Oh sure … Jude’s happy there with the Devil in Oaxaca. Forging those passport apps, interviewing desperate Mexicans, chomping on spicy jícama and slurping cheap beer. After Ouzo, after all the freaks at New Bank, after those maniacal god-believers in The Assembly and the perfumed pretenders in Spring Fragrance, who wouldn’t be content?
For a time.
You know as well as I do, though, that Jude’s not going to stay that way for long. If you think he’s going to, you’re as naïve as he is … or was … or is …
Contentment’s a mood, peace is a day. Who wants peace anyway—inner, outer, guru, or eco-? We’re human not because we drink beer, have sex, or work 9 to 5 … we’re human because we dream … because we dream the impossible. Sometimes the impossible is love, sometimes it’s peace, sometimes it’s immortality, sometimes it’s justice … and sometimes we call the great stew of all those impossibilities God. And sometimes those dreams incarnate themselves for a second or a year and we say, See, I told you, dreams do come true. There is a fairy-tale called life. And maybe when we stop dreaming that fairy-tale—whether we call it God, love, peace, justice, or art—all there’s left to dream is death, and death’s the lesser dream.
Sometimes though we dream that we don’t dream the impossible, but that the impossible dreams us. And sometimes, when we’re uncertain about what dreams what and why, we think maybe dreams are, more than anything else, what makes us human.
Maybe it was growing up being forcefed on God that made us talk about peace and joy but in our daily lives be addicted to the streetlife of the soul—that lurching nomadic celebration of desire and mystery. Like the bum who careens and sleeps through alleys and parks, sidestepping knives, soft on the edge of nothing, we’ve become unaccustomed to staying still. Not the hard power of hierarchy, not money’s caress and scream, not reputation’s mass, but the rush and fall, the steps and grind of that other dance, the erotic mess of it all, the addiction of a thousand little deaths.
The bum has something hardwired deep within him that says no to stability, career, progress, reputation. No to the happy assurances of dental benefits. Oh, maybe initially he’s unsure of the uncertainties, the constant leaping, the players more cunning and serious, but after a time, he knows this is the life for him … a life of risk, immediacy, surprise; a constant willingness to throw anything away; to be committed to nothing but adventure and movement. Bums don’t just exist on the sidewalk, trying to get in your pockets … they’re everywhere, there are bums of the soul, sometimes in suits, always unsettled, acquainted with vulnerability … and they’re asking (and when they ask, a thrill!)—What’s around that smelly corner? What happens when I jump off the ladder without a plan? Does that garbage bin contain the secret?
Jude’s a bum. He loves bums, the life of bums. He dreams of bums. Dreams of dreaming bums. Bums dreaming of bums who dream of bums dreaming.
And everyone he’s met as an inmate in institutions has been a bum too.
Rev. Weal, Sister Gooch, Ferrelyn, and Juan Juan McLoo … lost in the dream of goodness and God. Twatfish and Maeby Might, Erikk Haze, Bobbi Childs and Hubert St. Paterson, Magna Flatch and Mr. Blood … lost in their dreams of donuts, sex, and power. And Ouzo and her team of dowdy scholars … dreaming of sudsy knowledge.
We could go on, you know, you and me … looking in the tottering kingdom of words for whatever we’re looking for, bumping into all those other inmates. The road’s endless … it’s what drives us crazy, keeps us alive. Jude looked in religion where he cloaked himself in morality. He explored the corporation where he almost found it in money. He did the academy, home of bombast and lunacy. Maybe he discovered that God’s alive—not where the theologians say, not in what the atheists debunk—but just an inch from your hand’s reach, just around the corner from your eyes’ lurching vision. They’re Tantalus’ fruit, the lover, the fame, you’ll never have, tomorrow and quiet desperation … the human dream.
For now, though, Jude’s happy with the Devil in Mexico. But, like you, no matter what’s on his business card, what his home's like, what he drinks and if he sleeps around … he’s a bum, moving from bench to bench, seeking for a better bottle, hoping for someone to reach out and drop something happy in his open hand. Hoping for a smile, for the sun, a throne.
Like you, he’s an inmate, shuffled from cell to cell, if for no other reason than to get a change of smells. To risk another dance with another smelly inmate, to see the guards and hope to see the warden, to maybe write about their crazy lives.
Who knows where he’ll be next? What outlandish prison he’ll find himself in? I don’t know. All I know is that we’re made of madness and desire, my sisters, my brothers. We’re chained to dreams.
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