Tracks of His Mind by Ron Crowley, Chapter 7 Annotated

Music soothed the savage beast, as did eating the musician.

∼ Amaurón, Original Con: Sequence⁰

Up to this point, Jack's life had been a series of moments he would never remember. Each new fold in his rapidly maturing brain had warped the wood of his earliest mental junk drawer so that he could never open it, or so it seemed until one day in college his friend Skeeter asked him, "What's the last thing you don't remember?"

Jack rearranged himself in the bean bag chair, closed his textbook and said in a low tone, "That's not a particularly odd question, not by your standards."

Skeeter lifted his lanky frame from his stuffed arm chair and walked barefoot across his dorm room. He gazed out the double windows, with his hands stuffed in the rear pockets of his jeans. "Not the last thing you've forgotten today." He leaned back slightly and looked over his shoulder at Jack. "That would be whether you're a man or a mouse, but what took place in your life immediately before . . . the first thing you do remember?"

Jack put the cap on his yellow highlighter and pointed it at him. "I'm flattered, Skeets. Only a true friend would give a shit."

"Lovely turn of phrase."

"Your mind, it's always somewhere in the past."

"In-deed-a-ly. The privilege of a humanities major is to journey back and forth effortlessly. So, what's your answer?"

"This is another of your tests, isn't it?"

Skeeter answered flatly, "Everything in life is a test, Jack." His face brightened. "So, if the cat hasn't got your tongue, my furry little friend, what's the last thing you don't remember?"

Jack gazed at the ceiling as if watching a scene from long ago. "There I was, staring out of a small hole at the bottom of the wainscoting in my parents' kitchen." He squinted to see more clearly. "Yes, I was nibbling a piece of cheese and wondering whether that dapper fellow across the road, Stuart Little, had the same tailor as James Bond."¹

Skeeter walked to his wooden desk chair and gave it a spin. He caught Jack's eye and began walking four fingers through the air. "Come on Mickey, think."² He retracted two fingers and said, "Be a man," he went back to using four fingers, "or scurry back in time and tell me what happened to you in that moment or two that you can't remember?"

"What is this?"

"Die Sendung mit der Maus."³

"No Kraut, and I'm not really interested in yet another of your trick questions, so just tell me."

"Ah! It does involve quite a trick, and yes, I do know the answer, but don't give up quite so easily, as Dawson would have counseled Basil.⁴ Hint: take all the time you need." He plunked himself in the chair, crossed his legs and propped them on the desktop. He engaged Jack with an eager look. Jack said nothing, preferring to use his friend's impatience against him. Skeeter tapped his finger on the blotter at one-second intervals. He said to the slow rhythm, "Start with what you can recall." Then he added shallow nods to the beat. "What's your, earl-y, est-rec, oh-lec, shun?"

Jack withdrew inside his head, where he saw people he recognized parading through familiar scenes. They seemed to march forward, but with each step their clothing and hairstyles reverted back to ever-earlier styles. Their faces softened young. Their color faded to shades of black and white. Slowly, a dense silent fog engulfed them, leaving Jack alone, weightless, expectant, hopeful. A wisp of air brushed his cheek. Bolder, it swirled behind him and gave him an unexpected push. Then stronger, more insistent, it began to howl in his ears, teasing, chiding and deriding. What exactly? He didn't know. It would be years before he realized that others resented his outwardly optimistic predisposition and seemingly effortless confidence. Annoyed, the wind tugged and pushed. Then it grabbed him roughly, lifted him, and heaved him through the all-encompassing gray, which began to thin and shred as he plummeted down, down, down. A primal scream pierced his head! And ceased only when he tumbled onto a brightly-colored stage for Act I, Scene I of his earliest Kinflick.⁵

He was as if newly awakened from the soundest sleep, with his head face down on soft grass.⁶ He felt it tickle his nose. He could smell the dank earth below, where the dreaded earth-beetles dined.⁷ His eyes opened to an old brown apple core at someone's feet.⁸ He heard a mild exclamation, "My God!" He recognized his mother's voice. He knew it was her hands scooping him up. He caught a glimpse of his Uncle Philip, a moment before shards of light cut through the leafy canopy above and stabbed his tender eyes. Wincing, he buried his face into her shoulder.

Fran tried to pry him away for an inspection, but he held tightly to her blouse. She sat down at the picnic table, unsnapped his soiled bib, and asked, "What happened?"

He had no idea.

"Are you OK?"

Jack thought . . . I am.⁹

Apparently, he'd tumbled out of his highchair, which he saw sprawled on the grass along with a piece of bread soaked with grape juice from his plastic sippy cup.¹⁰

Skeeter summoned him. "Something happened. What was it?"

"I was two years old, lying face-down in the grass."

"Who picked you up, Pelagius?^10a I know! You were you eyeball-to-eyeball with a hookah-smoking caterpillar, who asked in a languid, sleepy voice, 'Who are you?'"¹¹

"Probably."

"Did you hear or feel anything?"

"A casual shout that broke the silence. An unimaginable touch."¹²

Skeeter put his eyebrows together and asked with a fiendish tone, "Did you cry, when you were born to this great stage of fools?"¹³

Jack sensed a literary allusion and guessed. "Shakespeare's Puck or Falstaff?"

"Pay attention Jack! All the clues are important. My face, my tone—well?"

"Weirder than usual, but only a little."

"A regal leer!"

"Ah! Cordelia's loving father."^13a

No, the fall hadn't made Jack cry, not at first anyway. He was too busy noticing his relatives' stares, their eyes quickly shifting from concern to something far more disquieting, the suggestion—no, it was more!—the accusation that he'd done something to precipitate his fall. They seemed to know what it was.¹⁴

He didn't.

Immediately, Jack experienced something else new: a wave of what he would later learn was a fusion of guilt and shame. He had no idea where it came from.

He didn't like it.

The faces continued to stare. Ah! What evil looks from old and young. They hung about his neck and dragged his head down into his mother's shoulder, where at last he finally cried. Each heave of his small chest made him realize:¹⁵

He didn't like them.

Not at the moment, anyway. Jack rubbed his teary face into the cotton blouse. He breathed in the familiar scent, expecting the aromatherapy to soothe him, but his scraped elbow stung with pain. Somehow he knew it was a consequence of his fall, a punishment, a penalty meted out by . . .

Whoever it was, he disliked that person even more.

What had he done? Nothing he could remember. It was a total mystery to him, and not knowing, well, that was something he really didn't like.

And it made him mad.

His mother brushed grass from his sailor's outfit. "Look at you, fallen overboard into a deep green sea," she laughed. "Be careful some big scary fish doesn't swallow you whole!¹⁶ Now then, time to clean you up, my little man." She hustled him toward the ranch-style house, calling over her shoulder, "Back in a jiff, ladies."

"Where were you?" asked Skeeter.

"At a picnic."

"In Grover's Corner?"^16a

"No, in Maine, at my Aunt Greta's house in Scarborough. I was wearing a sailor's suit."

"Were you Popeye or Bluto?"

"I am what I am, and that's all what I am:^17a a deckhand on the Pequod.^17b

"That's not the same thing as 'I will be what I will be,' is it?" Jack didn't answer. "Go on with your story."¹⁸

"I remember seeing my Uncle Phil. We were in his orchard where he often paced." Jack rubbed the arms of his plaid flannel shirt. "The day was cool, so it must have been late summer."¹⁹

"Are you sure it wasn't a bright cold day in April and all the clocks were striking thirteen?"²⁰

"That wasn't due to happen for another thirty years or so. It was autumn. Some leaves had fallen. It was probably my birthday. I love September."

"For everything there is a season."²¹

Jack remembered the smell of burgers and hotdogs sizzling on a charcoal grille. Men in chino pants and sports shirts stood nearby chatting, probably commiserating about yet another dismal Red Sox season, poking the food out of frustration. On the nearby picnic table, bowls of potato- and egg-salad, bags of potato chips, jars of gherkins, plates of sliced and cool cucumber and tangy tomato were all destinations on the red-check tablecloth that mapped Greta's Downeast land of milk and honey.²²

"And a time for every purpose," added Skeeter.

Women telling tales. "Yakking up a storm," his Grampa Pete would have said. His mother, aunts and grandmother all taking turns on the soapbox, each pretending to listen while looking for the chance to get a word in edgewise.

"I heard she's shacked-up, the little . . . " the young voice censored by older eyes, "but knowing her mother, well."

"Exactly. The apple doesn't fall—"

"Very far from the tree. No sirree, Bob."

Jack had no real interest in the conversation. His stubby fingers pushed a piece of bread through a bowl of Ma Lum's famous apple sauce,²³ chasing away a fly, which flitted off to investigate the other sweet aromas of Scarborough fare: parsley, sage, rosemary, and fresh-picked thyme.²⁴ Then the calamity struck.

"Time to clean you up, my little man."

And not long after that it was time to return to Rivermouth, and time for Jack's bath, and time to put on his pajamas, and then time to listen to his mother read from the Just-So Stories,²⁵ and then time for her to say his prayers slowly so that he could parrot each line.

Now I lay me down to sleep . . . with Wynken, Blynken and Nod.²⁶

And although his eyes drooped ever lower, he would ask her to read another timeless tale. She would lean over and let a lingering kiss seal his eyes closed, leaving him suspended in darkness, hearing only her promise of lots more time tomorrow, listening to the soft tick of his heart, awaiting the first talk of tomorrow.

Tomorrow is easy—on the young mind, lasting only for an instant of overnight darkness; but today is uncharted—stretching across brightly-lit landscapes eager to show him all their possibilities:²⁷ the smell of his baseball glove, the cry of "ready or not, here I come," the taste of Mrs. Hanbury's warm madeleines,²⁸ the sticky pine-pitch of his tree house, and his mother's on-going assurances of yet another tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, each creeping at a petty pace,²⁹ each beginning with Jack poised in a brief moment of uncertainty, hovering somewhere between the dreamy reality of the night before and the firmness of a sister's hand stirring him awake, her voice mildly surprised, "Why, what a long sleep you've had!"³⁰

Yester's daze, when all his troubles seemed so far away. Now in nooks, as foes, they sneer and prey. Oh Jack believes in yesterplay.³¹

Suddenly! Skeeter realized that Jack knew the answer to his question. He leapt from his chair and blurted, "A universal experience."

"I suppose so," said Jack.

"In that fleeting moment before you awoke, you were slipping through the ether on the Kairos-to-Chronos Express.³² The hands on the station clock beckoned, 'come hither and play.' Its silent voice assured you, 'Yes, it's time. It's Time in time with your time . . . although I find it hard to believe that news of your arrival would engender rapture.'"³³

"Fleeing the white Queen, is that why I fell?"

"Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but you know,"^33a Skeeter raised his eyebrows and looked amused, "freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.³⁴ You, my friend, fell smack dab into Time." He scratched the stubble of his chin in thought. "I wonder, where else might you have landed, with what other family, or in what other dimension? No fall is Newtonian straight," he snaked his hand toward the window, "not with all that gravitational warping going on out there."

Jack extended his hands with their palms up and bobbed them like a pair of scales. "With which family, the Tudors or the Cantys, but undoubtedly," he clapped his hands loudly, "with a thud."³⁵

"You are a libra."³⁶

"Fuck off."

"Charming idiom. Combine your thud with all the others and what have you got? A baby boom." Skeeter sang, "People try to put us d-down."

"Are you talkin' 'bout my generation?"

"Just because we get around."³⁷

"Our generation is special," said Jack, "but then again, mine always are. Wouldn't miss one 'for all the tea in China,' as my Grandma used to say."

Skeeter rushed out of his chair and began flipping through his record albums. "I've got just the song," he said, extracting a vinyl disc and putting it on the stereo. A moment later, a drumstick took on the syncopated beat of a clock by alternately striking the edge of a snare drum and a cowbell. A single word, "Cuckoo." Then a crescendo of primal "Woooooooooo." A guitar picked up the rhythm, a brotherly voice filled the chamber.³⁸

Time has come today. Young hearts can go their way!

Jack leapt to his feet and began to dance. Skeeter turned the volume louder, rose and whirled, imaging himself Zorba on a moonlit beach.³⁹

Can't put it off another day. I don't care what others say.

Time had come today.

Time—Uncle Walt's mystic baffling wonder⁴⁰
(Tio Jorge's abismal problema del tiempo,^40a

without which everything would happen at once,

or not at all,

which is essentially the same thing

becauseEverywhereplusEverywhen⁴¹

multiplied by (or possibly extruded from) Everybody

equals Everything,

when your soul's been psychedelicized,

and you hear yourself ask a Hippo,

"What then is time?"

And he must confess, "If no one asks me, I know.

If I wish to explain it . . . I know not."⁴²

Undoubtedly,

There are things to realize.

Things that a college kid had only just begun to contemplate, such as LCpl. Levesque home from Vietnam, not home really, but buried in his native soil of Great Falls amidst the beetles, enduring the myth of eternal return,^42a resting in peace, although it was an altogether different tranquility than the one in Jack's dorm room, with its new-found, parent-free, airy freedom.

The soldier's silence haunted.

Unexpected, it crept inside of Jack and lingered, waiting for the seemingly endless banter inside his head to quiet so that he could take its notice, so that he might truly understand that he too was once . . . that he was upon a time . . . that he was jogging with Faustus down the same restless course that time doth run with calm and silent foot until one day Jack ran out of Time altogether,⁴³ tripping with his last stride and falling into a granite-dotted New Hampshire field. Put out to pasture. Retired with a solemn High Mass for a going-away party, with no parting gifts, please! No superfluous gold watch awarded because Jack would never have to be on time again. Jack, poof! Gone with the wind that carried Time's final sullen "good-bye," the solitary toll of a church bell ringing in perfect harmony with the chime of a towered bell clock.

Bong!

Which was not an exclamation but a question: Would he be saved by the bell, saved after a life of serving hard Time for the crimes of others, saved for all eternity by a prescription for Viaticum filled and taken faithfully so that he might be spared the fiery flames in just the nick of time?⁴⁴

If nothing else, he would be saved from the illusions of "making time" and "taking time," and "keeping time," and pretending that "time was on his side." Freed, he would be, from answering the silliest question of all, "Excuse me, Jack, do you have the time?" For the time being, it had him.

Tempus? Fug it!⁴⁵ No longer would he be obliged to huddle beneath a tree (just another tramp en attendant) waiting to hear if Time would tell—anything at all.^45a

Bossy ol' Time. Always of the essence, continually trying to manage his affairs, constantly demanding more from him and relentlessly intimating that he just might procrastinate a little less. Be more efficient! Work longer hours! He'd try, really he would. Then an evening would come when Jack, working late once again, would abruptly stop. He'd storm down the hall and barge straight into Time's office and shout, "I'm over Time!" (A tad rude, yes, but that's what people do when they no longer have to watch themselves.) Finished with telling time, he would tell Time, "Your time is up! Hickory dickory dock, no more tick-talk."

Never! —which sounds like a very long time, but in reality it's no time at all, which has been true since . . . time out of mind.

Slamming Time's door behind him, Jack could fling his scarf of fine imported Gilgamesh⁴⁶ over his shoulder and walk away, crooning confidently as he went I got, got, got, got no time. He'd be on his way to better things⁴⁷ with—go on, guess who—that's right, the best friend of all the darling children, the sentry at the pearly gates of Never Land, primus inter pares⁴⁸ of the good ol' Lost Boys network, Saint Peter himself.⁴⁹

In the mean time ruled by alarming clocks, on that day long ago in Scarborough, there was Jack, as he was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be whirl without end—a man.⁵⁰ Eventually, he would appear in later editions, but always wedded to himself in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy as well as sorrow, forsaking himself for no other, and that included his wife who was nothing, nothing more than the greatest gift he would ever give himself, which only confirmed for him that love is essentially a what's-in-it-for-me proposition, a notion she thoroughly rejected.

Opposites attract? Damn straight they do.

"Jack?" asked Skeeter.

"I think so."

"What's going on in that murine mind of yours?"

"As I'm to understand it, I arrived on the tick of the cosmic clock."

"Ontic, yes, very good, a fortuitous pun, but excellent nonetheless," murmured Skeeter. The word reminded him of another. "Noumenon. Were you?"

"New men on what, cocaine?"

"Oh, Jack," Skeeter said with despair. "Noumenon—the genuine article—ding an sich."⁵¹

"Me?"

"The thing-in-itself. You arrived as a baby independent of thought. As yet un-interpreted by yourself and others." Jack looked clueless. "Never mind. Go on with your tale Pixie. Or are you Dixie?"⁵²

"To tell you the truth, Jinksy, it has often occurred to me that others have written the soundtrack to my life." He began to gather his texts and notebooks.

"Just the instrumental bits, surely. It's your job to compose the lyrics, to write the plot."

Jack started stuffing his belongings into his Boy Scout backpack. "Not an easy task unless, of course, the words have already been written down for me." He pointed up. "Tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut."⁵³

"No frog."

"Already written by some higher authority," explained Jack.

"That's absurd."

"I agree and that's why I continue to search for my muse, someone to aid my adventurous song."⁵⁴

"Someone to help the simple pollock swim the course of time?"⁵⁵

"Perch," corrected Jack, remembering the spell Merlyn cast on the future king of England so that he could swim as a fish in the castle moat.⁵⁶

Jack walked over to Skeeter's bookshelf saying, "A very wise tench once told me that direction is the better part of valor. Fair enough, but as to which direction was best, he had no advice." He took down the copy of The Great Gatsby he had given Skeeter. "Still unread, I see." He flipped to its last page. "Keeping with the riparian theme, I quote, 'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'"

"Throw out your anchor, ol' boy, quick."⁵⁷

"Fitzgerald did, a tombstone with those very words."

"Ah, the metaphorical Jack."

"I'm not a metaphor. Speak clearly."

"I heard a song on the radio with a clever metaphor," said Skeeter who sang, "we're captive on the carousel of time."⁵⁸

Jack remembered the song. It said that he couldn't return to the past. That was true. He could only look behind from where he came. Hold on! A carousel would bring him right back to the beginning over and over again, at least that's the way it worked in the good ol' U.S. of A. (The order of Canada might be different.) So a rider like Jack could be a pedantic jerk again and again and again, trapped in a vicious cycle, captured in a circle game in which the tension of his mainspring slowly ebbed—out, out—little, less, nothing but frost for a graveyard sheet.⁵⁹ Out, out brief candle,⁶⁰ the flame extinguished by the rush of air as Springheel Jack jumped over the candlestick,⁶¹ calling out as he flew, "So long moon. So long cow jumping over the moon."⁶² Oh yes, Jack was nimble and Jack was quick, but he often wondered, why bother being slick, when the penalty was the same . . . as for those who were thick?⁶³

"I suppose it's reaching too far—trying to grasp the golden ring—that makes most people fall off the carousel," said Skeeter.

"Up, down, up, down, up, down, too," said Jack.^63a

"On the day you die, how would you like to be remembered?"

"I'll probably exit as Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis did,⁶⁴ as the only memorable death anywhere in the world that day, perhaps with the word 'rosebud' on my lips."^64a

Jack over and out? His sound and fury signifying nothing,⁶⁵ replaced by the sounds of silence. Hello darkness my old friend⁶⁶ . . . Jack no longer chasing the masters' tales with the tick, tick, tick of his petit iambics?⁶⁷

All the world's a stage, the bard forlornly notes.
We're all just merely players, including you, you dope.
So listen to O'Casey, when he adds his Paddy verse:
We strut and preen with every scene—desperately unrehearsed.
Yet from time to time we get it right, or so we each believe.
The words we treasure, oh so dear? Our beloved soliloquies!

"Jack? Earth to Jack," said Skeeter.

"Houston, we've had a problem."

"This is Houston, say again please."⁶⁸

"As I was telling you," said Jack, "I fell. My mother took me in the house. She cleaned me up and then we would have stood in the hallway looking at all the family photographs, with her explaining who everybody was because that's what she always did. But she never had a thing to say about the far-out oil painting my aunt Greta kept at the end of the hall. It was eerie, let me tell ya. Everyone had an opinion as to what it depicted: a midnight gale, an unnatural combat, a blasted heath, a winter scene, a breaking up of—"⁶⁹

"The Beatles? Antony and Cleopatra, or rather Richard and Liz? Who said breaking up is hard to do?"⁷⁰

Jack ignored him. "And of course my mother would have paused for a while in front of the grandfather clock. Kevin was supposed to have inherited it—she being the eldest sister and primogeniture a natural right when it suited her—but my aunt Greta scoffed it from my grandparents' house after they were killed."⁷¹

"If a clock ticks in a hall and no one hears it, does time pass?" asked Skeeter, explaining, "That's a twist on Berkeley's unanswerable question."⁷²

"Here's a better one: If Skeeter talks and I choose not to listen, did he speak?"

"Berkeley suggested esse est percipi, or 'to be is to be perceived.' What do you think about that?"⁷³ They fell silent until Skeeter asked, "Do you suppose he meant people as well as sound? If one goes through life unheard, may we assume he or she never really existed?"

"Lives of quiet desperation," said Jack. "Isn't that what we're supposed to be living?"⁷⁴

"Not us. We're immune as long as our tuition bills are paid," said Skeeter.

"That is the popular perception, and perception is reality."

Skeeter snapped his fingers. "Doors of Perception—let's listen to The Doors."⁷⁵ He rose to put on a record. "Do you believe that reality is what you can get away with?"⁷⁶

"Is my reality your reality?" asked Jack, who then sang with the music, when you're strange."⁷⁷

"Perception," Skeeter mused slowly. "How do you think you're perceived, Jack? Is that more or less important than how you see yourself? How do you see yourself?"

Like everyone else his age, impressionable, like a warm piece of virgin vinyl constantly molded into discs, each imprinted with the zany zeitgeist of free love, hawks v. doves, don't let the man above put your soul on ice,⁷⁷ an ethos gleaned from books and films and music and the bottoms of coffee mugs and beer glasses—and laid down in the tracks of his mind.

He once heard an earnest girl named Gwen say that there was very little music in the name Jack, but he could feel each record slide down the spindle of his spine.⁷⁸

Clack!

Turn, turn, turn—the vinyl's edge inexorably tracing an hermeneutic circle, he finds himself marching to the ineluctable music of an orchestra that plays behind the scenes.⁷⁹

Clack!

Jack answered Skeeter, "I see myself as vertiginous vinyl."

"Cool."

Jack agrees, and why not? His vinyl is coated with youthful invincibility. It repels most inconvenient truths, including the fact that vinyl is susceptible to deep and permanent scratches just like one's forehead. He's not really concerned that in the coming years his vinyl will be at the mercy of the changing seasons, the heat of summer bringing the risk of warping and the cold of winter threatening to freeze his material in that distorted state, causing his voice to vacillate between clear and warbled, and rendering the wisdom he has acquired, cherishes, and so desperately wants to impart to others discredited. Embarrassingly so.

Clack!

The sound resurrects the last time he saw Grandma Nora. He sees her sitting below him in a nursing home chair. So tiny, yet the palsy of her folded hands shakes his armor. The droop of her lower lip slackens his confidence. Her courteous gaze, the one she offered people on first meeting them, is now for him. He does not know what to say to this woman, who would have never done anything to cause him any discomfort, who taught him the value of the stinging Should Bee.

Clack!

The jarring sound erases her face, but only smears the truth that his vinyl will also age hard and brittle. The fall of every one of his records will damage the grooves of the one below until one day his stylus skips ahead, inexplicably leaving his thoughts unfinished as it jumps ahead to the next. Then, perhaps, his needle will become stuck altogether, with his scratchy words repeating and annoying, repeating and annoying, while his family and friends whisper what he cannot realize: his records have fulfilled their destiny, all records having been made to be broken.

Clack!

"Jack, you were born in Rivermouth," said Skeeter. "Tell me, is your soundtrack the story of a bad boy?"⁸¹

Being bad, thought Jack, was simply an unavoidable part of the educational process. See Jackanapes at his desk. The evil one towers over him, tapping his palm with his ruler, expecting his pupil to cower, but finding the young man prodding him with sticks of various lengths and sneering, "So, Big Fella, you say that all sin is a manifestation of ingratitude." Poke. "Is it really?" Jab. "Tell me more." Stab. "Show me!" He did, teaching Jack what others deny, that one must know evil to appreciate goodness.

Oh yes, Jack's vinyl has an A-side, which is popular and makes everyone smile and want to dance. It also has a B-side, which can be urchin rude, of manners crude, of un-angelic voice.⁸² No matter which side he plays, his lyrical voice comes forth in stereo, allowing him to say nearly the same thing in different directions—at the same time. Ooh, how entertaining that is! How delightfully more gratifying than the timorous monaural voice so many others settled for.

His two-sided brain operates on two levels, conscious and unconscious.^82a Binary electrical pulses race through his nervous system, so he too can sing the body electric.⁸³ It is little wonder that every choice he makes involves both an acceptance and a simultaneous rejection. Choosing—it's a never-ending process because Jack lives in a realm of endless dualities, of daylight and darkness, of the humanity of Gene McCarthy and the vulgarity of Tricky Dick,⁸⁴ of careers in the Peace Corps and lives engaged in the ol' ultra-violence,⁸⁵ of sobriety and escape, of the wise and the otherwise, of on-and-off, and on again down roads paved with hope and despair.

The green woods of Jack's childhood have yellowed, and he finds himself standing at many a sharp-tined fork in the road.⁸⁶ No matter which path he takes, it bleeds into a four-lane superhighway jammed with discourteous drivers obsessed with blowing their own horns. Unsure of which lane to use, or which exit to take, he often pulls his lazy college-boy ass into a rest area and turns off his motor. He props his feet on the dashboard and reads until his eyes weary. He flicks on the radio and discovers that whether he pushes the pre-set buttons, or turns the tuning dial, the song never changes. The green woods of Jack's childhood have yellowed, and he finds himself standing at many a sharp-tined fork in the road. No matter which path he takes, it bleeds into a four-lane superhighway jammed with discourteous drivers blowing their horns. Unsure which lane to use, or which exit to take, he often pulls his lazy college-boy ass into a rest area and turns off his motor. He props his feet on the dashboard and wonders whether the virtuous rules of the road he admires—the Via Romana—have been completely abandoned on today's interstate highway system.^86a He flicks on his radio and discovers that whether he pushes the pre-set buttons, or turns the tuning dial, the song never changes. Dueling banjos mock his divided will, taunting him with one infuriating and immutable fact: life is an endless quandary of choosing between what he would like to do and what he should do.

His fingers find the correct knob on his radio, but he struggles with the balance control. He fiddles and diddles until he's fed up. He searches his mind for a simple solution and wonders, oh bard, is it true? Is there nothing either good or bad but thinking so?⁸⁷

High on intellectualism, Jack cruises down that multivious freeway from time to time,⁸⁸ passing through the wide gate⁸⁹ and learning by going where he has to go.⁹⁰ The kaleidoscopic scenery, and the self-reliant Devil's children with whom he wrestles,⁹¹ teach him that many things are often more easily defined by what they are not.

He arrives in Sandburg and strolls down sidewalks filled with heroes and hoodlums, of that he is certain, but the comic and tragic people wear two faces, so he finds himself struggling to determine who is whom.⁹² As a reminder of this dilemma, he buys a postcard of the town's Fourth of July parade and mails it to himself with a single request scribbled on the back: Tell me, Lord Shakenspear, why do some rise by sin and others by virtue fall?⁹³

He informs Skeeter, "I struggle with my volume control as well."

"You can rant, but you haven't answered my question. What of the old miching mallecho—mischief? Is it a form of self-entertainment you simply cannot do without?⁹⁴ Or perhaps you require something even more sinister. What would you do if Lt. Calley gave you the order, Sgt. Pepper?"⁹⁵

Jack re-positioned himself in his chair. "Why do you suppose chicks dig bad guys like James Dean, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Cagney, and Jimi Hendrix?"⁹⁶

"No one is allowed to answer a question with a question, Sarge."

"Then I'm doomed; we're all doomed."

Skeeter tilted his head in thought. Then he formed his hand into a six-shooter, fired a shot at Jack, and blew the smoke from his fingertip. "Do you long to ride the dusty trails of the Wild West with the notorious James Gang?"⁹⁷

"Yea, but as slick-fingered Joe Walsh!"⁹⁸ Jack stood and took up his air guitar. "I see myself out of the cradle," he picked his strings, "endlessly rocking." He tapped his larynx. "Out of the mocking bird's throat comes the musical shuttle."⁹⁹

"And if that mockingbird don't sing?"¹⁰⁰

Jack gave him a grave look. "Don't ever kill your mockingbird, Skeets. That would be a senseless, sinful slaughter.¹⁰¹ Be like me. I am the musical boy asking himself in song,

Pray tell me true, young ruffian, do,
if thus you live from choice,
or if in your unhallowed ways
you really don't rejoice!

"Did you make that up?"

"The words, alas! aren't mine! I found them in native fields . . . of far superior rhyme!"¹⁰² He tilted an ear upwards. "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes," he twirled his index finger at the side of his head and said spookily, "voices."¹⁰³

"Ooooh."

"I hear," continued Jack, "not merely the volumes of sound. I am moved by the exquisite meanings."¹⁰⁴

"Not always, surely," said Skeeter. "Rock 'n roll lyrics can be dreadfully lame, which is why I adore the greatest rock 'n roll instrumental ever written, which is?" Jack looked quizzical. "Come on, wipe that dumbfound look off your face." Jack held up a finger to signal that the answer was on the tip of his tongue. "It's . . . the Allman Brothers'—"

"Jessica!" shouted Jack.¹⁰⁵ "I tell you, the man that hath no music in himself is fit for treasons, Strat-O-Matic baseball, and goils."¹⁰⁶

"You're definitely losing it, Jack."

"The name is Lorenzo. Remember him? Last seen eloping with a boy."¹⁰⁷

"Goils only! Or rather, the one woman who rules my heart, the comely but dangerous Kriemhild!"¹⁰⁸ With that Skeeter wheeled out of his chair and opened the small white door to his refrigerator. "Would you like a beer, Mrs. Frisby?"¹⁰⁹

"Sure. Flip me an anhyzer.¹¹⁰ The problem with you, Skeets, is that you're loveless. You covet the wench on the St. Pauli Girl label, but you don't respect her. You must respect someone before you can truly be said to love them." He sang, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me."¹¹¹ He took up his guitar. "That's why you loathe sweet tunes," he held a note with a grimace, "where a note grown strong relents and recoils, and climbs and closes—"

"Love songs depress me. They remind me of the women I let slip away," said Skeeter. He handed Jack a bottle. "I shall hate sweet music my whole life long, Algernon."¹¹²

"I'm Jack. Algernon Moncrieff is my friend."¹¹³ He raised an imaginary rifle at Skeeter. "And I'm not the doctor's son, who was playing with a loaded gun. He pointed it towards his sister, aimed very carefully—BANG!—but missed her!"¹¹⁴ Jack spun on his heels and turned the gun into a guitar. He extended his arm and fingered various chords on his beer bottle, singing soulfully, "I'm Uncle Walt's nephew. I sing . . . the body electric!" He struck a chord violently and quivered his voice. "Yin!" He flailed again. "Yang!"¹¹⁵

"Compared to B.B. King, you're a child with a BB gun."¹¹⁶

Jack came to a halt. "Child?" He let his arms flag to his sides and said calmly, "I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.¹¹⁷ Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, dormez vous?"¹¹⁸

"Quiet, Anatole."¹¹⁹

"Les plus beaux mots du monde ne sont que de vains sons, si on ne les comprend pas."¹²⁰

Skeeter scowled. "Allman Brothers—let's listen to Jessica." Jack started to speak, but Skeeter silenced him with a pointed finger.

As Skeeter knelt to find the record, Jack couldn't resist. "In this bawdy lair I must tell you, 'La musique souvent me prend comme une mer!'"

"Aufhalten!" growled Skeeter.

Jack finished in a low, plaintive tone, "Vers ma pâle étoile."¹²¹ He took a long drink of beer, belched, and asked, "It's time to play the music? It's time to light the lights?"^121a Skeeter slid the recording from its paper jacket, prompting Jack to say, "The orchestra has sufficiently tuned the instruments." Skeeter placed it on the spinning turntable and lifted the tone arm. Jack announced, "The baton has given the signal."¹²² The needle slid into the song. A guitar, a piano, and then the rest of the music took their minds away for several minutes. When it finished, Skeeter turned off the machine and returned to his arm chair. He hoisted his bottle in salute. "Dickey Betts."

Jack returned the toast, "Uncle Walt, the pair of them in concert at the Fillmore East.¹²³ Why don't you get a cassette-player, Skeets?"

"No way. I'm not going to spend money I don't have to replace albums I already own. 'New Lamps for Old,' is a ballad well-worth remembering.^123a Besides, who wants a bunch of recordings that end with the warning, 'this tape will self-destruct in five seconds?'"¹²⁴

Jack chuckled, "Not spend money? That's a subversive, downright un-American sentiment. Well done!"

"Up the revolution! Damn the affluent society!"

"That's not the conventional wisdom."¹²⁵

"In-deed-a-ly."

A sly look came across Jack's face. "Hey, Skeets, speaking of records, I've got a trivia question for you. Who wrote 'forward, forward, let us range. Let the great world spin forever, down the ringing grooves of change.'¹²⁶ It was on the Sangsara Records label. Name the artist."¹²⁷

"I suspect it was you," his voice lingered, "or some other Jack." He looked thoughtful. "Not the Wolfman.¹²⁸ Merridew! That's it, Jack Merridew."¹²⁹

"Wrong lord." He locked eyes with Skeeter. "What's it all about, Alfie?"¹³⁰

"That's a hint, isn't it? You can be utterly exasperating when you show off your sticky brain."

"Touché!"

"No frog! If you really want to impress me, Jack, if you truly want to be proclaimed Rhapsode-in-Residence, recite all eighteen minutes of Alice's Restaurant."¹³¹

"Alice? I remember her. 'The words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock.'"¹³²

"Officer Obie, arrest that man—for fraud! He's no DJ."¹³³

"I'm Jack Clondale, a J.C., made in the image."

"You're a blasphemous J.D.," said Skeeter.

Jack knocked back the last of his beer and collapsed into the bean bag chair, which hissed air. He stretched out his arms, crossed his feet, and dropped his chin onto his chest.

Skeeter ended the momentary silence. "I get it. Three days later."

Jack's eyes sprung open. "Stored up here," he tapped his head, "are the words to God-knows how many songs!" He sang, "People's words are coming back to me in waves of . . . of . . . mindless sophistry.

"Shades of mediocrity," corrected Skeeter.

"Like tempting breasts on bar honeys, I need dumb ones to comfort me."¹³⁴ He smiled. "Or so said the simple Simon to the Pie Man.¹³⁵ It's incredible, really. You're driving down the road and any one of a million songs comes on the radio. Easily, you recall every word. What's that all about, Alfie? It's the same thing with dialogue from countless films and television shows. Problem is, I can't remember—"

"How to say an Act of Contrition?¹³⁶ Deus meus . . . That is guilt written all over your face, isn't it Jack? Do you wear the mark of Cain?" He studied Jack's face carefully. "Hmm. Does he or doesn't he? Only his Herr-dresser knows for sure."¹³⁷

"That would be Frau Eva?"¹³⁸

"In your case, it would be either Fräulein Hilda or Frau Blücher."¹³⁹

Jack raised his elbows to shoulder height, stacked his hands under his chin, and sighed, "I ain't got nobody, and nobody cares for me."^139a

Skeeter shook his head. "No one can remember your name, oh mouse who wrote the disrespectful letter to Santa,¹⁴⁰ but everyone knows that Windy has stormy eyes that flash at the sound of lies."¹⁴¹

Jack lowered his arms and said, "I can think of far worse lyrics. How about 'there were plants and birds, and rocks and things.' THINGS! You can make a gold record these days—win a Grammy Award—with a fourth-grade vocabulary!" He howled with laughter.

Skeeter continued the song's lyric, "There was sand and hills and rings. WAS! –when wuz we taught to complement nouns and verbs, sixth grade? And RINGS! Rings of what?"

"Pot smoke, obviously," laughed Jack, who sang more of the song, "'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."¹⁴² They convulsed with belly-laughter, Jack managing to spit out, "Sheer poetry! –from an imaginary garden with real shrooms in them."¹⁴³ After they quieted, he said, "It's not just rock stars that write crap. Take Robert Frost's 'two roads diverged in a yellow wood.' Surely it was only one road that diverged. A person can only travel one road at a time, unless you're Oscar Wilde or possibly Timothy Leary."¹⁴⁴

"It's called 'poetic license.' He was using 'diverged' as an adjective to describe the two roads that lay ahead. I really need to explain this?"

"But it's not an adjective. It's a verb."

"Why must you always be a pedantic jerk?"

"Can't help it. Pedantry fuels the fiery lyrics in my head, and that music is always," he pursed his lips in thought, "inclined to carol, over and over and over again, my friend, there's no end."¹⁴⁵ He looked at Skeeter for recognition. Finding none, he stuck his left thumb in his mouth. He fingered a sax with his right hand.

"Presley," said Skeeter.

"Wrong king and you know it."

"What did you expect from someone who's the right king in the wrong realm?" He looked at Jack pensively. "Did you ever feel as though you were standing on the shore holding your mother's hand one minute and the next thing you knew you were all alone on an island drifting away?"

"Not really, but unlike you I have friends."

"You're my friend."

"I'm your Boswell."¹⁴⁶

"Impossible. You're an American. I see you as Ben Franklin's Amos."¹⁴⁷

"Now you're the one who's losing it. I do know what you mean, though. There certainly is a lot going on in my life that I never planned."

"Oh, you probably did." Skeeter walked four fingers through the air. "But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.¹⁴⁸ You just don't remember the planning sessions." He tapped his skull. "Unreliable memories, especially when it comes to our early years. Our mothers mixed too much Lethe water with our powdered formulas,¹⁴⁹ so beware your image in the convex mirror, John.¹⁵⁰ Keep a weather-eye out for Freud's 'screen memories.' Deckerinnerungen.¹⁵¹ Be wary of cryptomnesia."

"Crypto's milk of magnesia?"

"Cryptomnesia.¹⁵² Think of it as Kryptonite to your subconscious."¹⁵³

Skeeter looked at the wall clock and asked, "Where has all the time gone?"

"The eternal question," said Jack. "Where does Time go after it's passed by, some other place for others to enjoy?"

"Or loathe," said Skeeter. "Crapola happens. You're suggesting the radical notion of 'a time in place' rather than . . . 'a place in time.' Consider the implications."

The door to the room opened. Danny Brentley's curly head leaned in and asked, "Hey, what are you guys up to?"

"This is one of the hundreds of meetings where people are learning about nam-myoho-renge-kyo and gohonzon," said Skeeter.

"To the last detail," added Jack with a salute.¹⁵⁴

Danny returned the gesture and said, "You're something else, Jack."

"I know, both gingham dog and calico cat, the old Dutch clock it told me that."¹⁵⁵

"Have you been eavesdropping?" asked Skeeter.

Danny answered, "As for you, no one has any idea what you are."

"Excellent! Now what can we do for you?"

"I need help," he said, stepping inside.

"You're lucky," said Skeeter. "The doctor is in."^155a

Jack asked, "And her advice is?"

"Snap out of it," said Skeeter, who extended his hand. "Five cents, please."

Danny slapped the textbook he was holding. "I mean memorizing these terms for my Developmental Psychology course. Don't look at me like that. I'm taking it because there's this serious babe I'm dying to, oh, never mind."

"There are easier ways," said Jack. "Candy is dandy," he waved his beer bottle, "but liquor is quicker."¹⁵⁶

"With hot chicks like Pam Wenton, maybe, but not with Professor Jelearn."

Skeeter pointed at Jack. "He's your man," said Skeeter. "No one knows more about life in the fetal position. Just let him curl up on a sofa and he'll explain it all, if you can keep his thumb out of his mouth."

"I used to think about all kinds of things while hanging out in my crib," said Jack.

"Really?" asked Danny.

"On the first part of my journey," said Jack, "there were grants, by nerds, of clocks with springs." He saw Skeeter smile. "You know, things can always be improved in America." Skeeter laughed.¹⁵⁷

NEXT SECTION: Chapitre Secret

ENDNOTES

⁰ The source of the quote is fictitious; however, it is reminiscent of the poem "Original Sequence" by American poet Philip Booth (1925-2007), which is alluded to in other parts of this chapter.

¹ Stuart Little (1945) is a children's book by E. B. White (1899-1985) that features a nattily dressed talking mouse of that name. James Bond is the fictional British spy created by Ian Fleming (1908-1964) in 1953. The debonair Bond was renowned for his stylish dress.

² Mickey Mouse is an iconic cartoon character of The Walt Disney Company created by Walt Disney (1901-1966) and Ub Iwerks (1901-1971) in 1928.

³ Die Sendung mit der Maus (The Television Program with the Mouse) is an award-winning children's series on German television. It first aired in 1971 as Lach- und Sachgeschichten für Fernsehanfänger (Stories for Beginning Television Viewers to Laugh at and Learn From).

⁴ Basil of Baker Street (1958) is the first children's book of a series created by Eve Titus (1922-2002) and illustrated by Paul Galdone. The stories feature two mice, Basil and his biographer Doctor David Q. Dawson.

⁵ Kinflicks (1976) is the first novel of American author Lisa Alther (1944).

⁶ "As new wak't from soundest sleep, Soft on the flourie herb I found me laid," is how Adam recalled his awakening (birth) in the poem "Paradise Lost" (1667) by John Milton (1608-1674) at 8.253-254.

⁷ "Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue? Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?" are questions asked in the poem "To Think of Time" by American poet Walt Whitman (1809-1892).

⁸ "The fodder for that two-fold flock fell, an old brown core, at God's stopped feet. He reached, and wound the clock" are the closing lines to the poem "The Original Sequence" by American poet Philip Booth (1925-2007).

⁹ The words convey the Latin tenet of Western philosophy cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am.") French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) expressed the concept as "Je pense donc je suis" in Part IV of his Discourse on the Method (1637).

¹⁰ The imagery is that of the Communion wafer (bread) and wine (grape juice).

^10a Pelagius (ca. 354-420/440) was declared a heretic because he did not believe in the doctrine of original sin (The Fall of Man) as explained by St. Augustine (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430).

¹¹ This question was posed in this manner by a caterpillar to Alice in the children's story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898).

¹² "Some casual shout that broke the silent air, or the unimaginable touch of Time" are the closing lines to the poem "Mutability" (1822) by English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

¹³ In the tragic play King Lear (1608) by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), the monarch says, "When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools." That language echoes the biblical explanation found in The Book of Wisdom (The Apocrypha's Wisdom of Solomon, NSRV, 7:3): And I too, when born, inhaled the common air, and fell upon the kindred earth; wailing, I uttered that first sound common to all."

^13a The youngest daughter of King Lear, Cordelia was banished from his kingdom because she refused to profess her love for him (she preferred to let her acts speak), unlike her obsequious sisters.

¹⁴ The accusation is the same as in the biblical Book of Genesis, which indicates that mankind caused its fall from God's grace.

¹⁵ "Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung" are the closing lines to Part II of the poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1797-98) by Englishman Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The ancient mariner killed the bird, which helped save his lost ship, so his fellow crew members forced him to wear it around his neck as a symbol of his thoughtless act.

¹⁶ Jack is warned that he might endure the same fate as Jonah, who was swallowed by a large fish (perhaps a whale) while trying to flee from God in the Book of Jonah 1:17.

^16a Grover's Corner is the rural New Hampshire-like setting for the play Our Town (first performed in 1938) by Thornton Wilder (1897-1975).

^17a A catchphrase of Popeye the Sailor Man, a fictional hero of comic strips, television, and film created by Elzie Crisler Segar (1894-1938). Popeye was a good guy; Bluto was his nemesis.

^17b The Pequod is the whaling vessel under the command of Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick; or The Whale (1851), a novel by American author Herman Melville (1819-1891).

¹⁸ "I will be what I will be" is the literal translation of Yahweh, the self-described one true God, according to the Hebrew Bible.

¹⁹ Uncle Phil represents God by echoing the lines "This was his orchard, his to pace; the day was cool, and he was God" from the poem "Original Sequence" by Philip Booth.

²⁰ The first line of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950) reads, "It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen."

²¹ "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" is the King James Version of Ecclesiastes 3:1.

²² "A land flowing with milk and honey" is a biblical reference to the agricultural abundance of Israel in Exodus 3:8.

²³ Ma Lum's apple sauce is an allusion to the biblical Book of Genesis and the fruit that Eve ate in the Garden of Eden. The bible is unclear as to the identity of the fruit. The Latin words for "apple" and "evil" are similar: mālum is "apple" and mălum means either "an evil or a misfortune."

²⁴ The traditional English ballad contains the lines, "Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme." It became popular in 1966 with the release of "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" by (Paul) Simon & (Art) Garfunkel.

²⁵ The Just-So Stories for Little Children (1902) is a collection of tales that explain why things are the way they are by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The first story tells of a man who is swallowed by a whale.

²⁶ "Now I lay me down to sleep," is a traditional beginning to bedtime prayers. "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" (1889) is a children's bedtime poem by American journalist Eugene Field (1850-1895).

²⁷ A twist on the words "Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted, / Desolate, reluctant as any landscape" in the poem "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," (awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1975) by John Ashbery (1927).

²⁸ The episode of the madeleines is an exploration of the theme of involuntary memory in Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way, 1913), the first of the seven volumes that comprise the novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust (1871-1922).

²⁹ "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, / To the last syllable of recorded time" are from the play The Tragedy of Macbeth (written between 1603 and 1607) by Shakespeare, 5.5.19-21.

³⁰ The allusion is to a passage in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll: "Wake up, Alice dear!" said her sister; "Why, what a long sleep you've had!"

³¹ The sentence imitates the rhyme and cadence of the opening words to the song "Yesterday" (1966) written by Paul McCartney and recorded by his band The Beatles.

³² The ancient Greeks used two words to express time. Kairos means the "right or opportune moment," or "God's time." It signifies "a time in between," a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens. Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time; it is quantitative. Kairos has a qualitative nature.

³³ The lyric "'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured for the queen to use" appears in the pop song "I've Seen All Good People" performed by the band Yes, written by members Jon Anderson and Chris Squire, and included on the record The Yes Album (1971).

^33a "Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, now I think, hell, it could be my fault" is a lyric from the song "Margaritaville" by American songwriter Jimmy Buffett (1946).

³⁴ Quotation of line 102 in Book III of the poem "Paradise Lost" by Milton. The idea in the poem is that Adam, Eve—and consequently their progeny—sin of their own volition.

³⁵ In the novel The Prince and the Pauper (1881) by Mark Twain (1835-1910), Tom Canty is from a poor family and Edward Tudor is the Prince of Wales.

³⁶ The zodiacal sign for a Libra is a pair of scales.

³⁷ These song lyrics are from "My Generation" (1965) by Peter Townshend (1945) of the British rock group The Who.

³⁸ This is the start to the song "Time Has Come to Today," which appeared on the album "The Time Has Come" (1967) by the American band The Chambers Brothers. The 11-minute song was originally recorded in 1966, but re-released in a much shorter version in 1968. Song lyrics appearing here include "Time has come today. Young hearts can go their way"; "Can't put it off another day. I don't care what others say"; "soul's been psychedelicized"; and "There are things to realize."

³⁹ Zorba the Greek (1946) is a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957).

⁴⁰ "It [time] alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, / That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all" are lines 481 and 482 of "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman.

^40a "El abismal problema del tiempo" (the abysmal problem of time) is from the short story "The Garden of Forking Paths" (El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, 1941), which is the title-story in an eponymous collection by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

⁴¹ Everywhen is a term brought into general usage by Australian anthropologist William E. H. Stanner (1905-1981) in his lectures "After the Dreaming" (1968), which pointed out the relative silence of the indigenous voice in his country's history following European settlement.

⁴² "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not" is from Book XI of The Confessions of St. Augustine (398), the autobiographical essays of Augustine of Hippo (354-430).

^42a "Eternal return" (also "eternal recurrence") is a philosophical concept that suggests that the universe recurs infinitely and in similar form. It was popularized in Western literature by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

⁴³ In the play The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604) by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), Faustus says to the devil, "Now Mephastophilis, the restlesse course / That time doth runne with calme and silent foote, / Shortning my dayes and thred of vitall life, / Calls for the payment of my latest yeares" in 4.2.1-4.

⁴⁴ Within the Roman Catholic Church, "viaticum" is the Eucharist (Communion) administered to a dying person as part of the church's sacrament of last rites.

⁴⁵ The Latin saying tempus fugit initially appeared in the four-book poem "Georgics" (29 B.C.E.) by the Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 90-17 B.C.E.). It means "time flees," although it is often translated "time flies."

^45a The allusion is to the tramps who wait beneath a tree in the play Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Parts (originally written in French and titled En attendant Godot, 1949) by Samuel Beckett (1906-1989).

⁴⁶ Gilgamesh is the fourth king of Uruk, according to the Sumerian king list. The poem "Epic of Gilgamesh" is one of the earliest known works of literature. One of its major themes is Gilgamesh's distressed reaction to his friend Enkidu's death: he embarks on a quest for immortality.

⁴⁷ The italicized lyrics and the suggestion that Jack was "on his way to better things" come from the song "No Time," (1966) composed by Randy Bachman (1943) and Burton Cummings (1947) of The Guess Who, a Canadian rock band.

⁴⁸ Latin for "first among equals."

⁴⁹ Wendy Darling, her siblings, and the Lost Boys are characters in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904) by J.M. Barrie.

⁵⁰ These words are a play on the "Gloria Patri," a doxology known as "Glory Be to the Father." The Latin text is Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen. A Roman Catholic translation that Jack would know is "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

⁵¹ The noun "noumenon" refers to a thing in itself, as distinguished from a phenomenon or thing as it appears. In the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), its German equivalent (ding an sich) is an object as it is in itself independent of the mind, as opposed to a phenomenon.

⁵² Pixie and Dixie are mice featured in "Pixie & Dixie and Mr. Jinks," a regular segment of the televised cartoon series The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958 to 1962) created by Hanna-Barbera. Mr. Jinks was a cat nicknamed by the mice "Jinksy."

⁵³ "Everything that comes our way down here, good and bad, has already been scripted by someone on high" is the protagonist's viewpoint in the novel Jacques the Fatalist and His Master (Jacques le fataliste et son maître, c. 1780) by Denis Diderot (1713-1784).

⁵⁴ At the very beginning of Paradise Lost, poet Milton appeals to his "heavenly Muse," telling her that he wants to "Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song."

⁵⁵ Scottish poet Robert Pollok (1798-1827) is the author of the ten-book poem "The Course of Time" (1827).

⁵⁶ The wizard Merlyn turns the boy Wart, the future King Arthur of England, into a perch in The Sword in the Stone, which is the opening book to the collection The Once and Future King (1958) by T.H. White (1906-1964). It is during that episode that the tench tells Wart, "Direction is the better part of valour."

⁵⁷ The closing line to novel The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is engraved on the author's tombstone in Rockville, Maryland.

⁵⁸ The lyrics are from "The Circle Game," a song by Canadian artist Joni Mitchell (1943) that appeared on her third record album, Ladies of the Canyon (1970). Mitchell was awarded the Order of Canada in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II.

⁵⁹ "Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it" is a line describing a man's death from the closing verse of the poem "Out, Out–," (1916) by Robert Frost (1874-1963).

⁶⁰ "The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!" is from Macbeth (5.5.23) by Shakespeare.

⁶¹ Springheel Jack, who could jump extraordinarily high, is a character from English folklore said to have existed during the Victorian era. The character Mr. Hanbury in Tracks of His Mind calls Jack by this nickname from time to time.

⁶² The language mimics that of the children's story Goodnight Moon (1947) by Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952): "Goodnight Moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon."

⁶³ "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick" is the nursery rhyme "Jack Be Nimble" (Roud Folk Song Index number 13902).

^63a Jack's words are from the song "On A Carousel" (1967) by The Hollies.

⁶⁴ Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) died on the same day (November 22, 1963) as American president John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963).

^64a "Rosebud" was the dying word of the main character in the iconic American drama film Citizen Kane (1941) directed by and starring Orson Welles (1915-1985).

⁶⁵ The "sound and fury" of a man's life was first described in those words by Shakespeare in Macbeth's famous soliloquy (Macbeth, 5.5.24). American novelist William Faulkner (1897-1962) used the phrase for the title of his famous novel The Sound and the Fury (1929).

⁶⁶ "Hello darkness my old friend," is the opening to "Sounds of Silence" (1964), a song by Paul Simon (1941) recorded with his musical partner Art Garfunkel (1941).

⁶⁷ "Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, / Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, / While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?" is from "Petit, the Poet," an entry in Spoon River Anthology (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950).

⁶⁸ Observation made by American astronaut John Leonard "Jack" Swigert, Jr. (1931-1982) upon discovering the difficulty that scrubbed the lunar-landing mission of Apollo 13 in 1970. The NASA control center followed with, "This is Houston, say again please."

⁶⁹ This is a truncated description of the strange oil painting in the Spouter Inn as provided by the narrator (Ishmael) in the novel Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville (1819-1891): "It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It's a blasted heath.—It's a Hyperborean winter scene.—It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time."

⁷⁰ The Beatles musical band broke up in 1970. Antony and Cleopatra were played by Richard Burton (1925-1984) and Elizabeth Taylor (1932), respectively, in the epic film Cleopatra (1963). The couple was well-known for their rancorous break ups. The song "Breaking-Up Is Hard to Do" was written by an American pop singer, pianist, and songwriter Neil Sedaka (1939).

⁷¹ Primogeniture is the right by law or custom of the first-born to inherit an entire estate to the exclusion of all others.

⁷² Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) is famous for having asked, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

⁷³ Berkeley's contribution to philosophy suggests that all the things surrounding us are nothing but our ideas. Sensible things have no other existence distinct from their being perceived by us. This also applies to human bodies. When we see our bodies or move our limbs, we perceive only certain sensations in our consciousness.

⁷⁴ "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," is a quote from the opening chapter "Economy" of Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).

⁷⁵ The rock band The Doors took its name from the book The Doors of Perception (1954) by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), which is the author's account of his use of mescaline. Huxley took the title from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (composed between 1790 and 1793), a series of texts written in imitation of biblical books of prophecy that express the intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs of English poet William Blake (1757-1827): "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."[

⁷⁶ The play Reality Is What You Can Get Away With: an Illustrated Screenplay (1992) was written by Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson, 1932-2007), an adherent of Discordianism, which is a "religion" based on the assumption that chaos is the natural order.

⁷⁷ The lyric is from the song "People Are Strange," a single-release from The Doors' recording album Strange Days (1967).

^77a Soul on Ice (written in 1965, published in 1968) is both a memoir and a collection of revolutionary black essays written by Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) while he was in Folsom State Prison (California).

⁷⁸ "Jack? No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed." Told to the protagonist Jack (a.k.a. Ernest) Worthing by Gwendolen Fairfax, his paramour, in Act I, Part II of the play The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People (1894) by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900).

⁷⁹ "The Zeitgeist times his marching over mountains and ravines / To the music of an orchestra that plays behind the scenes" is from the poem "The Zeitgeist" in the collection Dreams in Homespun (1897) by New Hampshire-born poet Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911).

⁸¹ Rivermouth is the setting for the novel The Story of a Bad Boy (1869) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907). It is the thinly-disguised city of Aldrich's childhood, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the birthplace of author Ron Crowley.

⁸² The third verse of the poem "Musical Boy" in the collection Ballads and Other Verses (1880) by James Thomas Fields (1817-1881) reads: "Oh urchin rude, of manners crude, / Of un-angelic voice, / Pray tell me true, young ruffian, do, / If thus you live from choice, / Or if in your unhallowed ways / You really don't rejoice!" Fields was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and went on to become a leading American editor and publisher as well as a poet of note.

^82a In the wake of psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), many psychologists accept the theory that human thought exists in two forms: the conscious and the unconscious.

⁸³ "I Sing the Body Electric" (1855) is a poem in Walt Whitman's collection The Leaves of Grass (1900).

⁸⁴ Candidates for the office of President of the United States in 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005), a Democrat, and former vice-president Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994), whose nefarious political dealings ultimately led to his disgrace and resignation of the presidency.

⁸⁵ The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the federal government, with the mission of helping people outside the United States and fostering goodwill. The "old ultra-violence" is how Alex, the protagonist in the novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess (John Burgess Wilson, 1917-1993), describes his acts of opportunistic and random violence.

⁸⁶ "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" is the opening line to the poem "The Road Not Taken" (1916) in the collection Mountain Interval (1916) of Robert Frost (1874-1963).

^86a The Via Romana, the Roman way of life, defines the ideal character and behavior of Roman citizens. Its foundation rests on well-established private and public virtues designed to promote moral strength.

⁸⁷ "Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing / either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me / it is a prison" are words spoken by Hamlet to Rosencrantz in Hamlet (2.2) by Shakespeare.

⁸⁸ The character said to be "high on intellectualism" comes from the song "Every Day is a Winding Road" (1996) by Sheryl Crow (1962), who advises in the song "lay back and enjoy the show." The song foreshadows a discussion Jack will have with his children as to whether or not they live in "the days when everything goes," another lyric from the song.

⁸⁹ Matthew 7:14 (NSRV): Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

⁹⁰ "I learn by going where I have to go" is a line from the poem "The Waking" (1953), a villanelle by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963).

⁹¹ "[I]f I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil" is from "Self-Reliance" in Essays: First Series (1841) by American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).

⁹² "The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum" is a line from "The People, Yes" (1936), a book-length poem by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967).

⁹³ "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall" is from the play Measure for Measure (1604) by Shakespeare; see Act II, Scene 1.

⁹⁴ The phrase as used by Hamlet (3.2) is "Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief."

⁹⁵ Lieutenant William L. Calley (1943) is the American army officer who stood trial for the massacre of civilians in the village of My Lai, South Vietnam in 1968. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) is a record album by The Beatles, one of many bands at the time known for its anti-Vietnam War stance.

⁹⁶ American celebrities noted as tough or rebellious characters: actor James Dean (James Byron Dean, 1931-1955); rock vocalist Jim Morrison (James Douglas Morrison, 1943-1971); actor Jimmy Cagney (James Francis Cagney, Jr., 1899-1986); and rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix (James Marshall Hendrix, born Johnny Allen Hendrix, 1942-1970).

⁹⁷ The James Gang was a famous outlaw gang of the American West headed by Jesse James (1847-1882).

⁹⁸ Joseph Fidler "Joe" Walsh (1947) is an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He has been a member of three popular bands: James Gang, Barnstorm, and the Eagles.

⁹⁹ "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, / Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle," is the opening to the poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (1900).

¹⁰⁰ "Hush, little baby, don't say a word, / Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. / If that mockingbird don't sing, / Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring" is the opening to "Hush, Little Baby," a traditional American lullaby.

¹⁰¹ The allusion is to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee (1926). The mockingbird represents innocence. Hurting the simple and innocent character Boo Ridley would be like "shootin' a mockingbird," according to Scout. Miss Maudie says, "Mockingbirds don't do but one thing . . . sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

¹⁰² "The words, alas! are mine!" are the closing words to the poem "Musical Boy" by James T. Fields. See note 81.

¹⁰³ "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments / Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices" is spoken by Caliban in The Tempest by Shakespeare (Act III, Scene 2).

¹⁰⁴ "I hear not the volumes of sound merely—I am moved by the exquisite meanings," is from "The Music Always Round Me" by Walt Whitman.

¹⁰⁵ "Jessica" is a rock instrumental that appeared on Brothers and Sisters (1973) by The Allman Brothers. It was written by Forrest Richard "Dickey" Betts (1943), guitarist of The Allman Brothers Band, and Les Dudek (1952), who played with the band after the death of Duane Allman (1946-1971).

¹⁰⁶ In The Merchant of Venice (5.1.83-85) by Shakespeare, Lorenzo told Jessica, "The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." Strat-O-Matic baseball is a board game. "Goils" is the mispronunciation of "girls" by Popeye the Sailor.

¹⁰⁷ Jessica dresses as a boy in order to elope with Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.

¹⁰⁸ Kriemhild is a character in "The Song of the Nibelungs" (Nibelungenlied), an epic poem composed in Middle High German. She is based on Gudrun, a major figure in the early Germanic literature involving the hero Sigurd, son of Sigmund. She also appears as Gutrune in "The Ring of the Nibelung" (Der Ring des Nibelungen), a cycle of four epic operas by Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Skeeter knows her from the story "Siegfried's Murder." He has given her name to the woman on the label of St. Pauli Girl beer.

¹⁰⁹ Mrs. Frisby is a widowed field mouse in the children's story Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971) by Robert C. O'Brien (Robert Leslie Conly, 1918-1973), which was made into the film The Secret of NIMH (1982).

¹¹⁰ Jack plays off the name Frisby: a Frisbee is a trademarked flying plastic disc. In the game of "disc golf," an inside-out throw is called a "hyzer" and an outside-in throw is dubbed an "anhyzer," the latter a pun of world-wide brewer Anheuser-Busch.

¹¹¹ Song lyrics to "Respect" (1965) by Otis Redding (1941-1967), which became a "signature song" of Aretha Franklin (1942) in 1967.

¹¹² "I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong / Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes," are lines from the poem "The Triumph of Time" (1866) by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). It also includes the line "I shall hate sweet music my whole life long." In the novel Flowers for Algernon (1958) by Daniel Keyes (1927), Algernon is a laboratory mouse who undergoes surgery to increase his intelligence.

¹¹³ Algernon Moncrieff is a friend of the protagonist Jack Worthing in the play The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.

¹¹⁴ The rhyme is from "Algernon," a children's poem-story in Cautionary Tales for Children (1907) by Hilaire Belloc (Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc, 1870-1953).

¹¹⁵ In Chinese philosophy, the concept of "yin yang" describes how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites, therefore, exist only in relation to each other.

¹¹⁶ B.B. King (Riley B. King, 1925) is an American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter.

¹¹⁷ "A long, long time ago I can still remember how that music used to make me smile" is from "American Pie" (1971), a popular song written and sung by Don McLean (1947).

¹¹⁸ "Frère Jacques" (Brother Jack) is a French nursery melody first published in 1811. The words and music were first published together in Paris in 1869.

¹¹⁹ Anatole (1957) is the first in a children's series written by Eve Titus and illustrated by Paul Galdone that features a French mouse named Anatole.

¹²⁰ "The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them" is a quote from Anatole France (François-Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924), a French poet, journalist, and novelist.

¹²¹ "The music often bears me away like the sea! / Toward my pale star" are the first two lines of the poem "La Musique" by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867).

^121a Partial lyrics to the opening song to the children's television program "The Muppet Show," which premiered in 1976.

¹²² "The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments, / the baton has given the signal" are lines from "To Think of Time" (Canto 7) by poet Walt Whitman.

¹²³ The Fillmore East was a rock 'n roll venue in the East Village of New York City that showcased famous acts from 1968 to 1971.

^123a "New Lamps for Old" (1889) is an old Indian ballad or poem that ends, "But ever we look for a light that is new, and ever the Spirit cries, / 'New Lamps for Old!' and we take the lamps, and—behold, the Spirit lies!"

¹²⁴ The self-destruct warning was a staple on the American television show Mission: Impossible that aired on the CBS from 1966 to 1973 and on ABC from 1988 to 1990. Most episodes began with the leader of the Impossible Missions Force receiving tape-recorded orders that ended with the warning.

¹²⁵ The Affluent Society (1958) is an influential book by Harvard University economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) in which he coined the phrase "conventional wisdom."

¹²⁶ The answer is Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (1809-1892). The lines appear in "Locksley Hall" (1835) found in his volume Poems (1842). Tennyson said that the poem represents "young life, its good side, its deficiencies, and its yearnings."

¹²⁷ Samsāra (or Sangsara) is a Buddhist concept meaning "continuous movement" or "continuous flowing." It is the exploration of the life-cycle of birth, death and decay and the possibility of escape from it through enlightenment.

¹²⁸ "Wolfman Jack," or Robert Weston Smith (1938-1995), was an immensely popular American disc jockey during the 1960s and 1970s.

¹²⁹ Jack Merridew is the embodiment of evil in the novel Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding (1911-1993).

¹³⁰ Alfie (1966) is a film adapted by Bill Naughton (1910-1992) from his eponymous play (1963). It featured a song "Alfie" written by Burt Bacharach (1928) and Hal David (1921) that begins, "What's it all about, Alfie?"

¹³¹ The song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (1967) by Arlo Guthrie (1947) inspired the film Alice's Restaurant (1969).

¹³² "I'm sure I'm very sorry," was all Alice could say; for the words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock" is from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll.

¹³³ On Thanksgiving in 1965, Guthrie was arrested by police officer William "Obie" Obanhein for illegally dumping garbage from Alice's Restaurant in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the town dump being closed for the holiday.

¹³⁴ "All my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity" is a line from the song "Homeward Bound" (1965) by Paul Simon and sung by Simon & Garfunkel.

¹³⁵ "Simple Simon" is a popular English language nursery rhyme (Roud Folk Song Index 19777) that includes a dialogue between Simple Simon and a pie man.

¹³⁶ The Act of Contrition is a Christian prayer expressing sorrow for one's sins. Traditionally, it begins with the Latin phrase "Deus meus" meaning "my God."

¹³⁷ "Does she or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure" is the advertising slogan used by Clairol to launch Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath in the 1950s.

¹³⁸ German novelist Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) used the Mark of Cain as a motif in Demian (1919), a Bildungsroman in which it was worn by the protagonist Emil Sinclair as he sought his true self with the assistance of Frau Eva.

¹³⁹ Fräulein Hilda was a secretary to Colonel Klink in the American television sitcom "Hogan's Heroes," which aired between 1965 and 1971 on CBS. She was played by Patricia Olsen, who used the stage name Sigrid Valdis and married the star of the series, actor Robert Crane, on the set in 1970. Frau Blücher (played by Cloris Leachman) is a character in the comedy film Young Frankenstein (1974) directed by Mel Brooks.

^139a In the film Young Frankenstein, the character Igor (played by Marty Feldman) sings part of "I Ain't Got Nobody (and Nobody Cares for Me)" (c. 1915) in a scene where only his head appears on a shelf aligned with some skulls, giving the appearance that he had "no body."

¹⁴⁰ Albert was the child mouse in the animated film 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974) who displeased Santa Claus by sending him a letter saying that Santa and his reindeer were myths.

¹⁴¹ Adapted from the song "Windy" (1967) written by Ruthann Friedman (1944). It was a number-one hit for the musical group The Association.

¹⁴² These lyrics are from the song "A Horse With No Name" (1972), a number-one hit in the U.S. for the musical group America.

¹⁴³ The poem "Poetry" by Marianne Moore (1887-1972) in her The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967) contains the line "for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them." "Shrooms" is drug-world slang for psilocybin mushrooms (magic mushrooms), which have a hallucinogenic effect on the human mind.

¹⁴⁴ Irish writer Oscar Wilde was bisexual. American psychologist Timothy Leary (1920-1996) experimented with mind-altering drugs.

¹⁴⁵ The lyric is from the song "Music" (1971) by Carole King (Carol Klein, 1942).

¹⁴⁶ James Boswell (James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck, 1740-1795) is famous for penning The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), the biography of his friend and fellow Scot, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

¹⁴⁷ The children's book Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos (1939) by Robert Lawson (1892-1957).

¹⁴⁸ The line is from "To a Mouse" (1785) by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796).

¹⁴⁹ According to the ancient Greek theory regarding the transmigration of souls, a dead person drinks from the river Lethe and loses all past memories of their previous life as a prelude to re-birth in another human body, thereby ensuring that the soul is eternal.

¹⁵⁰ An allusion to the previously mentioned poem "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by American poet John Ashbery (1927).

¹⁵¹ In 1899, Sigmund Freud published his essay "Über Deckerinnerungen" in which he explained how people use "cover memories" or "screen memories" to cover, screen over, and thereby replace unpleasant ones from childhood with more pleasing memories.

¹⁵² Cryptomnesia is a form of misattribution. It takes place when a memory occurs to someone but that person does not recognize it as a memory but believes that he or she is formulating something new and original.

¹⁵³ Kryptonite is one of the few elements that can kill the superhero Superman (1932), who was created by American writer Jerry Siegel (1914-1996) and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster (1914-1992). Kryptonite has become synonymous with the classical Achilles' heel.

¹⁵⁴ "Tonight throughout the city there are, actually, there are hundreds of meetings like this going on, where people are learning about Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and Gohonzon!" is a line from the film The Last Detail (1973).

¹⁵⁵ The poem "The Duel" in the collection Love-Songs of Childhood (1894) by Eugene Field (1850-1895) tells of an inevitable fight between a gingham dog and a calico cat in which they devour one another. That fact was revealed to the narrator by an old Dutch clock.

^155a In the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000), the bossy female character Lucy often posed as a psychiatric doctor, using a booth that looked like a lemonade stand. Its sign read, "The doctor is IN." When Charlie Brown complained to her of depression, she gave the terse reply "snap out of it" and asked for her customary fee: five cents.

¹⁵⁶ The aphorism "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" is the entire poem "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" by Ogden Nash (1902-1971).

¹⁵⁷ "On the first part of the journey" is the opening phrase to the song "Horse With No Name" by America. Jack's rhyming parody of its line "plants and birds and rocks and things" expresses the chapter's theme: time.

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