Ronald Fischman

I. Insta-MED, summer 1989

"Jag, did you see that?! If you had a highway exit that offered no services, would you place a sign to that effect?"

"It depends if your goal was truth, or marketing!"

"Make a note of it, Exit 29, Mile Run," I interjected, not asking my partner the meaning of his koan. "If the show in Queens goes well, we'll stop on the way back, and I'll run a mile at Mile Run. I bet it'll be marked."

Jagannadham was a short, round, friendly man from Andhra Pradesh. He had a MS degree in biomedical engineering, which he had barely used, because he liked to see what effect he had on people, not products.  He had gotten the engineering degree for his mother, and to get a green card if he needed, or wanted, one. When he laughed, his whole torso laughed with him. He had lured me away from a competitor on the basis of that laugh alone, I think. I remember ruminating on the facts - his car, a Caprice Classic, was two years older than my Buick Regal, and his wasn't even turbocharged. Well, he has a wife and two kids, I thought out loud. Beside, we were travelling in my car now, and I'd let them hear the turbo from Mentor to Marietta if I had to.

"How can I help make this a success, gentlemen?'

Kamal, who looked more Calcuttan than Keralan, was an observant Muslim.  Other than the occasional annoying habit of bursting out in prayer, prone, with blood-draw customers lined up, Kamal was a model worker. Three religious men, one Hindu, one Jewish, and one Muslim, (NO THEY DIDN'T GO INTO A BAR) created a business model. It was accepted to the level that we measured Rt. 80 between Kamal's prayers and not the mileage markers.

It was Kamal who actually recognized Mile Run first. Barefoot, I fumbled about in my gym bag masquerading as a briefcase to put shoes, stockings, and football on the same toes. 1.6 miles into the run, I came to wonder if the score was Figurative Language 3, Fischman nil.

Giving up on finding a mile run, we took off our clothes, faced Mecca (just in case) and sat on the great rock maintaining an amateurish excuse for freedom.

"You look like two yogis sitting there on that rock," Kamal observed his two partners, sitting naked on the great rock 1.6 miles down Mile Run Road from the exit to I-80.Kamal was sitting askew from the other two, in shorts, facing Mecca. The Jew and the Hindu meditated there, and offered prayers to Ganesh to support ther initiative. Kamal prayed toward Mecca. The rock was big enough to handle all three.

II. Ganesh trumpets off-key

I-80 rolled through my life for another year. Jag had gotten caught in a novel capitalization scheme. Kamal, sorrowfully learning that neither he nor the son of Family Guy would become rich by associating with Jews, found honest work, while I was moving confidently in the direction of musicianship and poverty-ship (which had the engine and which had the side car was never clear). Kamal had said once, in passing, that he had put his ears up toward Mile Run and thought that Ganesh's nose was a little stuffed up, and was that a bad omen for Insta-MED. I replied, "Maybe Ganesh just met the Prophet? Or are you going Hindu on me?"

I assured him that Jag was doing well enough in prison, thank you, and that I would have to find a way to be an artist myself, because like many creative types, I was a mess with money. I declared myself the artist, and gave the Universe the task of coming up with the adjective. 

Remembering Mile Run, I gathered up a sketch or twelve that I had been working on while moulding myself into a musician. One in particular kept returning to the top of the pile. so-la-ti-do, so - mi - re, do-ti-do, la-sol-fa-sol. Ok, so it was an Irish shanty. I looked up a few hundred. No luck.  I wrote some Irish folk music historians. The consensus was that it was very familiar, but no one could point a finger at it. So if it were plagiarism, it was clever, indeed.

I was to stay at the Collomsville Inn. This was the one and only commercial entity of a "place" with no postal code. The nearest named place was another townless town called "Oriole" with a great hiking gorge behind a wheat field. The proprietor, a portly 58-year old blonde with randomly positioned teeth, was expecting me around 5 or 6, but I would make a change. The agenda included the trip to Williamsport, that magnetic north of so many boys from John R. Tunis to those unhittable Taiwanese kids (some of whom actualy have crossed the Pacific and had big league careers). Williamsport, where a grown man could compare himself to Babe Ruth when the latter was 12 years old, and a self-styled Jackie Robinson could see what it would have been like to hit Ralph Branca at 3/4 distance, but nearly full speed. Williamsport, where I could dream what it would have been like if I had not self-medicated with M&M's starting from when I was 2!

The calls of Tunis's heroes, "All the Way to Williamsport!" dwindled to echoes, not obsessions, by the time I pulled off onto I-80 in search of Mile Run. My odometer ticked off 1.6 before I had stripped my shirt off. The music sheets leapt out ot the passenger's seat, replaced by the rest of my clothes. I, my waterproof writer's desk, and some sharpened pencils would replace the naked yogis and the mullah from the last visit.

The deer came at twilight to drink, confident that no hunter looked like that brownish peach being on the rock with his legs disappearing deeply into the space formed by the rocks below the big one. The brownish peach thing realized that too much time had passed; he was expected. Stepping first into the void, finding that it provided that rush unique to being a post-pubescent man where you feel you genitalia shivering together (like shaking dice with or without the compulsion), he clambered crablike to the shore. He turned into me. He was Genius; I was His channel.

How would I explain that to an annoyed owner of the bed-and-breakfast?

"Get lost?" she ventured as I asked what to do with my car.

"You could say that," I hinted.

"Easy to do. Especially here." She pointed to her head

"And here." I touched my heart.

I had no idea.

III. The past sings the future

Fifty year old feet don't handle moraines as well a thirty year old feet do, even in sandals. Fifty year old hearts - well, that's a different matter. My children's mom was back in college, getting her master's degree, and wondering if she'd ever find someone with whom to be a mother when I was here, with or without the Ecumenical Council.  My son's biomom had probably just met the man who bore her hopes for a better life from the remesas he would send back. My daughter's biological parents hadn't been born yet. But the picture had been printed, poorly framed, and hung on the walls of every place I'd rested my head since - every place except the marital residence. Now, Erez recognized the rock and the shocks of birch snd beech framing the creek at Mile Run. He looked about for the beaver bridge and to the bridge built by unemployed men like his daddy seventy years ago.

He looked down into the creek.

"Daddy, can I take my shoes and socks off and go to the Rock?"

"How do you know that this is the Rock?"

"It's in the pictures, and it's just the right size."

"Of course, Everyth."

Yoda, my first cat, was my first Everyth. You had to capture me pretty completely to become an Everyth.

Both the kids clambered out to the Rock. Becca kept chattering nonstop. She had been language delayed, and is making up for lost time by fitting an extra word in every crack. Little girls are a force of Nature. Nature abhors a vacuum. Little girls... You know the logic.

So did Erez. He tried to quiet his sister, using harsh language she did not understand. Intervening, I explained that this was a special place, but to understand it, she had to listen as well as look.

"Daddy wrote music here, Becca. You want to hear the music that Daddy heard, don't you?"

Rebecca nodded her head solemnly. In the silent seconds, maybe ninty of them, I heard music again. This was not the Concerto for Orchestra using the original "Scottish Air" on highland bagpipes (or concertino grouping; I scored it for either).This was certainly not the music of the rustling leaves, the rushing water, and the occasional cracking twig that Rebecca heard. It was fugal - a counterpoint to the tapestry of memories only imagined, but as tangible as the photographs, that were composing and being composed by Erez.

It was Erez that broke the silence.

"Dad, you said there were river hoppers here."

"It's late in the season, and the tide is low, but I remember a pretty deep place near the Rock where I think the minnows hatch."

Erez stepped into the darkest spot in the swirling water, with the confidence that would guide your next step on fine sand at a beach. His gaze softened.

"Erez?"

"I hear it, Daddy!"

"What, Erez?"

"The song! The one you wrote here!"

Erez is unable to match two pitches in a row. I just let him hear what he heard, because if I made a sound, it might dispel the fragile melody and destroy the filigree of the soundscape from which the melody emanated. Another voice broke the reverie, instead.

"Daddy? Erez?"

"What, Becca?"

"Why is this such a special place?"

Wordlessly, I extended my arms. She jumped off the Rock like the springboard at the Roxy Y. I set her down about a foot deep in the stream.

"Come here, Becca!" Erez encouraged Rebecca toward the spot where the rocks disappeared.

She just jumped into the void, catching her footing when the water reached her armpits. As I caught my breath, she giggled.

We left the Void, the Rock, the Run, "not because we want to, but because we have to." It was a changed family that would meet my mother five hours later in the train station in Philadelphia. I did not need to take more pictures in my cell phone with no batteries. The pictures are already on my wall.

Except now, a new set of spirits now fits an extra image in every pixel.