Cuppa

 March 16, 2015
St. Patrick's Eve

          You can feign indifference to Fortune, but so what? – she doesn’t care. 
                                                                                                                            - Uncle Albert

Corner Coffee

Not much going on at work today – it's St. Patrick’s Eve, so it's easy to slide out mid-morning for coffee with Axel Sundstrøm. He’s there when I arrive at Corner Coffee; he's at his table; he has his mug in front of him; this is his place, and he’s buying. “I’ve already paid,” he says. “Just tell the girl – the barista,” he corrects himself – “what you want.”

    “Just coffee,” I tell her. “Dark.”

Axel is like “yond Cassius” in Julius Caesar. “He thinks too much; such men are dangerous" – most often to themselves. Axel has come to know himself too well – to the point self-knowledge no longer profits but freezes him into a dither. “The cure,” he tells me, “besides lots of coffee” – he chuckles: “The cure would be action. But that only treats the symptoms, so it doesn’t really cure. The malady remains.” (When was the last time you heard that word – malady?)

“At least, I’m not a liar,” Sundstrøm starts off in another direction. “Or, I should say that, I’m no more a liar than anyone else is. We all lie – from ignorance, because we can’t distinguish truth from fiction.”

    “‘What is truth?’ – right?”

    “Ah, you know that great Roman statesman-philosopher Pilatus. Earlier Jesus had said ‘I am.’ To Pilate's question ‘What is truth?’ he answered ‘I am . . . and light, too.’ That is, according to John, who tends to ignore Jesus' humanness. Because if he is human . . . Well, that's our spēcial problem, isn't it, the problem of our species? We aren't able to tell truth from fiction.” Sundstrøm makes a toasting motion with his mug; it's my turn to say something.

I don’t know what to say, so I ask: “Do you ever listen to what you’re saying?”

    “I do. But not too hard. I don’t worry overmuch, or not with you, I don't. But, better than ‘What is truth?’ you might ask, ‘What are words?’” He blows a faint raspberry. “Those that say the pen - or the mouth - is mightier than the sword are . . . .  As we say in the call to confession, ‘They deceive themselves; they are strangers to the truth.’ They love to listen to themselves. They love their own words as if they really existed; but about sticks-and-stones they know nothing. They do exist: the stick Balaam beats his ass with; the stone Sam Johnson kicks down the road; the ass, and the road; Johnson's poor toe. Those are real. Our bodies are real - the muscles and the joints.” He shrugs his broad shoulders and cracks his neck: “Hear that?  – our poor bodies growing around the pains of getting older - they’re real. The bitter, skunky smell of your coffee; the floor, walls ceiling.  This table.” He raps it with his knuckles. “But what I'm saying . . . .” He shrugs again. Then he says urgently, “Look over there,” pointing out the window. I look: “What?”
“Poof. What have I been going on about? It's gone.”

to be continued