cold water on him now."

"Perhaps he could rewrite his paper," she suggested.

"Perhaps. Yes, and perhaps you could review his work before he resubmits it? Just a quick run-through, I think."

"I'd be happy to."

"You've done well, Lindsey. I'm proud of you."

"Thank you, Professor."

"So many come through my door, yet so few rise to the challenge. And fewer still meet expectations. You've exceeded mine, by the way."

"You always exceeded mine too, Professor."

"Franklin, my dear. After all these years, perhaps you should call me by my given name."

"Thank you."

"Now, what's all this angst about," he said, as they came to the gate that led to the swimming pool. "Young Peterson has done nothing but show me the way to some deeper concern of yours. What's troubling you? Is it John again?"

She sighed, looked at her friend and mentor closely, then shook her head. "Shall I fix tea?" she asked. "And sit out here, in the shade?"

"You know, I feel a chill. Perhaps we could sit inside today."

"Okay."

They went to her apartment and he sat on the sofa, looked at her desk, then out the window -- and she asked him what he'd have.

"Have you any Port about?" he asked.

"You know, I think I do. One finger?"

"Two, I think."

She poured two glasses and went to the chair by his side, and he took a sip. "Ah, thank you. It's been a long time."

"How are you doing?"

"Tired. And I think this will be my last term."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"I do wish you had taken my advice, gone for your PhD. I'd like to turn the department over to someone I trust, someone who cares about things as you do."

"Other roads beckoned."

"They still do, I see," he said, looking at her desk. "Are you writing again, at least?"

"Yes."

"Ah, finally! Hope springs eternal!"

They laughed.

"So, this impulse young Peterson refers to, this monastic impulse of the desert fathers? Where are you going with this?"

"Actually, I'm not sure. I thought I was going down the same path as Mills and Weber, but in the end, I think that will lead to a..."

"A paradox. Yes, it will. What is your basic assumption?"

"That societies experience a kind of collective anomie when certain thresholds are crossed. The dictates of Law, the imposition of endless bureaucracies on the routines of life, and the results are the same across time. That much is obvious to anyone, but these times feel different."

"Yes. They do indeed."

"But humanity has been here before."

"Yes. It has. Do you forget Joseph, and the well?"

"We're turning inward again."

"Yes. We are."

"Mysticism. Irrationalism."

"The pendulum swings, Lindsey. There's nothing we can do to stop that, as you well know." He sighed, took a sip of his port, then leaned back. "There's nothing finer, you know, than a smooth port on a cool afternoon."

"A fireplace would be nice."

"Ah, well, let's make it a stone fireplace at my old home in the Cotswolds. That would be something to experience again. My father and his dogs, by the fireplace. Listening to Winston on the radio, telling us how the Germans had been turned back over Dover."

"God, what a life you had. The things you experienced, the things you shared with us. You opened so many doors, so many minds."

He pinched away a tear, rubbed his eye. "Did I, indeed?"

"I wish Mary was still with us."

"I do as well. Not a day passes when I don't think of her."

"What about the Cotswolds? Will you return now?"

"I've thought about it, but in a way this is home now. Even now. The fight is here, waiting to be joined, yet I feel that night calling even now." He sighed, shook his head. "This all started in Bhutan, did it not? This angst of yours? It is your father's, I suppose?"

"Yes. In a way I think it's continuation. The past is prologue."

"Your assumptions. When you find yourself at a dead end, so you must challenge all your assumptions. And yet, why is it that I fear you have been looking for answers in all the wrong places, my friend. You so often have, I think."

"Oh? Have I?" The look she saw in his eyes troubled her deeply, yet she did not turn away.

"The answers you seek will not be found in the musing of dead academics. The way ahead is over there," he said, pointing at the campus just across the street, "in Bunche Hall."

"The Buddhists?" she said -- incredulously.

"You have been on that path a long time, Lindsey. Even if you walked unawares. And I think it time you come to terms with that, and with your father."

"My father? But he's..."

"No, he isn't. Not in here, Lindsey," he said, pointing to his heart. "In fact, you've been following in his footsteps all your life. Your brother has, too, though he'd be the last to admit such a thing."

She looked at him, wondered where he was going with this.

"It's such a pity, too. He's courted ignorance and fear all his life, exploited weakness in others all his life -- even yours -- and yet I fear he'll never rest until he's burned the pillars of our world to the ground. And the sad thing, Lindsey, is that he'll never understand why he did -- yet I feel almost certain that when he walks over the rubble the only thing he'll have left in his heart is a profound sorrow for all the things he killed."

"Deep is the well of the past," she sighed.

"Yes, my dear. Exactly so."

+++++

She walked between rough juniper and smooth-skinned eucalyptus, the planters along her way full of ivies and discarded political leaflets, and from time to time she looked at wide-eyed students darting between classes, so serious, still so much like she had been. The campus was the same, too, yet different. Everything had seemed new when she first walked along narrow pathways between buildings twenty something years ago, but what had once been new felt old this morning. Old and almost worn out -- like bread past it's expiration date -- and she wondered why such an enclosed, tempered world might feel this way.

Maybe, she thought, because school itself had been a gateway. A means to an end, yet today she felt that the place itself had become an end -- in and of itself. If it had been, almost thirty years ago, a place to study the world before she moved out seeking experiences of her own, she felt that now, today, it had become a safe harbor, a place to run away from experience, to study it from afar -- without getting your hands dirty.

Had life grown so preternaturally -- ugly -- since Clinton? Had an enlightened approach to the world only opened minds to all it's horrors? With our ability to peer deeply into every facet of human existence, had we finally seen and learned enough? Did we not want to see any more?

She by-passed the Asian Studies building, shook her head and walked up into the sculpture garden beyond; she looked around, found a bench -- yet passed that by too. She walked around, looking for just the right spot, then she sat on the grass -- her legs crossed 'indian style' -- looking up at passing clouds, then she laid back and let the sun fall on her face.

And with the sun guiding her, she felt herself drift away...

Falling into the dream...a dream of shadows and rivers.

Then a fresh shadow loomed, remained fixed overhead, cooling her brow -- and she opened her eyes -- saw fields of red fluttering in the breeze. A monk, she saw, standing over her, looking down. Then she saw her book in the monk's hand, and she smiled -- if only to herself.

"Lindsey?"

"Guilty."

"Oh? Of what?"

"Original sin."

He laughed. "And along came concupiscence..."

"No...and then came the Stone Temple Pilots," and then her eyes brightened when she saw her old friend laugh.

"You will never change," the monk said, laughing again. "May I sit with you?" he asked a moment later.

"Of course, Tschering," she said, swinging around to sit up, keeping the sun on her face as she turned to face him. "Interesting choice of books," she sighed.