Oliver Benjamin
“What for?” he asked simply.
“I would like to learn from them.”
He laughed, bearing large yellow teeth.
“I am a wise man,” he said, “What is it you would like to know?”
I swallowed in embarrassment. “The meaning of life,” I
confessed sheepishly. He beheld me with great empathy and then
raised one finger and stood up. Walking to the kitchen, the small,
weatherbeaten man retrieved a large, mysterious and dusty book and
consulted it, simultaneously writing something down on a sheet of
paper. When he was done he replaced it on its shelf, and slowly
returned to the table. He read from the paper, speaking sagely:
“The meaning of life. The quality that distinguishes a vital and
functional being from a dead body or inanimate matter. Or the
physical and mental experiences of an individual,” he put his hands
together, “…Webster, 1963. Webster was also a wise man.” He
handed me the piece of paper.
I folded it up and put it in my pocket.
“Is there anything else you would like to know? Or eat?” he said.
“How about pizza? We make a very good pizza here. You can read our
guest book, everybody love our pizza! Why you are laughing? Maybe
you like whisky instead?”
Apparently, there were no men with long beards living in caves that
anyone knew about, so I began my descent, defeated, yet sort of
relieved. People had ruminated on the purpose of existence for eons,
and they always came up with the same idea: life’s a bitch, then you
die. What made me think that I would ever be able to see it any
differently?
Descending from that lofty height, I felt as if I was being sucked
back down into the depths of hell, and was strangely comforted by
the thought that I was going home. Hell, sweet hell. Horrible, yet
predictable. Torturous, yet familiar. Bad, yet good.
In the midst of abstraction and not watching my step, my left
foot slid out from under me and I fell. My right ankle buckled and
twisted painfully backwards as I tried desperately to keep myself
from falling off the edge of the world. By holding onto exposed tree
roots I was able to prevent from tumbling into the river and onto the
rocks far below, but the weight of my pack made it impossible for me
to pull myself to safety. I didn’t want to lose everything I owned.
However, it came down to a choice between being warm and dead, or
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