Death of a Philosopher
Monk lay in the emerald moss, a lone fly buzzing like a chopper in Ornette’s ear.
“Monk, do you hear that fly? Is that loud or what?”
“I hear the fly,” he whispered with the gentleness of a falling leaf.
“What’s happening? I can’t hear you breathing.”
“I’m breathing more deeply than I ever have before, rest assured.”
“Good. I thought you might be dying. But, of course, you can’t be dying—there’s no reason for it.”
“There doesn’t need to be a reason to die, Ornette.”
“What are you saying?”
“Everything; including what words cannot express.”
Ornette produced a single tear that ran down his face. He grasped Monk’s stone-still hand.
“I’ve thought every thought there is to think; I’ve felt the light and heat of every belief ever capable of believing.”
“What?” Ornette shivered as the mugginess of the mossy pond made his underarms begin to perspire.
“There is no more learning left for me.”
“Don’t be absurd—everyday brings new light and wisdom—you told me that or something like that before.”
“And it was true. But for me the sum of all wisdom has boiled down to one pure idea—one unwavering and blinding light of understanding in a flash that spans the entire spectrum of time infinite.”
“What is it then? You’ve shared so much wisdom with me—what does it all add up to—let me in on it—we have no secrets, remember?”
“I can’t. There aren’t words. If there are words, I don’t know them. You’re the writer, remember?”
“And you’re the thinker.”
“There are no correct words to express thought—“
“Only diluted metaphors to fill our empty gourds for thirst.”
“You really have listened to me this whole time, haven’t you Ornette?”
“That’s how I write: I observe in every way I know; listening is only one way—and actually, it’s the easiest way for me. It’s what I interpolate from the words I hear that has always been the hardest part. Words can mean almost anything I’m coming to understand.”
“You’re almost right. See, I’m the thinker so now you take a good last listen to this:”
“Yes, I’m listening, Monk.”
“They don’t mean almost anything; they mean anything and everything all at once and forever. There is black and white and every shade of grey in between, all at once: all time, forever in a glorious flash in a space and time tinier than the tiniest imaginable expanse of infinity.”
“What does that mean? It means nothing.”
“Exactly as much as it means everything. You said interpolation has always been the hardest part for you. I think and have admitted that I cannot find the right words to express this purest and final thought—I’ve given you a diluted metaphor to fill your empty gourd with. Now let it quench you every day till it’s your time.”
“Monk, you sound like a man on a permanent acid trip.”
“In a way, you could certainly say that.”
“I guess you never left the forest behind, huh?” Ornette said with a nervous chuckle.
“The forest has stayed with us even as we left the last of its leafy spires in our blazing wake. Right now, I can see the forest; I can see the ocean, the desert, the far reaches of space, the sad eyes of my dying father, the innocent hands of my first love, the waving antennae of the first roach I stepped on, the leaf I pulled off an oak tree on my way home from school when I was 14—everything, Ornette. I see everything all at once and I can distinguish them all or I can blend them in an infinite amount of combinations and permutations.”
“Monk, you must be dying. I don’t want to believe it but you must be.”
“I’m already dead, Ornette. You feel the coldness of my hand in yours. You feel no breath coming from my mouth.”
“But you speak—you’ve bridged the gap between life and death?!”
“There is no gap. Never was. You believed you needed to hear my last words, so you did.”
“So I’m either hallucinating or you really are speaking, in spite of death.”
“Yes, Ornette. But spite isn’t quite the correct word. Never spiteful.”
“Which one?”
“Yes.”
“Is it me or you forming these words?”
“Yes.”
Ornette said no more. He stared at Monk’s stony smile and felt that it was the warmest smile he’d ever seen or imagined in his whole life.
