Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave
with the song still in them – Thoreau, Walden Pond
Thoreau certainly had a point, although a checkered past of both
fulfilled and unfulfilled ambitions is perhaps more accurate. Missed
opportunities are what trouble most men, especially the sexual roads not taken.
Bradley Phillips remembered playing hooky on an unusually warm
January day years ago, finding the one excuse that to his ethical mind seemed
the most justifiable. How many Spring-like days were gifted in the middle of
the winter; and especially this one not only warm but foggy and still, perfect
for being alone in the city?
He took the Erie Lackawanna to Hoboken, crossed the river by
ferry, and made his way from South Ferry to Wall Street, the meat market,
Washington Street, the Village, Midtown, and finally Central Park.
He headed to his favorite corner of the park – out of the way and
far enough from the avenues that street noise became background and hardly
noticeable. There was no one in the park. Stillness in a place
which was always trafficked (not noisy in an intrusive way, still busy and
distracting), was always exciting, almost creepy when the park was not just
lightly visited but empty and, in the damped, muffling fog ,absolutely quiet.
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As the fog lightened Bradley noticed a young woman sitting on a
bench by the flower bed which in the Spring was planted with daffodils, in the
Summer roses, and in the Fall geraniums and zinnias; but now was just turned
earth, muddy after the thaw, and grim.
He knew from her dress, her relaxed but correct way of sitting
(good posture like his probably learned in dancing school) that she must have
come to the park for the same reasons he had. She was too happy with the empty park to be at loose ends; but there was no
real reason for her to be there other than to sit like Bradley on a warm day
gifted to New York in the middle of winter, playing hooky, getting out of a
blindered office in Brooklyn like he did in New Jersey. She could only be a
romantic like him, an employee who, because she needed only the slightest,
although reasonable excuse to get out of town.
Everything was right – the warmth, the fog, the quiet, the way she
sat so properly with calm and reserve but without primness or exaggerated
decorum, the unexpected weather, and the unlikeliness of two very similar people
out of millions sitting in the same place on the same day in the same year – and
yet Bradley did nothing.
He sat for twenty minutes looking at the girl, deciphering who she
was like a semiotician – hair and scarf meant New England, boarding school,
modest wealth, English heritage; uncrossed, demurely placed legs meant patience
and shyness; steady eyes, hands, and lips meant determination not willfulness.
She was young enough and content enough to still be idealistic without illusion;
and old enough to have sorted through her priorities and come to the park.
Bradley had never been shy with women and had always spoken up,
introduced himself, and begun to chat. He was never obtuse about women, knew
when they were open and when they were shut, gave them a wide berth when
everything from eyes to feet said keep your distance; but walked up – even
sidled up when he saw a coquette and came on with confidence when he smelled
sex.
“What’s wrong with me?”, he remembered himself saying. “Why am I
still sitting here?”
“Blame Watteau”, he said, recalling the painters treacly, stylized
pastoral scenes of he French countryside, trying to interrupt the
uncharacteristic sexual stymie with the irony he had learned from Vincent Scully
at Yale whose dismantling of the romantic and idealization of the mythic were
the stuff of sophomoric imitations (“The great, thrusting, phallic, powerful,
irrepressible, heroic horned mountains of Croesus”) of the great man.
Still, Bradley never moved off the mark let alone charge out of
the gate. This was not only an opportunity, it was the opportunity of
a lifetime. She was his emotional double, his doppelganger, his soul
mate; and yet there he stayed, tethered to the park bench, reduced to ogling
instead of looking and frustrated at his own uncharacteristic insecurity.
Finally the girl left, turning back to wave at him as she crossed
the bridge towards 57th Street. He waved back, in far worse shape than he would
have been if she had walked straight out of the park, but still paralyzed.
The last way that anyone would describe the life of Bradley
Phillips would be one of quiet desperation, a man with an unsung song in his
heart. On the contrary, he struck everyone as a fulfilled, generous man who
had many lovers, friends, business colleagues, and casual acquaintances ;and
many remarked about his unusual combination of resolve and rectitude. He was a
man without a purpose, perhaps, but one who knew what he wanted when he wanted
it.
As he entered late middle age and about to retire, Phillips
thought back on his life and realized that there was nothing about it that he
would change. Thanks to his experience in Central Park those many years ago,
he had taken advantage of every opportunity. He had travelled throughout
Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean; eaten the best and the
most exotic foods; stayed in five-star luxury hotels and funky beach cabanas;
was friends with drivers and ministers; and all in all did everything that any
one person could possibly do.
It was too bad that he had never made it to either Cairo or Istanbul before the Muslim world started to fall apart at the seams; and he knew he missed his chance to see Isfahan and Qom before the Ayatollahs; but he had been to Afghanistan before the Russians, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda; had worked in Romania just after the fall of Ceausescu, and from the small window of opportunity which was open to both the Stalinist past and the capitalist future, he saw a country few others had.
He had travelled deep into the African bush not long after
independence and before corruption, crime, and civil war ruined the entire
continent. He had missed some things, but in his mind he had missed nothing.
He didn’t even regret the end of this charmed, adventurous life.
It was enough to have lived it and to remember enough of it to keep it intact.
He was no memorist like Nabokov who trained himself to remember the present so
as to preserve the past, the only durable and meaningful part of the
past-present-future continuum; but was aware enough of his good fortune while it
was happening to have engraved it in his memory.
He had some regrets over things he had said or things that he
never should have done; but he had either atoned for his mistakes or let bygones
be bygones.
He was sorry that he had had no grandchildren. The only reason
for having children, he said, was to experience pure innocence for once in your
life; and being a grandparent gave everyone a second chance. He, however, had
brought up his children to be independent and to think for themselves; so he was
not surprised that both of them had concocted their own brew.
Most of the people Bradley knew, however, had not been so lucky. There were friends who had married too early or too late; had
stuck too close to home or strayed too far from it. There were those who
regretted their fidelity and others who, because of their infidelities had no
wife to return to. Some colleagues regretted business opportunities passed up,
promotions denied, and investments missed; and others regretted foolish
financial decisions.
Emerson was fond of pithy quotes about the life well-lived. “Every
particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to
the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole”, he wrote among hundreds
of others. Bradley, however, thought that all of them were nothing more than
treacly homilies, feel-good nostrums that would make good greeting cards. His
life well-lived was one without expectation and therefore without regret; one
with no noble ideals and therefore no failure; one with no ambition and
therefore without loss.
The best way to lead life was to follow one’s nose, always
pleasantly surprised but never disappointed when the turning leads nowhere.
Bradley never considered his professional life a career, so
episodic was it; so when he began writing, teaching, and studying literature and
philosophy he never called it a second career like many retirees did. It was
simply part of a long continuum which had no particular value or merit per
se but always had something in store. Everything he did added inventory
to his memory and expanded the past. Like Nabokov, he understood that the
present was simply the tool for engraving memory, and the future a limitless
trove of opportunity.
No, Bradley Phillips did not lead a life of quiet desperation.
Not in a million years.
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