"it is noble to write as we think; it is the privilege of humanity." - voltaire
"someday i'll invent a time machine just so i can come back to tell the present me that "she" will be coming into my life, sooner rather than later, and that i am going to need to be able to recognize her when she does. except the "future" me doesn't offer up any insight into what this "she" looks like or where we will be when our paths cross. you think he'd give up a date but nope. not even a "brian (me)...nerd (what she looks like)...bookstore (where we are)"...but i guess that description wouldn't help very much anyway. i'd probably just figure i'd finally given up and decided to date myself. (insert joke here...) but i'm not that far gone yet, though there is something intriguing about the idea. hmmm...anyway, "future" me is afraid of changing the course of history so he won't spill important details like those. you know, just in case the whole space-time continuum or the basic principle of time travel in the movie timecop came into play (can't have the same matter in the same place at the same time). he can't allow us to be the cause of the end of the world. just know that she's coming and soon. (insert another joke here...) and that she is the kind of woman that will keep me swimming in peach faygo. peach faygo, you ask? yep, peach faygo. why? because i like peach faygo. she'll be the kind of woman who will keep me swimming in peach faygo just because i like peach faygo. i don't really have to explain that, do i?
it's a rainy saturday afternoon and i'm doing what i usually do on a rainy saturday afternoon. i'm at "borders", leaned back in a recliner with my feet propped up, re-reading candide. knowing that the people who work there would rather me actually buy the book but they don't bother me. you can't buy something at the store if you're not at the store so they let me lounge there. they're banking they'll end up with the couple dollars in my pocket anyway and they're probably right. "ahh voltaire", i think, "where is my lady cunégonde, where is my lover with the one butt cheek?" quoting, "candide, that tender lover, seeing his fair cunégonde sunburned, blear-eyed, flat-breasted, with wrinkles around her eyes and red, chapped arms, recoiled three paces in horror, and then advanced from mere politeness." i close my eyes to focus on what i've just asked myself, somewhat jokingly but mostly serious. which is pretty much how candide was written. bad things happened to people and yet i know i laughed out loud at them more than a couple of times. but that was how voltaire wrote it to be, it's sarcastic parody, satire at its best. i think about that until i hear a woman say, "i'm right here". her voice is beside me and her hand rests on my shoulder but i can't bring myself to open my eyes. "candide, that's a classic." "you like voltaire?", i ask. she says she doesn't know yet, that "ignorant readers are apt to judge a writer by his reputation." she says, "for my part, i read only to please myself. i like nothing but what makes for my purpose." i tell her she's right, that candide really is a must-read book. i ask her if she's read it and she said she hasn't and i begin to wonder how she's quoting lines from a book she just said she hasn't read but that's not important. i start to offer her the book in my hands but quickly realize it isn't mine to offer. and i'm pretty sure "borders" prosecutes shoplifters to the fullest extent of the law. i tell her she really should read it and she tells me to stay where i am because she'll be right back. then i hear the sound of heels clip-clopping away from me. i'm not going anywhere though, i wasn't planning on moving as it was. i'm not even going to open my eyes. and after a couple of minutes, i can hear the familiar clip-clopping sound returning to me and the "plop" that comes with someone about to get comfortable in the recliner next to me. "i grabbed a copy of candide to read while i'm here. it better be as good as you say it is", laughing as she says it. i tell her it is, because it really is. so we sit in adjacent recliners, in silence, enjoying the work of voltaire. until she read out loud, "the next day after dinner, as they went from table, cunégonde and candide found themselves behind a screen; cunégonde let fall her handkerchief, candide picked it up, she took him innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady's hand with particular vivacity, sensibility, and grace; their lips met, their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed." "i like that", she says. and i could feel her hand seeking out the hand i had been resting on the arm of the chair. until she finds it, intertwining our fingers as she continues reading, this time once again in silence. and i smile, i haven't experienced the touch of a woman in a long time and this feels right to me. twenty minutes later and she laughs, releasing my hand as she reads aloud, "alas!" said the other, "it was love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sensible beings, love, tender love." "alas!" said candide, "i know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. how could this beautiful cause produce in you an effect so abominable?" "a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside, that's funny", she says and i can feel that her hand, almost instinctively, is drawn back to my own. she places it on mine and gently squeezes. and once again, we sit in silence as she continues to read. some time later, her hand leaves my hand as she announces that she needs to be on her way. she tells me that she's actually going to buy the copy of candide that she has been reading. i laugh. "not me." i can feel her pen on my hand as she starts writing. she leans down to my ear and whispers, "call me and i'll let you know when you can come get my copy." then she walks away, leaving me to my recliner and another quote, "if we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer". and i do have "other means" of "making good cheer" but 250 years after this was written i think i'm totally taking this quote out of context. "eat?" was that an euphemism then too? maybe? probably not. but i digress. i open my eyes for the first time since i closed them to focus on the question i'd asked myself earlier. "where is my lady cunégonde?" "where is my lady cunégonde?" perhaps she just left me. i don't know. i do know it's getting late and i also need to go going. i return the copy of candide i had been reading back to the spot i'd gotten it from and make my way towards the exit, thinking how much i really like that book. it's starts with candide being taught optimism by pangloss his mentor, and how his hardships and experiences altered that thinking. how he went from "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" to "we must cultivate our garden". and i get that. i do, but i'll remain optimistic. despite trials and tribulations, i'll remain optimistic. though voltaire also said, "optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable", the phone number on my hand is proof that optimism does and should have a place in my heart. i'm out the door before i realize i better put this number in my phone soon. i really don't need it washing off from the rain. and i do, right then, 'cause i'm not that optimistic about its chances of surviving the weather."
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