Ben Douglass: March 2008 Archives

One day in the Spring of 1979, while sitting with my friend Steffan in a San Francisco Chinese cafe having green tea and egg rolls, he asked me quite bluntly:  "Who is the real Ben Douglass?"

Steffan often waxed philosophical about the world and its primary players, especially when he had a bit too much to drink.  This was the first time, though, his philosophical searchlight directed itself at me personally.  I was intrigued by the question and after a deliberate and measured pause, I decided to play the game.

I told him that the state of my soul at the time was rather complicated and couldn't be adequately explained to another without reading first three novels that had had a moving anf profound influence on my life.  These novels were:  Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov; Knulp by Hermann Hesse; and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft by George Gissing.

Goncharov's Oblomov tells the story of a wastrel member of the Russian gentry class who spends his whole life dreaming and wanting to be happy like other people but dies a very lonely man, passed over by friends, his first love and life in general.  Hesse's Knulp was the author's spiritual autobiography so to speak.  It tells of a wandering tramp who never does settle down to the domestic life like his former classmates and friends, but always in search of freedom on the road.  In the end he's speaking with God and re-evaluating his life and finds that he couldn't have lived any other way even if he had wanted to.  While he lay dying in a snow drift, babbling to God about his life, he finds true freedom.  Gissing's The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft is simply about failed literary ambition. 

I told Steffan if he would just take the time to read and try and understand each of these novels, he would fully appreciate the hopes, dreams, failures, and the philosophical condition of my soul.  Later that evening I let him borrow copies of these three novels.

Several weeks later we found ourselves at the same Chinese cafe having lunch.  Steffan had brought the books along with him.  I was eager to know his opinion on my reading material and he didn't disappoint me.  He had only gotten half-way through Goncharov's Oblomov before tossing it aside.  He claimed he came very close to using the novel as toilet paper.

While going on and on about the novel in particular and Russian literature in general, he used phrases like "moral bankruptcy," "spiritual illness" and "tragic oneupmanship."  I remember him leaning across the table and wagging his finger in my face and saying quite loudly so everyone in the cafe could hear, "Keep on reading this crap and you'll end up just like them."  He then gave me a big wink.

I immediately felt quite insulted and reminded him rather tersely that when he asks to peek into a man's soul he should be prepared for anything-and if not-don't be asking in the first place.  After a dramatic pause on his part and a thousand yard stare, he grabbed the Russian novel, tore out several pages, stuffed them in his back pocket and smiled saying:  "I need something to wipe my ass tonight."

The following is the record of a dream, or more accurately, a memory.

It could be a fragment from another life, another time, or pure fantasy contrived by a mind without enough practical work to keep it busy.  It has been a persistent memory throughout the years, popping into my conscious life like fast moving storm clouds on a spring day in the Pacific Northwest.  From childhood through my adult years it has always come into my life without request, when I least expect it.

The memory came back today.  It seems to come and go like the wind (excuse the worn out phrase).  Usually when it comes it is a slow, hot and lazy day when I feel at peace with myself and no pressing problems to distract me, or it comes on a day when I'm sick or under heavy and profound stress.  A day just like today.  It was the same as before, but seems to linger a bit longer this time, casting a spell of permanence and realness, when I fully realize that there is none to be found. 

The most significant memory of this memory, if that's the proper way of expressing it, is the absolute clarity of the otherworldly silence.  A deep and pregnant silence.  The best way of describing this silence is like sitting in a big movie theater watching a film that has no sound.  The visuals are strong and resonating but the lack of sound makes for a sureal experience.

Each time this memory quietly invades my life I'm left with a deep and powerful longing for childhood; a time of beauty, discovery, goodness, satisfaction, and innocence.

Looking around the periphery of this memory are mighty old growth eucalyptus trees, almost touching the sky, standing as if they stood for a thousand years and will go on standing another thousand years.  The ground is hard and dry.  Fallen leaves are heavy-laden, giving me a deep and rich carpet to walk upon.  As I walk, the gentle crushing of leaves bursts into pungent aroma in the warm summer air.

In the middle of this memory stands an extremely large house, and its stark whiteness clashes greatly with the brown and green surroundings.  It is a rich and solid house full of history.  There are four massive pillars in front that is reminisent of the old antebellum mansions in the deep south of the United States.  As I concentrate and focus on this scene the smell of many mounds of burning sandelwood becomes apparent but never getting in the way of the eucalyptus odor constantly but lightly swirling about. 

Actually, now that I think of it, it is merely the memory of this long past olfactory experience that still persists.  I get the impression of something straight out of India; the gods, the diversity, the passivity, the slowness, the heaviness.  No people populate this memory but their individual and collective memory lingers as if they were still somewhere in the background or had just recently left.

Everytime I smell eucalyptus or see an orchard of oldgrowth eucalyptus trees this memory gently slides back into my conscious life.  After about an hour the memory fades.  Each time this happens I long to be in that memory forever and entirely forget this world.