The Incredible Tale of Phineas Schmidt (a Parable)

The world was simmering in a new plague called COVID-19 and people shambled about with masks covering their mouths. Neighbors fell ill and the news buzzed with gloom, contradictions, and fear. 

Phineas decided it was time to run, so he sold everything he owned, gave the money to charities for children, and spent the rest on a plane ticket and a backpack so that he could access the most remote wilderness on Earth. Better to die in the age-old struggle for survival than to perish a the hands of some unseen spectre conjured and sustained by the irresponsibility, ignorance and mishandlings of others. And, perhaps, he might even find happiness some in thre embrace of primeval, shadowy glade, immersed in silence...

The forest was thick and deep, and Phineas took only ways that were unmarked by the boots of men or the hooves of beasts. Some days, he moved mere yards forward, but what did it matter? He'd never have to be on time for anything again. The goal of each day was to simpy to live -- to survive, then to sit by a fire and ponder this most human of accomplishments: another day enscribed in the journal of Time. 

For many days he moved through the bush, knowing, per the map of his mind, that he must be approaching the belly of this forest -- a stretch of uninhabited land that spanned millions of square miles...

One day, he reached a little pond that was shaped very much like a grizzly bear. (In fact, in centuries past, the natives had called it "Bear Cub Lake," but Phineas did not know this.) He took off his pack and paused to drink. He smiled at the shape of this placid tarn. 

Before he put on his pack again, he bent to find a small, white rock, which he picked up and tossed into the cobalt blue. 

As he turned to walk away, a mosquito landed oh his nose, so Phineas squashed it with his hand. He then rubbed his face to be sure there were no more bits of bug gore upon it. Then, he walked away. 

A few weeks later, Phineas lay dead in a field of flowers. At first he'd felt hot; then, he had started coughing and, in his last few moments, gasping for air, he'd fallen in this field of flowers, amazed, as he was fading away, that he could smell none of them, though they surrounded his head in radiant abundance...

How could Phineas have known that, only a few hours before him, a young man who had also fled civilization, had passed that same "Bear Cub" pond, moving through this brief intersection of paths -- the Cartesian X to Phineas's Y; or that said young man had stood there, also admiring the water, and that a bug had flown into his mouth, causing the young man to spit; or that some of the young man's spittle would land on the very rock that Phineas would later pick up, with his bare hand, and throw into the pond before rubbing his face to clear way the body of the smashed mosquito?

Anyway, the last thing Phineas saw was the sky in which he saw a cloud in the shape of a bear. 

The other man hiked on to build a snug cabin in a primeval, shadowy glade next to a chuckling brook and he grew fat on salmon and venison and died in happy isolation -- instantaneously, of a heart attack -- at a very old age, completely unaware that the civilized world had destroyed itself, with weapons and political discord, decades defore... 

Lock and Key; Fate and Humanity

Oedipus, the Blind. (Photo credit: By Albert Greiner) 

I lock and unlock my classroom door approximately five times per day.

On my school key chain, I have five keys that are irrelevant to this post, but the two remaining keys appear identical (at least to a non-locksmith).

Often, when I am unlocking my door and my students are waiting behind me, I will joke that that laws of probability say that I have a 50% chance of picking the right key first but that, 100% of the time (and this is, as far as I can remember, completely true), I pick the wrong key first.

Ah, Man and Fate. The eternal struggle. Plague of Oedipus; power higher than Gods and Titans...

Today, however, before I could pick the wrong key, yet again, I dropped the whole bundle. I picked them up and chose one. It was the right key. (The door opened; a beam of light shone down from above...)

Thinking as an ancient Greek, I might surmise that some favorable God, some agent of Fate's dominion (I like to think, perhaps, Athena is on my side, what with me obviously being the idea man of my age as was my predecessor, Odysseus) jangled the keys into the right position before I picked them up...but...that's just it, isn't it?

Is Fate stopping me from picking the right key, or is it a result of the repetition of the position in which they hang and the fact that I am right-handed that causes the "wrong" key to come to my fingers first? Dropping the keys broke the pattern of physical events that leads, daily, to my failure.

See, it's not Fate. It's Physics.

With how many other things to we do this? How often to we blame forces beyond our control for our rough-patches? I know a guy who is always complaining about his poor health. He has actually uttered the phrase, "Why does all this s$%t happen to me?" Well, we could blame God or Fate or we could blame the fact hat he weighs about three-hundred pounds.

But what if it is Fate? What if the forces of the cosmos really do tend to conspire against us? Well, even so, if I took five minutes to put a little rubber key identifier on the proper key to my classroom, I could smite Fate and become the master of my own door-opening destiny. Even old Teiresias would have to admit I was able to pull of what Oedipus could not.

And, so, I become the first character in a long line of victims of fate whose hubris become his salvation. I shall outwit Fate!

Now...to scrape up the 75 cents for one of those key thingies...

"Remember me...but...forget my fate."

Yesterday, I was driving drowsily home. I turned off of the main road, onto a sort of sub-main road; a busy little side street that runs past some schools and businesses.

The speed limit is 25. No one does that, but no one "flies," either. Between obstructing cars parked on the side, I saw something topple and I tapped my brakes. My brain tried to make sense of it. It had all of the characteristics of a falling tree -- a small one, but rigid and straight, all of the way down. As I got closer, I saw an old man, half in the roadway, his cane pinned under him. He was motionless.

I stopped the car and put on the hazard lights. I crouched next to him.

"Are you okay, sir?"

"I think I hit my head." He was bleeding from the forehead. "I guess I can't even walk anymore."

This was familiar territory for me. My dad went through this kind of thing, both the physical falling and the visible shame of a dwindling list of strength-affirming things he could do on his own. I had picked him up many times, both physically and mentally. (Sometimes I failed to "pick him up" on the mental end.) Not all experiences are good, but, sometimes good comes out of them: I knew what to do.

I helped this old man to sit up and rest for a minute, then I put my hands under his arms and used my legs to help him stand. (It is astounding how heavy a little old man can be.)

Before long, I had him holding onto a street sign for support. I got a rag out of my glove box and gave it to him to hold up to his bleeding head. "Do you have a car?" he asked. "Can you take me home?"

The Chances of Me

If a little Italian guy in 1328, by the last name of Matarazzo (and, no doubt, looking exactly like Mario from the Nintendo games), had bent over to pick up a dropped spoon and, as a result, had missed seeing a beautiful girl walk by, things might not have unfolded from gallant introduction, to marriage, to ancestral line...and I might never have existed. And you would never have read this.

But, because, instead of having dropped the spoon, he fumbled a little and recovered and, sipping his soup, leveled his gaze at a dark-haired beauty to whom he simply had to speak, I am here to annoy you with posts like this.

Maybe God made him catch the spoon. Maybe Fate made him catch it. Maybe it is just pure, un-biased chance.

Either way, it inspires a feeling of awe, does it not?

Fabio and the Goose

In writing an article for When Falls the Coliseum last week, my often wayward brain had occasion to reference an event that occurred in 1999: the injury of legendary romance-novel cover model, Fabio. This, to me, was, at once, perhaps the most philosophically profound, the funniest and most ironic event in the history of the world (the injury of Fabio, not the publication of my article). Within this event lies all of the profundity of the questions of fate and Creation.

But, damn it, I can't seem to get anyone else to see it. In the attempt, I have annoyed the ones I love and estranged the ones who merely tolerate me. I have even caused a few people to move seats on the train.

Here's what happened: