Op-Ed

Two philosophers are walking towards a gate on a path that leads into a wood. H is a young man with a regal bearing. P is a white-haired old man. They wear blood-stained clothing. They pass through the gate and into the wood.

H: My thesis is this: that being and not being are incompatible.

P: Mutually incompatible, then?

H: Just incompatible, fishmonger.

P: Not mutually?

H: That is my answer.

P: To what question?

H: Whether to be or to not be.

P: I don’t follow you.

H: Please don’t. We’re incompatible.

P: Mutually?

H: No, each of us alone is incompatible with the other. “Mutually incompatible” is, if not an oxymoron, redundant.

P: Nevertheless, I’ll attempt to follow you. Is “not being” death?

H: It is true that death is to not be living.

P: Is then living “being?”

H: It is true that living is to not be dead.

P: Hmmm.

H: You understand me, then.

They walk in silence for a time. H plucks and eats an apple.

P: Shalt one kill?

H: Thou shalt not.

P: Never?

H: Not until thou shalt be commanded to kill every living thing in a city.

P: Shall one be?

H: In Jericho, shortly after receiving an incompatible edict.

More walking in silence. H occasionally picks up a rock and bounces it softly off of P’s head.

P: It’s unlikely that Tupac Shakur will have joined a klezmer band.

H: Unlikely, yes. But google “Yiddish Klezmer hip hop.”

P: Forsooth?

H: Indeed. And Elvis Costello has written a ballet score.

The walk has become a bit of a steep climb. P is perspiring noticeably. H picks up the pace.

H: Can the universe grow if it contains everything that exists?

P: Not according to Hoyle, my friend.

H: But steady there! Stars are flying away from us in all directions.

P: I don’t notice.

H: Faster and faster and farther and farther. The universe expands.

P: Relatively, then, our minds shrink?

H: It would appear so–but then how to explain Einstein?

P: Psychologists do try.

H: Warren Zevon figured him out. He wrote that Einstein “was making out like Charlie Sheen.”

P: Albert was quite a ladies’ man, then?

H: Do you mean “a possession of more than one lady?”

P: No, of course not! Perhaps I should’ve said “ladies man.” Maybe I did, in fact, and you heard an apostrophe that wasn’t there.

H: But “ladies man” sounds like a contradiction in terms. An antithesis.

P: Now you’re just being difficult.

H: So you say, but verily I say unto you, it is the General Theory of Relativity that is difficult. That, my fusty nut of a friend, is an antithesis.

H stoops to pick up another stone. Warily, P drops a few steps behind him and they trudge on in silence for awhile. H throws the stone at a rabbit. He misses.

H: Did I ever tell you the story of the turtle and the hare?

P: I do seem to recall it.

H: Did you understand it?

P: It was Greek to me.

H: I will retell it to pass the time.

P: You’re not going to tell me a story about rabbit stew now, are you?H: No, of course not!

P: What is the moral to the story of the turtle and the hare then?

H: There is no moral: it’s just a story. It’s a fable that every story must have a moral.

The philosophers have crested a small hill. The path now slopes gently downward.

P: Do opposites really attract?

H: Often, they do. I find myself strangely drawn to a Japanese dancer who is anything but gloomy.

P: You astonish me, Holmes!

H: Holmes?

P: An error. A non sequitur. Let it pass. The dancer?

H: Yes, the dancer. Or maybe the wife of a photographer, lonely and alienated in Tokyo.

P: Ah, La dolce vita!

H: The good life indeed! You know of whom I speak. But she is gloomy. So that would not fit.

P: No.

H: But back to your question: opposites. Consider for a moment the Spratts, the Mister and the Missus. You know their story well.

P: He can eat no fat.

H: Correct. Conversely, of course, she thrives on it. But they are opposite only in this very limited respect. In everything else, I can assure you, they are two peas in a pod.

P: I don’t doubt it. How about, then, The Dish and The Spoon?

H: Well that’s an absurd example, you tedious old fool. What is it about a spoon and a dish that suggests opposition? Clearly a complimentary pair, if ever one existed. Opposite and incompatible and are often one but not the other.

P: Meaning?

H: Opposite but not incompatible. In fact, opposite and compatible are often both.

P: Both?

H: Opposite and compatible. The Yin and the Yang; the mortar and the pestle; the tongue and the groove.

P: The Jerry Lewis and the French?

H: Ah, now that is a conundrum.

Now P picks up a stone. H eyes him suspiciously and picks up a stone of his own. The philosophers walk in step, without speaking, each repeatedly tossing his stone into the air and catching it. P fumbles his, whereupon H stops, waits for P to advance a few steps, and then throws his stone at the middle of P’s back. It strikes home with a loud “thud!”

P: Ouch!

H: I’ve written a limerick.

P: Really? Show it to me.

H: I haven’t written it down, you base-born varlet. I’ve written it in my head.

P: Doesn’t seem possible to me. It’s dark in there, and you have no quill.

H: I shall recite it then. Write it down with a quill, or a pencil, or scratch it into the dirt with your toe; I don’t care.

P: What possible relevance does that have to anything? And “humming” doesn’t rhyme with “Wyoming.”

H: So it’s without reason or rhyme, you say? But why must a limerick be relevant?

P: We’re philosophers. Walking through a wood. Surely everything we say must be profound?

H: Relevant and profound are two different ideas, and not contradictory. Perhaps the limerick is profound and irrelevant.

P rolls his eyes and motions to H as if to say, “after you.” H walks on and P follows. A small castle looms in the distance. After a time, they pass by it–it is just a stone’s throw from the path–and they can see that there is a knight standing under its walls looking up. Another knight, high in a turret, is leaning over the wall and shouting. He has a French accent and seems to be heaping abuse on the knight below. A cameraman films the encounter. H hurls a rock toward the castle, but it falls short. Looking back over their shoulders at the scene, the philosophers continue their trek.

P: Did that man just drop a dead cow on the other man?

H: I believe he did.

P: Strangely played.

H: Yes, strange indeed.

The woods begin to thicken around them, darker and more dense than before.

P: I have developed an intense yearning for a small glass of sangria.

H: I have a bottle right here. Let us repast.

P: Can we repeat the past?

H: Bob Dylan says that we can repeat the past, of course we can.

P: Here, I have a small capon, braised in butter and golden brown.

H: Tragic!

P: How so?

H: In no case is a concoction of sweet red wine to be served with roasted chicken. I have that on very good authority. They are incompatible. We shall have to forego our repast.

P: If we can repeat the past, it hasn’t passed and it isn’t past.

H: Yes, the very idea is an absurdity.

P: An impossibility.

H: An outrageous incompatibility!

P: A mutual incompatibility.

H: Well, no, I don’t think so.

P has disappeared from view. H walks on quietly until he hears footsteps and noises behind a curtain of leaves. Alarmed, he pulls out a dagger and stabs at the rustling. P staggers out from behind the foliage and is bleeding from a fresh wound. Silently, he looks at H, looks down at the wound, and then turns to resume walking down the path. H follows, and together they approach another gate on the path. Behind the gate is another wood. Together, they pass through the gate. H bends down to pickup another rock.

H: On the other hand …

Steve Bachman is Steve Bachman is aging like cheap wine in Saint Paul, a quiet suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He spends at least 40 hours a week toiling as a UNIX systems administrator, while metaphorically wearing a large bumper sticker that reads "I'd rather be traveling, birdwatching, playing Scrabble, reading, listening to music, playing volleyball, basketball, or softball, finishing a crossword puzzle, or taking a nap." Occasionally he writes down some nonsense, but he discards most of it. He wears a beard.
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