Dear P.,
Some other time is a beautiful expression. It keeps things alive, gives them a natural, spontaneous pace, lets them flow and occur whenever they’re ready to occur, as if out of a life of their own. Some other time, I was told. And I accepted it without question, without asking when or saying any of those nonsensical things about procrastination. Procrastination. They make it sound like a disease. Here’s a prescription of antibiotics for your severe form of procrastination, someone in a white coat would say. Be sure to take them twice a day on a full stomach, forever. Forever? I’d ask, flabbergasted. Forever, they’d respond, eyes fixed on their computer screen. Then, turning their gaze to my face: Unless, of course, you want to sink back into the procrastination abyss.Â
And so I’ll wait for some other time, without being conscious of waiting, letting myself float along in the river of occurrences. You know, unconsciousness is the very basis of life, wrote Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet. Could it think, the heart would stop beating, he went on. When I read that line, everything paused, as if in a temporal suspension. Then I closed the book and spent the rest of the day walking and thinking. Don’t you find it disarmingly true? If you haven’t yet, I warmly recommend that you read some Pessoa. In that same book, for example, he defines decadence as the total loss of unconsciousness. At its very core, he says, life depends on an innate, instinctual continuity, a forward motion that requires no thinking or reasoning or planning, an automatic rhythm that sustains us without conscious interference. Decadence is thus a state of self-conscious overrefinement, or an obsession with self-awareness, that distorts life’s natural flow.
I was in line at the pharmacy a few weeks back, and when my turn came, I asked for something that required the young lady at the counter to do some searching. Just give me a minute, she said, I’ll go check if we have it and be right back. By the silence around me, I assumed I was the only one waiting, but then I turned and saw a gentleman standing at the other counter to my left. Probably in his eighties, he was thin, short, curly-haired, and wore a mustache. He looked at me absently, with the gaze of someone who no longer tries to recognize the faces around them. But I immediately recognized him. He was Professor Del Zompo.
Ages ago, in high school, I struggled with math. Some concepts were so abstruse to me that I couldn’t get them into my head, no matter how hard I tried. Mom then found someone who could help me with private lessons, something I was reluctant to do. I must figure these things out on my own, I thought, or else I’ll never really understand them. And I had a point. And Mom knew I had a point, and she liked that I had a point. Meet with him just once, she said. If you don’t like him or his teaching style, you don’t have to continue. I was truly lost in mathland and could have used the help, but back then I was a knucklehead. Still, I went, moved more by a desire to see her happy than anything else.
I remember his small ground-floor apartment in a pink house on the same street where my grandparents had lived many years before. His name wasn’t on the buzzer, just the number eighty-eight, which Mom had thoughtfully pointed out to me in advance. I rang, and the door opened instantaneously. In the small entrance hall, I quickly noticed that his apartment door was the one directly to the right, left slightly ajar. I went in and closed the door behind me. The room was small and dark, with a round table in the center, two chairs, and a mountain of papers everywhere. There was a stale smell in the air. Have a seat, I’ll be right there, a voice called from another room. Instead of sitting down, I started looking at some of the papers stacked on the floor, seized by my usual incurable curiosity. Not even a minute passed before I saw him, standing in the doorway, looking at me. He was a small, thin man with curly hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, with sandals on his feet. In his hand, he held a Crodino. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in, I said right away, fumbling with some papers before putting them down. And I sat.
He stood there for a couple more minutes, as if studying me. I couldn’t maintain eye contact, so I nervously started unloading the contents of my bag onto the table. I had brought my math textbook, a new notebook, a mechanical pencil, a yellow eraser, and a calculator. He finally sat next to me and asked, What can I do for you? I diligently explained what we were working on at school, the topics I found difficult (or impossible) to grasp, and that we were going to have a test in two weeks that I couldn’t afford to flunk. I spoke for maybe ten minutes straight without him interjecting, unable to look up most of the time. He kept sipping his Crodino for a little while after I finished my rant. Then, he spoke.
And without further ado, he taught me the concepts I’d struggled to grasp, all in a matter of minutes, in language and examples so clear that I couldn’t fathom how I hadn’t understood them before. Coming from his mouth, it all sounded simple and natural. The whole lesson lasted no more than ten minutes, maybe twelve, after which I felt as though I’d known this material forever. My entire being, still and receptive, absorbed what felt like a telepathic download of knowledge that would stay with me forever. This should be enough for you to ace your next test, and all the others after that, he said. Now, set aside your book and papers, relax, and let me tell you a story.
I once worked as an apprentice to a clockmaker, he said, though not for long. It wasn’t the gears or the precision that caught my attention; it was the way the clockmaker seemed to listen to the clocks. He would sit quietly for hours, eyes closed, as if in conversation with them. I thought he was crazy at first, but then I noticed that the clocks would sometimes tick in patterns, as if they were telling their own story. One day, he asked me to repair a broken clock. But instead of working on the mechanics, I just listened. And for the first time, I could hear it too -- the hum of time, stretching, pulling, and returning.
He then fell silent, staring into the void for a few minutes before dismissing me for the day. The following week, the same pattern repeated: he would teach me math for about ten minutes, then ask me to sit back and listen to a story.
There is a library, you see, he began, hidden somewhere in the world, not on any map. It’s a library for the forgotten books. Not the ones that are out of print or gathering dust, but those that have been erased from time itself, their contents lost, their existence denied. I stumbled upon it by accident, years ago, while searching for something entirely different. The librarian, a bold man with gray eyes, never spoke. He merely handed me a key to one of the rooms. I opened the door, and inside were shelves full of books that shouldn’t exist. They were filled with stories no one had ever read, histories of lives no one had ever lived.Â
His stories were completely unrelated to one another and had nothing to do with math. They felt like flashes of memories, always had him as the protagonist, and always ended abruptly, as if interrupted by something that would suddenly appear, or disappear, before his eyes. He would stop talking and start staring into the void for a few minutes before realizing that time was up and I had to leave. This same routine went on for months, during which my math improved more than it ever had, and I got straight A’s. I loved going to Professor Del Zompo’s. When school ended, he didn’t want to be paid. Your willingness to listen to my stories is the currency to pay for my math lessons, he said. If you weren’t there listening, these stories would never have existed. It was an afternoon in June, in nineteen eighty-four, when he said these words to me -- the last day I saw him. The following year, I tried to get back in touch to resume the lessons, but a metallic voice informed me that his phone number was no longer active. I went over to his place and buzzed, but no one answered. One day, a neighbor said that he had seen the professor move a few weeks earlier, U-Haul and all, but nobody knew where to.
Professor? I timidly called, almost whispering in the silence of the pharmacy. Math lessons at your place, forty years ago, I continued, then gave my name. He turned to look at me, puzzled. Do you remember me? I asked. He remained silent. I came for the math, but stayed for the stories, I said, instantly cringing at my own words. Yes, the stories, he murmured, thank you for those. Me? I should be the one thanking you, I replied. No, no, they came to me because of your presence, he said. I still don’t know why, but they did. Maybe I don’t want to know why; what’s the point? I didn’t know what to say. I was so happy to see him, though he acted as if we’d last met yesterday. Forty years is a long time, I ventured. How have you been? Did you keep teaching math? Where are you living now? Did you move back here? He seemed a little overwhelmed by my questions and paused for a couple of minutes. I haven’t paid too much attention to what’s happened over the years, he then said. It just happened.
But now, would you excuse me? I have to pick up this heart medication, he said. I’m sorry to hear you have a heart condition, I replied sympathetically. Oh no, he said, it’s nothing serious. It’s just that the other day, for the first time in my life, I caught my heart thinking, and it stopped beating -- only to resume its lifelong job as soon as it regained unconsciousness. You lost me, I said. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a worn paperback copy of Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Here, he said, you should read this. Keep it; we’ll discuss it when we see each other again. I think you’ll like it. I thanked him, then asked when I might see him again.
Some other time, he replied.
"Unsent Letters" is a series released every other week. These are imaginary letters to fictitious or real individuals who may or may not have influenced my life, not always mirroring actual events.
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Time and reality...it is we who create both, unknowing from where they come and where they disappear...illusions of ourselves, we live. You express existence and non existence with such mastery!...like a maestro creating music.
Just wonderful, Silvio. You manage to wrap something up in its own package and the package has these layers that gets peeled back as we read, and then, when reading the end, a bow is placed around it all and you realise the package has resealed itself, ready to be read by another. Magical, as always.