A Great Lack of Discipline
A story for my great friend.
There was a man who joked that his discipline was so poor, that he'd fail to correctly follow even Newtons laws, and thereby begin to float away.
Everyone laughed heartily, which he enjoyed, because he sensed that this time they laughed with him. For the simple reason that they completely agreed. He felt a wave of love pass through him, and saw even in this his failure. Were he only more disciplined he'd recognize and hold a line against his enemies, he thought. But now more pressing matters arose.
No sooner was the joke made, than our man found himself on the ceiling, only quite awkwardly. He didn't rise with dignity, like Saint Francis of Assisi, surrounded by his birds. Instead the right side seemed to be less disciplined than the left, and the tail (so to speak) rather less disciplined than the head. So even this astonishing moment was somehow spoiled, and where the people around him would have called themselves ready to witness a miracle and be appropriately bashful and penitent, this crass display was frankly, merely embarrassing. By the time he reached the ceiling in his lopsided way, they were again rolling their eyes and passing the gesture among each other and really feeling like they'd had quite enough, thank you.
This was in the regional Foreign Persons Registration Administration, 3rd floor, corridor Seven. The man, already stammering out apologies, somehow rolled himself out to the hall. He needed help with the door, and suffered terribly to watch a beleagered old woman stand and cross the vast white floor with her walker in order to get it for him, the knob always out of reach. "Sorry, sorry!" he said.
Once outside, he rose above the building quite steadily, still with his right backside uppermost. He grasped shakily at the leaves of a tree, but it was October and they fell off gratefully. "Oh man," he said aloud, and with some emotion. Is this how it ends, as the balloon he lost on his 7th birthday and still mourned?
Happily for him, a worker on the roof saw him and emitted an abrasive cackle which seemed to stick in his memory on auto-replay. He wasn't one to put himself first, but really, this was too much. How did he deserve to be treated so badly? Did that man on the roof think he wanted to be up here? How would he like it to be in this undignified position?
And with those somewhat heavier thoughts, our man began to stabilize there at about 80 meters above the ground.
We all have times in life when a season of learning begins, and they go best when they arrive suddenly, pregnant with need. So it was now for our man as he floated and "swam," slowly learning to proceed with some dignity over towards the fairgrounds. In prior years they'd supported great beer halls and roaring laughter, but suddenly the people realized that a few of their number might carry bombs inside and so fences appeared in such great number that the area became unattractive. Then a pandemic arrived, and not only the anarchist had to be feared, but also the Bavarian farmer, with tears of love for you in his eyes, wishing only for a drunken embrace and another round of that old song "Wenn der Hund 'nen Vogel kriecht." So now it was an empty place.
Well mostly empty. There were the drones and their lonely operators. Men who'd given up on others and decided to settle for a virtual tour of a world they no longer understood. They regarded our man as just one more annoyance and avoided him, though, to their credit I'd say, the drones themselves seemed to linger, perhaps hoping to pick up a few tips from this drone which seemed to have no operator.
In the years that followed this afternoon, beginning with such shock and embarrassment, would remain special. Because having already failed visibly to maintain a mature grounded position, and because anyone who might take offense at that was simply too far away to make their presence known, he lost that painful, ballooning sense of self he normally carried around others. He drifted and whirled between the drones and a few bugs until it got cold and dark, and he knew supper would be ready.
The Middle
There comes a time in every story when we have to say "years passed," and happily we are already there.
Our man was reasonably content, owing first of all to the immediate willingness of wife and child to join him at his level. Well, the boy came immediately, clutching a wooden airplane in that "ham-fisted" way children and certain fat men have mastered. A new surprise: he followed his fathers gaze to the hand, splaying his fingers theatrically to drop the plane. But it stayed right where it was.
So evidently objects could "catch the bug," which was, one must admit, convenient. As for which objects would stay, the boy provided a hint, for he was only four, and still prone to adopt the habits of one much younger around the shiniest objects, or when he was tired. Evidently the key was to look at the object and silently (but gruffly) growl "mine!" at it.
This seems rude, but on further thought, why should an object mind being ordered here or there? It remains what it is in each place. It's likely that it experiences the command as something like magnetism, because if one thinks about it, even the slightest additional degree of consciousness about the wishes of the local two year olds, combined with the apparent equanimity in response to their gruff orders, would require the patience of a Job, and the love of a Christ in order to avoid growing spikes on normally smooth surfaces.
The mans wife took a few days to rise, though when she did she cut a noble figure. And right at sunset, too. The dinner table came with her. Not because she was irretrievably bound into constraining ideas of the feminine. In fact, her dissertation manuscript and a typewriter were conveniently lifted up. However, she did like to see her family together, and may well have uttered a gruff "mine" to certain objects that soothed the boy, and others which soothed the man. The former needed his pipe. The one he'd turned into a submarine periscope, 1/2 meter long. The latter needed his shiny antique bicycle bell, for which he hoped to get a good price on EBay.
They accumulated bits of necessary around them as the years passed. They really were deplorably lazy, and a spectacle that in some towns would attract attention was studiously ignored in this city of good burghers, who didn't wish to encourage such bad behavior. Though life at 80 meters did seem to have a certain elegance about it. Especially on summer nights when the smell of grilled meat drifted up from small campfires along the river.
"There is no use worrying," the man would say on such evenings. "I am this way, and I may as well like life as hate it." His people never replied, but there was a sense of agreeable silence after the words.
The End
"I was really very bad," he said. Incredibly, he failed even at this simple statement. The last word came out like "baa--" due to that characteristic laziness arising not in spite of but because of earlier resolutions to complete the work this time. His people cried, and at once a new problem arose.
A decent part of those objects, plants and small animals which had arose to this middling (and exceptionally lazy) position in the sky began to sink, along with the bed and body of their initiator, who breathed no more. They began to remember the discipline they'd forgotten. Of course, they live below the level of thought, mostly, but if there was a feeling about them it would run something like this: "I'm feeling more well-adjusted now. More ready to take up my part in society."
And so part of the kingdom sank out of sight. Those who remained wished they could be as disciplined. Perhaps they'd spent too much time with the man of the clanking pots and pans. They just couldn't do it. They had failed, and it even seemed to them that their little home, which now included even a mountain, was rising slowly. Victims all, of a fatal inability to put their noses to the grindstone.
Unrepentant layabouts, they!
I've regarded it as my duty to instruct them, but now my megaphones can't reach them.
I...I can only hope they return.