Picking Stones Chapters 12 & 13

"Is Any of This Real?" & "Retreat"

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

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Is Any of This Real?

The new used book hummed silently in my backpack. It was set on the seat next to me. Across from it sat an empty chair, and across from me sat Phil. We were at a bar in Hunter’s Point, a short trip on the G train from the bookstore. Phil had called to see what I was up to. Somehow I had found myself agreeing to meet him there.

All the tables had a dark veneer. Ours had a slight tilt to one side with several miniature puddles of water sprinkled over it from an overfilled glass. My back was to the wall; Phil’s was to the rest of the low-lit bar. Looking behind him, my eyes snapped left at ping, then right at pong. Two girls, a redhead and a brunette, were in a battle to the death over a fierce game of ping pong set in the middle of the room under two unfortunately set low-hanging lamps. Drinks were flying across the room as servers dipped and dodged drunken patrons while elusively evading the flying white sphere.

Cold beer touched my lips and went down easy. Yesterday I had sworn off drinking until Friday; after two days it appeared I was off to a bad start. I kept looking at the redhead. Tall and slender. Our eyes met a few times. It had been a while, well before Beth left. The girl’s eyes would meet mine and then she’d send a smirk over to her friend with the bushy eyebrows who Phil was already head-over-heels for. Paddle smack ball, point redhead, turn to me, heart flutters, smirks at friend. Ache. It had been too long.

“Anyway,” Phil said. “What’s new?”

“Do you have three hours?”

As I recounted the tale, leading up to the bookstore, I kept making eye contact with the girl playing ping pong. It seemed like she was breathing an air of confidence into me. For some reason, as the words escaped my lips, my story didn’t sound crazy anymore. It almost sounded real, like I was finally believing it. I don’t think Phil was. Isn’t that a thing? Liars who keep telling the same lie over and over start believing it themselves. Yeah, that was it.

The story seemed to spin further and further out of control. I got lost in the dark bar. Beer slugged down and helped cool me off. Maybe I really did believe it all in some sick way. The earth gave out below me. I dropped. Wild eyes looked around, I was still in my seat, waiting for an answer from Phil, from someone. Did I miss anything?

“I’m telling you, Phil. You gotta listen. I swear to you. The whole thing is true.”

“Come on, we’re up,” Phil said.

He set his empty glass on the table. It slid a few inches, almost shooting off the table. I made way to the empty blue ping pong table. Two paddles were set on the left side of the table; no one occupied it. I had gotten so lost in the story with all the um’s and uh’s taking a half hour to get out. She was gone. I had managed to let the redhead slip into the night without a chance to talk to her, or change her life. How disappointing. Better off—no reason to drag her into this mess. Phil served me the ball. Through the haze I still managed a three-game sweep.

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“So… my thoughts on your story. You really want ‘em?” Phil said. I didn’t answer, but he wasn’t looking for one. “Know what I think?” He continued, “I think you’re absolutely nuts. There’s no wonder Beth left you.”

We were walking down from Vernon to the piers on the water, towards the gantry. It was past ten. Half of my mind was screaming for sleep, begging, pleading for a rescue from tomorrow. I was no use to it. Something else in there kept telling my legs to walk. So that’s what I did.

“But I’m crazy, too,” he said. “And I think you’re onto something here. You gotta try that I Ching book out. Tonight!”

“Yeah okay. That’s out of the cards. You’re lucky I came this far.”

“I think you’re just as lucky as I am for that,” he said. “Don’t act like you didn’t need this. There’s been too much messed up shit going on in your head. A walk like this unblocks some of that useless shit swashing around in there.” He tapped his head for effect. “Getting out, going on walks. It’s good for you. Good for the soul.”

He continued, “I’ve always told you there’s no such thing as coincidences. Seems like you’re finally seeing that for yourself now. Yo, watch where you’re going!” A bicyclist nearly hurtled into us as he sailed past a stop sign at full speed as we crossed the street.

“Look at this guy,” I said as the biker became smaller and smaller in our peripheral.

“What was I saying? Oh yeah. There’s no such thing as coincidences,” Phil said.

“I don’t buy it.” Maybe I did.

“Bro, listen to me. Ask that book you got what’s going on. Maybe it’ll tell you. Tell me what it says. I need to get myself a copy, it sounds awesome.”

“Yeah, no. It sounds ridiculous.” Did it?

We walked under a green sidewalk shed. White spray paint formed into an ugly face with eyebrows bent inward. Its fat tongue stuck out at me through jagged teeth. I got a chill, knowing that image would flash into my head as I would try to drift off to sleep later.

“Think of it like this,” Phil said. “Does the story you told me make an ounce of sense?”

“No.” I was regretting bringing any of this up.

“Exactly! The story that you’re swearing is true goes against everything you’ve ever believed in. Randomly finding the book in the bookstore, seeing the same matchbook at work the guy gave you the night before. You should’ve been in bed by now, but look, something kept you out and now you’re having this amazing conversation with me. It all seems a little weird, and its all happening at the same time. Doesn’t it make you want to put a question mark next to every coincidence you have ever had? I’ll answer, yes. That’s because coincidences don’t exist. There’s no such thing.”

“Okay…”

“My suggestion is this: Throw out everything you think you know. If something makes you feel funny, write it down, remember it. Try to figure out what it means, because that little coincidence could be something or someone trying to communicate with you. Trying to get you to see something.” He rested his elbows on the metal railing that separated the pier from the river.

“Life is too short to think everything is a coincidence, Will.” Past the railing, over the bubbling river, and stretching up into forever was the skyline. He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t get better than this.”

I looked toward Manhattan. The entire world was across the river. All I had to do was reach out and grab it. All of humanity’s hopes and dreams had led to the creation of that place. Thousands of buildings stocked with millions of people, all who ventured there to find themselves. Poor things. There was no one to tell them they had come to the wrong place.

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream to them to save themselves. But no one would hear my cries.

In a city of millions, I was alone. No one to hold me close and tell me it was going to be alright. If anything happened I’d be pushed to the side, forgotten, and replaced without a second thought. The dream of New York, the dream of everyone in that city now, was dead. It had disappeared decades ago. But the dream was still kept alive by all the people blowing hot air as they spoke about themselves while no one listened to them, their audiences were too preoccupied thinking about what they themselves were going to brag about next.

I leaned against the railing that bent around the piers, my elbows rested into the soft splitting wood. My eyes caught sight of the tide coming in and out, vanishing as it crashed onto the stony shore. It was me, it was you, it was everyone. Forward march onward. Keep going, push push. Just to get to the end, to crash on the rocks and disappear into eternity. With billions of others following suit. The only thing that could change the cycle would be the world blowing up into bits and pieces. Until then, there will be millions of other lonely people trying to find life in a dead city that never sleeps. I wish someone would tell them that there isn’t any. Go home. Turn back. Be free. But.

I was cursed to be born here, and I needed to break the cycle. But I had no energy and the dawn was fast approaching. In a few hours work would start again and I’d be in that beautiful hellhole that stood across from me. I remembered the first time my eyes saw it, the first time I was there along the waterfront. I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was the best place on earth, nowhere else like it. A place oozing with potential, with life, with energy, with love all around. There I realized there was no potential, no life, no love. Only emptiness and death.

Yet we were still there, keeping the gears turning. I kept watching the dark river slowly flow out to sea, it’ll never stop. The skyline pointed up to the heavens while its reflection was juxtaposed over the river, appearing to crash down into the dead black depths of the water. The lights from all the apartment buildings shone over the river’s surface, their reflections dazzled as they moved with the current. I watched the tide coming in, carrying the lights of all the city’s inhabitants, as it slowly crashed and disappeared onto the shore. A million little ripples, a million little lights, a million unsung lives quietly disappearing without a trace. Never to be remembered.

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Retreat

Three coins sailed through the air and fell on my couch without a sound. Heads, heads, tails.

An eight.

The paused how-to video glowed from the TV while The Book of Changes was lying open on the couch next to me. The first line, the one at the bottom, was scraped onto the yellow post-it as little bits of lead broke off the pencil. Half a line drawn, lift pencil, finish the line. Eight gives you a broken line, two lines with a space in between.

Before you flip, you’re supposed to ask a question, like Peter had told me. Between the Mogwai and the card pulsing in my pocket, thinking of a question proved to be difficult. The one I chose ended up being pretty simple. “Is any of this real?”

Heads, heads, tails. Another eight. Another broken line drawn on top of it. Tails, tails, heads. A seven. I draw a straight line over the two broken lines. Nine, a straight line with an X in it, drawn in the fourth place. You’d have to look up what it meant, I didn’t even know. Two more sevens finished the hexagram.

I felt stupid asking it anything. It. As if there was something really listening. I guess in reality it didn’t really matter if anything was listening or not. I couldn’t sleep and had nothing better to do. My forehead was tight, temples were searing with pain, a loud ringing was whining into my ears. It seemed to grow louder as I flipped the pages trying to find the hexagram the coins had given me, #33.

#33. Retreat.

THE JUDGMENT

RETREAT. Success.

In what is small, perseverance furthers.

“So it’s not real,” I said to no one. “Figures.”

The ringing in my ears grew even louder, I could barely hear my annoying internal monologue over its high pitched tiny deafening roar. Retreat, it said, from this stupid idea you’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in. So according to this book I was crazy; I felt an odd sense of vindication. My eyes scanned further down the page, reading the meaning of my answer.

Success lies in being able to retreat at the right moment and in the right manner. This success is made possible by the fact that the retreat is not the forced flight of a weak person but the voluntary withdrawal of a strong one.

My brain couldn’t wrap around whatever nonsense the book was trying to shill out at me. There wasn’t an ounce of strength physically or mentally existing in my entire apartment. I read further, reading of yins and yangs and stupid things.

It is vitally important to hit upon the moment when retreat is called for.

The book was telling me to run. Get back in my hole. It wasn’t going to get better. Retreat. From this book. From this tale of spirits and ghouls and games. Retreat back to the black and white world I call home. To what I know to be true, not this new world I have entered where the impossible is possible and truth lies somewhere between the real and unreal. Retreat to where there is no God, to the place I belong.

THE IMAGE

Mountain under heaven: the image of RETREAT.

Thus the superior man keeps the inferior man at a distance,

Not angrily but with reserve.

Do not be angry, Will, said the wise old book. Retreat with dignity, back to your insignificant life where you will be most free.

THE LINES

The tutorial video told me that I was supposed to read the meaning of any line I had drawn with an X in it. I looked back at the hexagram scrawled on the post-it. There it was, on the fourth line from the bottom, crossed through the middle of a straight line.

Nine in the fourth place:

A) Voluntary retreat brings good fortune to the superior man and downfall to the inferior man.

B) The superior man retreats voluntarily; this brings downfall for the inferior man.

The Oracle was mocking me, knowing I would go back to my post of normalcy kicking and screaming the entire way. The superior man retreats voluntarily. I didn’t want to go back, I didn’t want the life I was forced into blindly. I wanted so badly for my sense of the world to be wrong, I realized I wanted to exist in this new strange place that the book was telling me to run from.

Tears of exhaustion welled into my eyes. The bed I had longed for all day was finally ready to great me. TV was left on. The book fell off my lap and onto the floor with a thud. It was open to the same page. The word on the top of the page caught my eye one last time before I finally looked away. Retreat.

I didn’t want to retreat. Each step to the bedroom brought my soul crushing through the floor. I didn’t want to retreat, but I would, unwillingly. Like the book said, this will bring downfall for the inferior man. Me.

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