Time Has Come Today: September 1987
—Chambers Brothers, 1966
—Yardbirds, "Glimpses," 1967
On Friday, September 4, 1987, aimlessly browsing in the Coles bookstore downtown after work, I stumbled upon a "quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore." At first glance, The Book of the SubGenius presented itself as a goofy, overblown satire on cults and fatuous you-create-your-own-reality New Age religions. Unlike Jonathan Livingston Seagull, however, it was based on the mythos of a grinning, pipe-smoking salesman on the front cover who looked distractingly like my father when he was the age I was that day (30). The salesman (like my dad) was named Bob. Bob Dobbs.
Large format, heavily illustrated in quasi–underground comics style, festooned with shock headings and outrageous proclamations, it practically screamed not to be taken seriously. And yet, as I skimmed pages randomly, I kept encountering passages that seemed simultaneously to echo and anticipate some of my own recent thoughts. But were they thoughts, or just things I thought I might have thought, or wanted to think I had thought, after seeing what I saw on the page? As I continued to skim, I found myself feeling confused, perhaps even a bit hypnotized.
I had to admit I'd been haunted recently by the elusive mental image of THAT MYSTERIOUS DARK-HAIRED GIRL. Now, for some crazy reason, this book was making me feel better about that. A lot better:
What is Slack? If you have to ask, you can never know. You were born with it -- everyone is born with Original Slack -- but the Conspiracy has most of it now. They don't even know what it is, but that hasn't stopped Them from siphoning off what little you have left. (The stealing of Slack paradoxically becomes easier the less of it there is around.)
The Slack that can be described is not true Slack. By definition, it is indefinable. True Slack is "Something for Nothing." It is a kind of direct perception, unfettered by so-called "Common Sense."
By the same token, however, Slack cannot be bottled or sold -- thus it is really FREE! You don't even need "Bob" to find it; you need only develop your "Slack Awareness." "Bob's" teachings can expedite this process, so that it snowballs until you get more and more Slack with less and less work. Or, rather, through real work, instead of wage drudgery. For Slack isn't exactly laziness, but a kind of active sloth. It is what "Bob" calls "surfing the Luck Plane" -- floating down The Path of Least Resistance -- EXPLOITING your MISTAKES. You "negate effort" by not trying, by not even doing ... by merely "letting."
Might it just be possible that all my doors to that girl's world hadn't yet been closed? I blanched at the thought of essaying yet another introduction to her and faltering yet again, but when I summoned the image of the "luck plane," I indulged myself just for a minute with the notion that, given the requisite firm conviction—er, sorry, the requisite SLACK—I might just be able to surf that plane long enough to be in the right place at the right time.
And what would BE the right place and the right time? If she were even still AT the university, how would I manage to pluck that divine needle from that otherwise mundane 25,000-strong human haystack? For reasons that elude me to this day, I chose high noon on the first Friday of classes. At the Coffee Company, where I'd encountered her after the exam the previous December. I should have pounced on her right then, I thought, and this time I WILL, dammit. There was no doubt that WILL was going to be the primary currency of this transaction, but LUCK was going to be my insurance policy. The Luck Plane. Bob Dobbs had my back. Why else had I found the book, I "reasoned."
Well, reasoning might have been a generous term for what I was doing, but as the week barrelled onward, so did my freight train of curiously constructed purpose and conviction. I was going to roll the dice this last time, and if they came up craps, that would put an end to the whole obsession. I would (with some relief, it must be said) vacate the field, having reached the limit of my exertions.
If my conditions were met, though, I would respond in kind: I would exercise my will and make the move. I would introduce myself to That Girl, even though I knew in the marrow of my bones that it would never lead to anything sensible or rational. It would be a true acte gratuit, as the French say: I would be thumbing my nose one last time at the notion that my life had to make sense.
The momentum of my freight train was also being musically fuelled. I had stumbled some weeks earlier on the long-forgotten sixties psychedelic anthem "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers.
So, when the morning of Friday, September 11 came, I walked over to my colleague at work, John McDermid, and said, quite spontaneously and unconsciously, “I’m going up there today, John, straight to the Coffee Company, right at high noon, and that dark-haired girl’s gonna be there, and that’s it. Game over. I introduce myself and get it over with.”
John, nodding: "And that's when you turn into a big puff of smoke. Impress the hell out of her." He'd been there for me in 1985. He'd had it figured before I had, in some ways. He was a poet, after all. Editing was his day job.
Editing was my day job, too, of course, but one of the perks of working at Carswell was having every Friday afternoon off. Using some flex-time, I lopped an additional hour off the morning that day and boarded the LRT in time to get myself to campus by noon. All the way up on the train, my fingers were twitching in nervous anticipation. Of what? To which of the two possible outcomes in this curious coin toss of fate did I owe the swimming in my head and the queasiness in my stomach? I would alight from my flight of fancy like a flicker on a fence post, precisely at the Coffee Company, precisely at noon. She would either be there or she wouldn't.
Was I afraid she wouldn't be there, or that she would? Or was I afraid of what I knew I had to do if she was there? Actually, what I was most afraid of was weaseling myself out of the whole enterprise with a blizzard of double-talk, just as I had on that pathetic afternoon the previous December, nine months earlier almost to the day. But my resolve was buttressed by the odd flashes of hope, blending almost imperceptibly now toward certainty, that I'd imbibed from the Word of Bob in the book I'd stumbled into a week earlier, and the echoing chants of the Chambers Brothers (TIME! . . . TIME! . . . TIME!).
But it wasn't really resolve. As I'd learned back in December, my resolve was no match for my cowardice; indeed, my will in such matters served as little more than a goad to my evasive instincts. What The Book of the Subgenius had offered me was an end run around my conscious intentions: if I relied on my Bob-given SLACK to get this done, I wouldn't have to confront my WILL at all, and my all-too-effective action-killing antibodies would be left in the dark. By the time they'd figured out what was going on, the task would be completed; the job, and Bob's will, would be done.
No question about it, I felt a sense of release in knowing that if my crazy, arbitrary intuition proved correct, I would fulfill my part of the bargain and introduce myself. At the same time, I had to prepare myself—and as the C-Train approached University Station this became more urgent—to deal with the possibility—nay, the probability—of deflation: that the only thing I would be confronted with at high noon at the Coffee Company was the ghostly memory of her, the spectre of the lost opportunity of nine months before.
Would I be crestfallen, or not-so-secretly relieved?
As I alighted from the C-Train and began to make my way along the path that led to MacEwan Hall, I found myself leaning on the music that had sustained me that whole week. How well the determined metronome of my walk now matched the opening bars of "Time Has Come Today"!! The TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK could be the gentle thump of my shoes on the pavement, and the "CUCKOO" could represent the sounding of the "imminent hour." Or—more likely— just my current mental state.
Now, at that time the expansion of Mac Hall in preparation for the 1988 Olympics was not yet complete, so the Coffee Company was still in its original spot, on the ground floor straight ahead inside the front entrance. Thus, several times during the previous week I'd had these short but quite vivid flashes in my mind's eye of seeing her there again, getting her coffee and preparing to take it away. Just wishful recapitulations of last December's encounter, I told myself. But I always had to give my head a shake because of the almost alarming clarity of the image.
I had timed it pretty well. It was 11:50. I took a stroll around the library and through the link where I'd failed nine months earlier.
Not this time, I vowed. Like the song said, there were things to realize. And that word had a double meaning that might be significant:
Realize [verb]:1. become fully aware of (something) as a fact; understand clearly.2. cause (something desired or anticipated) to happen.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, My God. No. This can't be happening.
I glanced at my watch. 12 noon. And a few yards in front of me, there she was, paying for her coffee with two of her friends. Her beauty had not diminished. How could anyone possibly look like she did? Furthermore, WHAT THE HELL?!! She was doing exactly what I'd seen in my mind's eye so many times in the past few weeks.
My first reaction? Pathetically, after all that prattling about realization, I immediately, desperately, tried to convince myself that, no, I hadn't seen this happening beforehand. I just hadn't. This was just a crazy coincidence, or something. Yes, I'd sort of had a FEELING this MIGHT happen, but it had never been more than a faint HUNCH.
Heh, heh, just one of those quirky things. . .
After this brief and embarrassing Cowardice Olympics gymnastics performance, I recovered my equilibrium. I stepped out of the lineup for coffee and exuented, stage left, to consider my options. If indeed I had foreseen this moment, I had not foreseen these two inconvenient friends.
How was I supposed to introduce myself now? Enter stooped, bearded, Dostoyevskian character intruding on conversation of fresh-faced, young, athletic, perhaps even Christian girls, to mumble, hesitantly and well-nigh inaudibly, about having been in a class with one of them a year ago. "Yes, yes, it's true, I sat next to you once. I remember it very well. I have always ever since wanted to, er, [cough] say hello."
Not a winning scenario, I quickly surmised.
I can't explain what happened next. All I can think of in retrospect is that I was rescued by the Fragrant Fumes of Fate, emanating from the very Pipe of Bob. Put simply, I had another vision. I saw myself talking to her later in the day, and there were trees. That's all I recall, just a millisecond of a thing, but it was enough to send me striding up the stairs to the food court, fairly bristling with newfound purpose. And there, as if to stamp a punch line onto a running joke, I ran smack into Marg—whom I'd run into so many times over the past year JUST AFTER SEEING THE DARK-HAIRED GIRL. So again I babbled about said girl, and Marg invited me to lunch with her.
I spun the new tale, and Marg chuckled as she always did. She got it, and I realized how fortunate I was to have her with me at that moment. What's more, she said that the focus that week in one of her social work courses had been "validation." And she couldn't think of a neater example than the events I'd just described to her.
"So you'll do it, right? Introduce yourself?"
"I'm still really nervous, but yeah, I have a feeling I'll go through with it."
"Go through with it?! Jesus, you make it sound like some kind of ordeal. For you AND her. Did you ever stop to think that you might be doing her a favour?"
"Well, no. Never occurred to me."
"Yuh know, you might think about that. She's probably noticed you looking at her. You said she's smiled at you. And you're not exactly Quasimodo."
"Yeah, well, I'll just be another guy hitting on her. I bet she gets hit on at least once a day."
"Oh, don't be silly. That's the way all you guys think, and then nobody does anything. And the world goes to hell."
She would know. Marg wasn't exactly Quasimodo herself. She was a bit older than me (and I was elderly at 30, by my lights), but she was a looker, with lustrous, long dark hair, dark colouring and penetrating eyes and mischievous smile (and figure) to match. She had split with her long-time boyfriend a few years back, returning to university to reinvent herself. But was still, unaccountably, unattached.
Seemed to me she had made her way in the world. She'd found out what was what and who she was. I decided I'd take her word for it.
By the time Marg and I parted, I was in a much steadier frame of mind, still with that crazy certainty that I was going to see her alone soon, was going to get my chance. Inside my head, the soundtrack shifted from the exhortations to action of "Time Has Come Today" to the assertion of outright inevitability of the Coasters' "Searchin'," which began its 10-week stint at number 1 in June 1957, two months after I was born. "Gonna find her!" was the refrain, driven home each time by a clunking piano beat hypnotic enough to transform those words into divine law. And divine law enforcement was the order of the day:
Well, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade got nothin', child, on me
Sergeant Friday, Charlie Chan and Boston Blackie
A-no matter where she's a-hiding, she's gonna hear me a comin'
Gonna walk right down that street like Bulldog Drummond.
"Fancy meeting you here": Somewhere behind those trees, in the black oval drawn on the photo, we finally exchanged actual words.The only one of those guys I really identified with was Sam Spade—the Sam Spade of Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. As he says at the end of the movie, the pursuit of the black bird will never end, because it's "the stuff that dreams are made of." He also said that sometimes all a guy has to go on is a hunch.
My hunch played out about an hour later, appropriately enough at the intersection of two paths, right in front of the building known as Science A. I spotted that unmistakable metronomic walk and followed at a discreet distance until, just shy of the entrance, she sat down on one of the benches amid the grove of poplars. I had to stop suddenly and had no chance to think. Perfect situation, given my proclivities. I smiled hesitantly, and she stood up and smiled back.
"Hi. I was in your History 331 class last year and always meant to introduce myself but never did. I'm Peter." Not bad for starters, and to my relief she didn't seem terribly surprised at what was happening.
"Hi, yeah! I'm Kari. Good to meet you. Are you still taking classes?" Her smile was genuine, and a thing of beauty in itself. Mine broadened and relaxed. In fact, my whole being relaxed, a gigantic inner sigh of relief. This was happening! And she seemed okay with it!
"Not right now. Taking a semester off to make some money. I'll probably come back part-time in January." I didn't believe that last part myself, but it sounded plausible.
"Great! I'm on the five-year plan, so maybe I'll see you around."
"Are you taking an education degree, then?"
"No, psychology right now, education maybe later."
"Well, it's great to finally meet you. I hope your year goes well!"
"You too. Hope to see you around!"
And so we went our separate ways, she perhaps to tell her friends later about That Guy who Finally Introduced Himself, and That Guy to head homeward, jabbering to himself in a sort of excited half-delirium.
First there was just shock and pure elation that I had done it. It was done! Yes! I had Found the Hidden Door and passed through it, thanks to my old friend Marg and my new friends Bob Dobbs and the Chambers Brothers. There was a thing that needed realizing, and I had just realized it.
And what was That Thing, exactly? Like L'Affaire Clapperton two years earlier, it partook of a generous dollop of good old-fashioned neo-adolescent romantic projection and daydreaming, complemented by something new and numinous—a whiff of metaphysical mystery in the air, no doubt enhanced by Keith's spooky chants and various other psychedelicacies I imbibed from my stereo on a daily basis.
Still, as my elation subsided, I realized there would be no immediate, epochal change in the world, or my world. Yes, she had been friendly enough, remembered me from the class, told me her name. All very normal. No earth-shaking revelations, no transmutation of matter, no “Thank you, Peter Enman, for introducing yourself to me, as the Gods have willed. Now, take my hand, let us go forth, you and I, and beget a race of beings such as the world has never seen….”
I did take note of the rather unique surroundings of our meeting. To our right, just behind Kari, was a large mounted sign, about chest-high, displaying the formal address of the science building—46 Swann Mall Walk. Swann didn't ring any bells, but 46 was an interesting number for someone with an ear tilted ever so slightly toward the arcane. It was the number of life, in a sense, in that human cells each have 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46, and thus, couldn't you look at two humans meeting as a sort of 23 + 23 situation?
Behind me, to our left, was the wonderful but somewhat inexplicable giant H grafted onto the wall of the building, inset with sculptures of gargoyles and caricatures, including one labelled "Typesetter" holding a pile of books. I eventually discovered this was part of a frieze along the top of the old Calgary Herald Building downtown, the pieces of which were dismantled in 1914 and move to various sites around the city. So the caricatures were of Herald employees of the time and their functions. At the time it just seemed arcane and archaic and mysterious.
So, yes, the arcane and the archaic had played their part in this strange little enterprise of mine. Heck, even the music I'd been marinating in all that spring and summer was archaic by the future-is-now standards of the decade I was now inhabiting. And you couldn't get much more arcane than The Book of the SubGenius. And I felt both relief and an odd sense of accomplishment that I had played my small part after all in whatever weird pattern of the universe had made it necessary. I'd likely never see this Kari again, but at least I could now resume living my pretend-normal life as if I were a pretend-normal guy. I figured the universe owed me that.
Unbeknownst to me, the universe was still making up its mind.
Comments
Post a Comment