I went to see the oracle this weekend. I had heard that she lived in a cave
up in the mountains, and since I had nothing to do but work or get further in
touch with my ennui, I dug my hiking boots out of the closet and filled a Ziplock
bag with gorp.
The drive to the spot where I would begin my hike was uneventful, but for a
close call with a deer and a fallen branch or two. After a few hours, I parked,
strapped on my backpack, and set out. It was, by this time, about nine o'clock
in the morning. The trek was more difficult than I had anticipated. The ascent
was steep, and though the scenery was breathtaking—tall, towering trees, an
occasional rabbit disappearing through the brush when it heard me coming—the
ground grew rockier as I climbed higher. Off the faint and narrow trail, the
drop-offs grew dizzying. After peeking over the edge and seeing the scattered
skeletons of pilgrims who had come before me, I stopped looking down.
I had been walking for hours, and I was feeling fatigued, and I had a blister
on my pinky toe, and the sun was disappearing, and I should have packed more
trail mix, and I wondered if there was a little mountain stream somewhere, anywhere,
because my canteen was already half empty. No, not half full, you optimistic
fuck. But then, I found myself on a landing. I saw an aperture, big enough to
step through if I ducked my head a little. It could have been for bears, but
I knew it wasn't. I stepped inside, made my way through an impossibly long,
dark passage, wondering if I hadn't been mistaken after all, and then I arrived.
The natural cave had been enlarged to create a room that was curiously well
lit.
The first thing I noticed—the first thing anyone would have noticed—was that
there were stones everywhere. Round ones, jagged ones, smooth little skipping
ones. Boulders, pebbles, fist-sized chunks. And then the glittery stones: diamonds
and mosaics and jade inlays on the walls. But I also saw a figure, a person
hunched at an enormous marble desk, head bent over a manuscript, hair cascading
so thickly over the desktop that I wondered how she could see what she was writing.
I stood there for a while, watching. I stood some more. Finally, I coughed
conspicuously—not one of those "I'm-an-ignored-customer-at-a-New-York-deli"
coughs, but a "perhaps-you-didn't-see-me-here" cough.
"I'll be with you in a second," said the hair, and I jumped a little, because
the voice was decidedly male. Then, there was a tilt. I saw a face emerge from
behind the locks, and it was a face I knew. The recognition made me groan.
"Christ," I muttered, not fully realizing I was speaking aloud. "I'm in Rockland
with Allen Ginsberg."
"Don't forget about me!" piped a voice from one of the darker recesses. I craned
my neck to see who had spoken.
"Hi, Carl," I said, staving off despair.
"So, Mr. Ginsberg, you're in the prophesizing business now?" I asked, not knowing
how else to begin.
"Baby, you can call me Al," he returned, deadpan.
"You're not serious?"
"Of course not. And yes, I'm in the prophesizing business. It's been a writer's
vocation for centuries, but few people realize it. And anyway, the agency was
a little short-handed today."
"Whitman was sick?"
"Singing the body apoplectic," he admitted.
Well, it could have been worse, I thought to myself. It could have been Camus:
"Keep rolling the rock up the hill, and imagine yourself happy." Some good that
advice would have done me. Or Plath; she would have made a miserable oracle,
grumbling about daddy and asking what did I know about pilot lights. Or someone
closer to Ginsberg, even. Like Burroughs. Oh god, I would have had to turn right
around and leave. I imagined Burroughs in the cave, a bushel full of apples
beside him... "Just stick one of these on your head, little lady, and hold right
still—"
"What can I do for you?" Ginsberg asked, interrupting my terrifying William
Tell fantasy.
"Well," I fumbled, not sure how much I trusted a prophet who had taken so many
bennies, "I want to know if I have a soul."
"That's easy," he replied, snapping his fingers to demonstrate his acuity.
"Of course you do. It was nice meeting you. Have a good trip down the mountain."
Disarmed but determined, I wasn't going to let him off the hook.
"Are you sure, Mr. Ginsberg?" I asked. "Because, the thing is, I'm considering
forging a career in either university administration or some sort of corporate
hoo-dee-da because I don't know if I'm as well suited as I thought for a life
of research, contemplation, and overloaded composition classes. I'm wondering
if that means that I somehow killed my soul."
He gazed at me for a while, and it seemed like he was thinking, but he gazed
too long for that. When I saw his head droop down, hair curtain beginning to
close over his eyes, I gave in to my frustration.
"Hey!" I half-shouted. His head snapped up, the curtain re-opening. "I don't
mean to be rude, but are you going to answer my question?"
"How can I prophesize in your silly mood?" he queried, grinning mischievously.
The man was an imp, I tell you. An imp.
I sighed heavily.
"All right, all right." He acquiesced, walking back over to the marble desk,
sitting down and dipping a quill into an inkwell. He wrote for a little while,
and then handed me a slip of paper. On the piece of paper, he had written:
In your dreams you will walk dripping from a sea-journey
on the highway across America in tears
to the door of a cottage
in theWestern night.
"Mr. Ginsberg!" I exclaimed, reprovingly. "I know you made a few changes, but
aren't you, well, plagiarizing yourself? And even if you weren't, what
kind of answer is that, anyway? These are desperate times, and obscure metaphors
have no place in a moment of crisis."
"You know that's not the case," he said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have come
here. And you also know that one should never expect a straight answer from
an oracle."
True enough. It was morning. Ginsberg gave me more gorp and water, I waved
goodbye to him and to Carl, and I set down the mountain, musing about sea journeys,
thinking about what the cottage would be like, and no longer seeing the skeletons
of pilgrims littering the slopes below me.
