Dragons - Chapter 63 (DRAFT)

There were five members of the Executive Committee. They were all men and they were all dressed in business suits. They sat around one end of a conference table, their chairman at the head and two on either side, each turned slightly in his chair so he could face me. I sat at the other end of the table, three vacant chairs between me and the nearest person.

They introduced themselves in quick succession. Their names, their companies, their positions in the volunteer leadership of the organization. They were all company presidents, and some of the companies I had even heard of. None of them were old and none of them were young. They all looked at me with a kind of placid understanding, as if they had already decided who and what I was.

The questioning was led by their chairman, a guy named Steve Anderson. He was the only one among them not wearing a tie, just an open collar shirt under his suit coat. First, he wanted to know more about my background and my current responsibilities. Had I really done the things my resume said I had? Then he wanted to know more about why I was looking for something new. Was there something wrong with the company I worked for or the organization I served? Where did I see myself in five or ten years? And then he wanted to know more about my plans for their organization. What did I know about their goals and objectives? What would be my plan for the first ninety days?

Unlike the experience with Mister Thompson, this felt like something approaching normal. The stakes were high -- I hadn’t needed Pamela’s warning to understand that -- but at least I felt like I was somewhat prepared. The questions were direct but appropriate to the situation. Jenny and I had rehearsed many of them, and most of them I answered without even looking at my notes, trying to remember to make eye contact with as many people as possible around the table. In doing so I received an array of silent feedback. Some eyes were encouraging, seeming to root for my success, while others were skeptical, hoping to knock me off my game so they could kick me while I was down.

There was really one moment where I felt like things might go off the rails.

“Tell me about your time with Mister Thompson.”

“My time with Mister Thompson?” I said. “What do you mean?”

Steve -- and he had twice insisted that I call him Steve so that is what I did -- smiled. “You spent some time with him before coming in here, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

I looked around the table. If I had sensed some silent supporters before, on this one they all seemed to have deserted me. One wasn’t even looking at me, his eyes down and looking at a few pieces of paper spread across his leather table pad. Another seemed to be licking his chops, his hands up and one slowly spinning an enormous class ring around the other’s finger.

“Well,” I said slowly. “Mister Thompson spent much of the time telling me more about the history of the organization.”

“Uh huh,” Steve said. “Like what?”

“Ummm,” I stammered. “Well, there was something about a capital campaign, and something else about the launch of your Foundation.”

Steve was nodding his head. “What did you think of him?”

“Of who? Mister Thompson?”

“Yes.”

I saw a pit opening at my feet, a pit with poison-tipped spikes jutting up from below.

“I just met him,” I said.

“How did he strike you?”

I had no idea what this line of questioning was about. It felt like Steve was fishing for something, like he wanted me to commit to one direction or another, but the safest path seemed to be tip-toeing through the middle.

“He cares a lot about this organization,” I said. “He’s dedicated a large part of his life to it.”

“And yet here you are. Trying to push him to the side.”

It wasn’t Steve who said this. It was one of the other committee members, the one with the class ring, a guy named Fred Zeidler.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said without thinking, not knowing what he was talking about. “I’m not here to push anyone to the side. He’s retiring, isn’t he? I’m just applying for the job. Am I missing something?”

Fred looked like he might argue with me, but Steve quickly jumped in. “No, no,” he said. “You’re not missing anything.” And then he pushed a button on a small keypad in front of him and I heard the door behind me open.

“Yes, Mister Anderson?”

It was Pamela Thornsby. She must have been standing just outside the room, waiting for the signal. I could sense her presence behind me, but I did not turn my attention away.

“Pamela,” Steve said. “We’re done with Alan for now. Can you please ask him to wait in his conference room while we speak with the third candidate?”

“Of course,” Pamela said, moving forward, standing behind my right shoulder, and present in my peripheral vision.

I looked across the table at Steve and met his impassive face. Not knowing what else to do, I slowly gathered my things and stood.

“Well, okay, then,” I said. “It was a pleasure meeting all of you. I am excited by this opportunity, I hope to hear more about it later.”

Steve simply nodded, and I felt Pamela step even closer and grasp my elbow.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

The Zero Dollar Car by John Ellis

John Ellis spoke at one of my association’s annual conferences, and The Zero Dollar Car is the book he was handing out. It’s a quick read, part biography and part manifesto, with the manifesto part the more interesting of the two.

Ellis’s idea -- the thing he calls The Zero Dollar Car -- is that there is coming a day when you will be able to get a car for free, because the data coming off them can be sold to interested parties and it will be more valuable than the car itself. The companies that leverage and profit from that data will pay you enough to entirely offset the cost of the car you just purchased, if you only agree to let them harvest the data that’s generated as your car operates and moves around.

Imagine that you’re buying a $40,000 U.S. car. Say you want to reduce the price of that car by agreeing to sell the information generated by six sensors: traction control, headlights, clock, wipers, rain, and barometer. If you could sell those weather sensors for an agreed-upon lifetime price, let’s say $3,000, that would reduce the price of the car to $37,000.

Cars also contain suspension-monitoring sensors that, while providing information on the health of the vehicle’s ride, could also record every time the vehicle passes over a rough stretch of road in need of repair. This data is potentially of interest to government agencies who maintain roads and highways. Now imagine that you could sell the suspension-monitoring sensors to a government agency for, let’s say, another $2,000 lifetime price. That would reduce the price of the car you’re buying to $35,000.

Almost every modern-day car contains a microphone. Imagine giving permission to Google to monitor what is being said in the vehicle to better help with navigation or searching for that perfect place to eat. If you could sell your voice data to Google for a $5,000 lifetime price, that would reduce the price of the vehicle to $30,000. And what about handing over the information from sensors that detect speed and from car cameras? That might be valuable traffic information that could cut another $2,000 off the purchase price of your car.

In theory, if you sold the data being generated from several more sensors, you could dramatically reduce the price of your $40,000 car. Now imagine what could happen in the future, when there are lots more sensors, and companies like Apple and Google figure out new ways to package the data coming out of those cars -- especially self-driving cars that leave riders plenty of time to read and shop and play on their portables and phones. The value of that data could end up being equal to or more than the purchase price of a car. It could be a data bonanza. Who would be the winner? If it’s you, the driver, you could have a car that effectively costs you zero -- the Zero Dollar Car.

You get the idea. It’s kind of a fun idea to think about. But I think it has a fatal flaw. After all, who says that all the wonderful data belongs to you in the first place? Future cars, it seems to me, are much more likely to be leased, loaned, or given to you under an agreement where the car manufacturer keeps and sells all the data. You won’t even be able to get a car unless you sign on that bottom line. There’s a chance that that future car may still be free to you -- after all, if the data is so valuable, would a car company really want something like a sticker price to stand in the way of all those other profits -- but I can’t see a scenario in which you’re the one selling, and profiting, from that data.

Ellis, I think, sees this, too. In his conclusion, he highlights the issue of data ownership as one of the two big challenges that stand between us and the future envisioned by his Zero Dollar Car.

Society needs to redefine the concept of ownership. This is at the heart of the [Internet of Things]. With so much software in so many places -- even including what we wear -- the question of who owns the data is becoming critical. We all leave a digital trail wherever we go, and so far, every time we click “accept” on one of those long, confusing terms-and-conditions forms that no one reads, we give away our personal data -- a priceless asset not only to marketers but corporations and governments. What do we get in return? “Free” email, text, internet search, and content. And we also give up our data every time we order a product on Amazon or Target, accept a discount from a travel company or airline, purchase a new appliance or home security system, pair our smartphone with our car…

I hate to burst Ellis’s bubble, but from where I sit that ship has already sailed. Society has already redefined the concept of ownership, and it is not in the direction Ellis would prefer. Practically speaking, there no longer is any concept of “personal data,” except perhaps in the medical space. All the data that is generated by all the sensors on our cars, appliances, and smartphones -- none of that data belongs to us, it belongs to the corporations that provide us with “our” cars, appliances, and smartphones.

The days of the Zero Dollar Car are already upon us, except, funny, we’re not getting our cars, appliances, and smartphones for free. There’s no need for that. Not only are we happy to give away all the valuable data we help generate, we’re willing to pay for the honor of doing so.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 62 (DRAFT)

I arrived at the offices of Quest Partners exactly eight minutes before the appointed time and was greeted at the door by a tall and slender woman in a gray business suit and dark hair.

“Hello, Alan?” she said to me. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she continued without waiting for me to confirm my identity, extending her hand for a powerful shake. “I’m Pamela Thornsby.”

Pamela ushered me gracefully into a small conference room just off the lobby. Once inside, she shut the door, motioned for me to take a seat and then sat opposite me. How was your flight yesterday? Did you have dinner in the city last night? Any trouble finding the office? Her polite questions came in quick succession, each in a tone meant to communicate that she really cared, but with barely a chance for me to even grunt in between.

“Now, Alan,” she said, turning deadly serious, “here’s how things are going to go today.”

She then proceeded to tell me that in a few minutes I would be sitting down with the retiring executive of the organization whose top job I had come to interview for.

“Wait,” I tried to interrupt, “you mean I’m going to be interviewed by the person whose job I’m trying to win?”

Yes, yes, Pamela said dismissively, clearly indicating with a wave or her hand that such things happened all the time in Beantown. His name was Thompson, Mister Richard Thompson, and he had been the organization’s executive for something like thirty-five years. He would be speaking to me for no more than twenty or thirty minutes, really just to get a sense of who I was, and then I would be returned to this small conference where I was to wait until Mister Thompson had had a chance to brief the Executive Committee on his discussion with you and the other two candidates.

“Wait,” I interrupted again. “There are two other candidates? Here? Today?”

Yes, yes, but not to worry, not to worry. Pamela was there to ensure that everything went smooth as silk and none of the candidates accidentally encountered each other. One was meeting with Mister Thompson as we spoke and the other would be arriving in about twenty minutes, when they would be sequestered in another conference very much like this one, but not quite as nice as this one. Just between me and her, I was told as if Pamela and I were co-conspirators, my conference room was the nicest of the three and she had put me there because I was her leading candidate. She was pulling for me, she really was.

“Wait,” I had to say again. “Who are you again? Don’t you work for the organization hiring me?”

Oh, heavens no, no. Had she forgotten to tell me? She was an executive recruiter that the organization had hired to pre-screen and submit candidates that met the right qualifications to the real decision-makers, Mister Thompson and the Executive Committee. Now, please, stop interrupting, she needed to tell me a few other things before checking on some other arrangements.

And then she took an actual breath, looking at me severely, as if waiting for me to acknowledge the difficulty of her task and apologize for my thoughtless attempts to make it even more difficult.

“...okay…” I said eventually.

Fine, fine. Now, once Mister Thompson has briefed the Executive Committee there would be a determination made, and there was a chance, a chance, mind you, that not all three candidates would be asked to meet with the Executive Committee. She would come and deliver the news either way, but in my case she was sure it would be fine, that there was no possible way I would fail to make the same impression on Mister Thompson that I had made on her, but a chance nonetheless. If things went the way she expected, I would be granted an audience with the Executive Committee. That conversation would likely not last more than thirty minutes, but every one of those thirty minutes would count in the final analysis, she could assure me.

“Do you have any questions?”

It took me a few seconds to realize she had stopped speaking and was now waiting for me to respond.

“Ummm, what happens after that?”

Excellent, excellent. Keep thinking like that and you’ll do fine. After that it was frankly anybody’s guess. The Executive Committee would go into a private session with Mister Thompson and a decision would be made. That decision could be a hiring decision, or it could be a decision to extend the process further. She wasn’t exactly sure.

The silence that followed was short-lived. Clearly uncomfortable with her own inability to affect the process any further, Pamela rose from her chair and quickly excused herself from the room, promising to return when it was time for me to meet with Mister Thompson and asking me to not leave the nicest of the three conference rooms until she came back for me.

Then the door clicked shut and I was left alone. For the first time, I started looking around the room. It was small and windowless, really just big enough for the mahogany table and the six chairs that surrounded it. In one forgotten corner was a green office plant, and on each wall was hung a tasteful piece of office art. I could have been anywhere, I realized, in any of a million little conference rooms in a hundred thousand office buildings, in ten thousand different cities across the globe and everything would look exactly as this one did. I noticed a framed photograph on the wall next to the door -- something black and white of people standing around in coats and ties -- and I had just decided to get up and take a closer look when the door opened and Pamela came rushing back in.

“Okay, Alan, it’s time, it’s time. Mister Thompson is ready for you.”

I picked up my padfolio and followed Pamela out of the room, round a corner, and down the side of what was a busy office complex. A sea of office cubes, a little like Don’s Ergonomic Pods, but more tasteful and understated, greeted me, and in each one, it seemed, a well-dressed young person was hard at work, only a handful looking up to see what kind of creature was being marched past. We traversed the length of the office floor and stopped just outside a corner office.

“Mister Thompson?” Pamela said, again proceeding without waiting for any kind of response. “Alan Larson is here to see you.”

She looked at me and cocked her head to the side, indicating that I should go in. Taking a deep breath, I did, and Pamela quietly shut the door behind me.

“Come in! Come in!” an elderly man from behind a wide desk said, rising slowly and somewhat painfully to his feet. He was dressed in a rumpled three-piece suit, the kind of thing likely last worn by Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon, watch-chain and all. But unlike Mister Greenstreet, Mister Thompson was thin as a rail and had a full head of white hair, combed severely to one side and standing up a bit in the back.

“Hello, Mister Thompson?” I said, stepping forward and extending my hand.

“Yes, I am Richard Thompson,” he said, taking my hand limply in his. “And you are Alan Larson?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Alan Larson, please have a seat.”

We both sat, he behind his desk and me opposite. I could not help but notice that his desk was colossal, easily the biggest I had ever seen, seemingly more a block of concrete than a piece of furniture.

“So, Mister Larson...” Thompson began, looking down at me through a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. “Or may I call you Alan?”

“Alan is fine with me, Mister Thompson.”

Thompson smiled. “Thank you. And please, dispense with this ‘Mister Thompson’ nonsense. My name is Richard -- has been since I was born seventy-eight years ago. There is no reason for anyone to call me anything else.”

I nodded, laughing nervously. “Okay.”

“Now, Alan,” Thompson said quickly. “Tell me. How did you first come to hear about my position coming vacant.”

I answered as best I could. “Actually, Mister Thompson, it was my wife who found the advertisement for the position and who brought it to my attention. I did not know until just a few minutes ago that you were vacating the position. Your retirement, I assume?”

Thompson studied me closely in silence for a few uncomfortable seconds. Yes, he was retiring, he said suddenly, and with a hint of frustration in his voice. Retiring after thirty-seven years of service to this organization, thank me very much, thirty-seven years in which the organization had steadily grown in size and influence. How much research had I done on the organization before coming there today? Did I know when it was founded and what its essential purpose was? Did I know anything about its accomplishments and the people who had worked so hard to make them happen? Because it wasn’t just him, I was to be sure about that. He had had the pleasure of keeping his hand on the tiller for so many years, but without the volunteers, and without the staff beneath him, the organization would have had no rudder, and it would have been impossible to steer it in any direction at all. Did I understand that? Did I understand exactly what kind of situation I thought I was walking into?

He took a breath, but thankfully it wasn’t out of any desire for me to answer any of the questions he had just asked. Instead, it was just a breath, and in a moment he was lecturing me again.

He had had a lot of young men in his office of late, and a few young women, too, all thinking that they were ready to step into the shoes he was vacating, and without exception he had been singularly unimpressed with them all. Most hadn’t done any homework at all, waltzing in here evidently thinking that they could get by on their charm and the strength of their resumes. That wasn’t going to fly with him and it wasn’t going to fly with the Executive Committee. This organization was a sacred trust. Yes, that’s what he said. Call him old-fashioned, but the sacred did still exist in this increasingly secular world, and organizations like his were there to protect the sacred, to preserve it, and to bring it forth into all the years that were still to come. Did I understand that? Was that the kind of commitment that I was prepared to make?

He took another breath, and this time it looked like he did want some kind of response from me. But I wasn’t ready. Throughout his lecture, it was all I could do to maintain eye contact with him, keep the expression on my face placid, and nod sympathetically from time to time like I knew what he was talking about.

“Alan, do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said, slowly releasing the grip I had taken on the arms of my chair. “Yes, I think I do. You feel very strongly about this organization, and you want to make sure that its essential mission is in good hands.”

It felt like I was just stringing words together. If Thompson would have asked me to repeat myself, I’m not sure I could have.

He looked at me craftily again -- more like Peter Lorre than Sydney Greenstreet, with the same kind of crazy in his eyes. In my mind I counted the seconds passing by, waiting for him to ask me another question or pull a gun out of his drawer and shoot me -- and not sure which would surprise me more.

“Here,” he said eventually, pushing himself with difficulty up and out of his chair. “Come here, Alan. I want to show you something.”

He led me over to a corner of his office where several photos were framed and hung on his wall. Thematically, they were similar to the one I had almost had a chance to study in the best of the three conference rooms. People, almost entirely men, mostly in coats and ties, standing around and posing stiffly for a cameraman in some bygone era. Most were black and white, but some of the newer ones were in color -- and by newer I mean from the 1980s, judging only by the hairstyles and the patterns on the sport coats.

One by one, Thompson began pointing them out to me and telling me his story behind each. The stories themselves were barely even anecdotes, just long lists of forgettable names and places. This was Harvey Withers, he said reverently, the first chairman of the Board that Thompson served under, standing with other members of the Board at their meeting at the Greenbrier in 1965. And this was Tom Donnor, who led their capital campaign in 1973, at the award banquet at their annual conference in Naples. And this was Jack Reardon, the first chair of their foundation, with his ceremonial gavel at its Board meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1982. And, of course, unmentioned but there nonetheless, Thompson himself was in every single one of these photos. First a young Thompson with black hair and a bow tie, then a middle-aged Thompson with a mustache and a paunchy belly, and finally a thinning and aging Thompson with a wrinkled face and eyeglasses.

But the oldest of all the Thompsons was the one standing right in front of me, his hand with its swollen joints and age spots trembling ever so slightly as he held it up to point out the people he had not forgotten in all those photographs. Through the long litany -- and long it certainly was, my feet growing sore in my polished wingtips as it dragged on and on -- through the long litany I did the best I could to remain attentive, to show deference and respect, but all the while I was wondering what the hell was going on and what kind of sick test this could possibly be. My attention kept going back to Thompson’s hand, his ancient hand with its manicured but still yellowed nails, and slowly I think I began to realize how sad this whole thing actually was. There was not going to be any test here, no gotcha questions designed to trap me into confessing the specific kind of monster I was. There was just a lonely old man in his corner office, preferring to remember the times he did the things that mattered than to engage the younger man they had sent to replace him.

Eventually, there was a knock at the door.

“Mister Thompson,” Pamela said, pushing the door open and her head into the room. “Mister Thompson, it’s almost time for your next appointment.”

We both turned towards the door. As we did so our eyes met.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Alan,” Thompson said to me, almost as if the last twenty minutes hadn’t happened. He extended that same crippled hand to me as his parting gesture.

“Same here, Mister Thompson,” I said, gripping his hand as tightly as I dared. “I really appreciate your time. You’ve got a lot to be proud of here.”

Thompson nodded.

“Come on, Alan,” Pamela said, now pushing the door all the way open and stepping fully into the room. “Let’s get you back to your conference room.”

As we left the room I gave a backward glance and saw that Thompson had turned back to his photographs, now simply looking at them with both his hands hanging forgotten at his sides.

Pamela began walking me briskly back through the office.

“How did that go?” she asked. “Well, I hope?”

“Perfect,” I said, smiling, and wondering the name of the planet I had just found myself on.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

This is the first paragraph from the author’s introduction:

I first published the novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, which ought to be far enough in the past for it to be erased from the world’s literary memory. It refuses to be erased, however, and for this the film version of the book made by Stanley Kubrick may be held chiefly responsible. I should myself be glad to disown it for various reasons, but this is not permitted. I receive mail from students who try to write theses about it, or requests from Japanese dramaturges to turn it into a sort of Noh play. It seems likely to survive, while other works of mine that I value more bite the dust. This is not an unusual experience for an artist. Rachmaninoff used to groan because he was known mainly for a Prelude in C Sharp Minor which he wrote as a boy, while the works of his maturity never got into the programmes. Kids cut their pianistic teeth on a Minuet in G which Beethoven composed only so that he could detest it. I have to go on living with A Clockwork Orange, and this means I have a sort of authorial duty to it. I have a very special duty to it in the United States, and I had better now explain what this duty is.

So, first of all, wow. A Clockwork Orange is evidently Burgess’s Frankenstein monster -- a creation he despises, but which continually begs for recognition from its creator. I didn’t know that. But an even bigger wow is the duty that Burgess begins to describe in the following paragraphs, and the only reason, it seems, that he wrote this introduction in the first place.

In case you didn’t know, A Clockwork Orange, as written by Burgess, is a short novel of 21 chapters. That’s the way it was first published in Britain. But when it came to the United States, it was published there with only 20 chapters, and that is also the version on which Kubrick’s film was based.

What’s the difference, you may ask? Well, according to Burgess, everything. The 21st chapter gives the novel an entirely different ending. It is the one in which his young protagonist grows up and seeks a new way of life.

There is no hint of this change of intention in the twentieth chapter. The boy is conditioned, then de-conditioned, and he foresees with glee a resumption of the operation of free and violent will. ‘I was cured all right,’ he says, and so the American book ends. So the film ends too. The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel.

Double wow. This is, by far, the most interesting thing about A Clockwork Orange. And one has to wonder that if the American publisher hadn’t removed the 21st chapter whether Kubrick would’ve made his film, or whether it would be the monster still plaguing its Dr. Frankenstein.

Because the novel, short as it is, is kind of a slog. Burgess’s gimmick of an entirely slang-based narrator -- Yarbles! Bolshy great yarblockos to thee and thine! -- is more impenetrable than it is interesting. It’s almost a shame, because at its core, A Clockwork Orange is a philosophical novel, but one that takes almost half its length to even broach its philosophical point.

‘It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321. But all I want to say to you now is this: if at any time in the future you look back to these times and remember me, the lowest and humblest of all God’s servitors, do not, I pray, think evil of me in your heart, thinking me in any way involved in what is now about to happen to you. And now, talking of praying, I realize sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer. A terrible terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think. So, God help us all, 6655321, I shall like to think.’

This is said to our young protagonist Alex, a violent wretch, by the man about to reprogram him, to reprogram him in such a way that even the thought of committing violence will make Alex retch and feel so sick to his stomach that he will do anything -- even not commit the violence -- in order to keep the brainwashed sickness at bay.

And this is the philosophical point that the novel would have us ponder. In such a schema, where does morality lie? Is the man who does good, but who would do evil if he could, a moral man? Or is only the man who chooses good the moral one?

Much of the movie stays true to the trappings of the plot of the novel in driving this question home. Alex is a connoisseur of classical music. As part of the reprogramming, classical music is played under the violent films and images that are conditioning him so that the music, too, brings on the sickness. Once out and reprogrammed, Alex is set upon by his former violent friends, who abuse and beat him for past grievances, and Alex is unable to fight back. Weak and injured, he seeks shelter at a stranger’s home, one he doesn’t realize he had previously visited in disguise prior to the reprogramming, a place where he had already committed violent crimes against the home’s occupants. The homeowner, kind to Alex at first, eventually discovers who he is and what has happened to him, and so locks him in a room where he purposely blasts classical music at him in order to make him sick and suicidal. The homeowner then uses the spectacle of Alex’s suicide attempt to discredit the government program that reprogrammed him, and the reprogramming is undone, returning Alex to his original violent state and tendencies.

As Burgess explains, this is where the film and the American version of the novel ends. And it is seemingly at this point that American audiences are required to draw their conclusions about the moral of the tale.

In this reading, it seems to support the concept that freedom of choice is the superior moral option, even if that choice is used to do violence. In comparison, it seems, compelled acts of goodness are absent the moral foundation of will. To be moral, once must choose.

But, as Burgess laments, there are cracks in this interpretation. He thinks those cracks are because the story is not complete, that with the novel ending with the twentieth chapter, Alex has only chosen to do violence and been compelled to do good -- leaving us with a twisted morality tale that appeals only in a Kubrickian sense of spectacle and excess. He believes the twenty-first chapter is needed to rescue the reader from this flawed interpretation, for it is there that Alex chooses to do good. Morality is not just choice, but choosing to do good.

But Burgess is going to find me disagreeing with even that, because Alex has never chosen to do violence, neither before nor after his reprogramming. The philosophical reality that seems curiously absent from the work is the fact that Alex, like all of us, is programmed either way. First by his genes and upbringing, and second by the “vitamins” and “real horrorshow films.” If choice is required for morality to occur, then I fear the deeper subtext of A Clockwork Orange is that we live in an amoral universe.

Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.

Right you are, Alex. But unfortunately, it is not just the young who act like malenky wind-up toys. Even adults, ready to choose something different, only make those choices when the spring inside them winds down.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 61 (DRAFT)

I couldn’t stay in that hotel room. Not after such a phone call. What had once felt almost like a sanctuary now felt decidedly like a prison cell. I knew the walls weren’t actually closing in on me, but I just couldn’t look at them anymore. Their stucco surface seemed to mock me, their last coat of paint not entirely covering the last around the thermostat and that stupid black and white print of Faneuil Hall -- the same one, I knew, repeated hundreds of times, in the same spot on the same wall in every room in the building -- staring at me, showing me nothing but my own eyes reflected in the dark spots between the windows. I hated it. I had to get out.

Moments later I found myself out on the street with little recollection of leaving either my room or my hotel. My mind was filled with questions and worries about the conversation I had just had with Bethany. On the surface were the simple terrors: Should I have told her about the interview? What would happen if she told people at the office? What would Mary do to me if she found out I was looking for a new job? But below that flow were deeper and darker currents: Why had Bethany texted me in the first place? Why was she so upset that I hadn’t told her about the interview? What exactly did that night in Miami Beach mean to her?

It was a cool night, but plenty of people were out and about. My hotel, it seemed, was in a trendy part of Boston, with upscale boutiques and restaurants lining the way. Something about it seemed familiar to me, but my mind was too distracted to make any real connection with it. I could feel my heart sinking and a cold sweat breaking out on my back as I continued to imagine implication after implication.

What, exactly, did Bethany think was going on between us? Sure, we had shared something close, perhaps even intimate, on the beach in Miami, but I distinctly remember our connection being interrupted by two phone calls -- the first from my wife and the second from Caroline Abernathy. I didn’t leave the beach with any lasting impression about Bethany. I only remember running frantically in an attempt to rescue poor Caroline.

My mind had run quickly over the memory of that first phone call from Jenny, but now it skidded to a stop and began to backtrack towards it. Tonight, Bethany had gone distinctly cold when Jenny’s name had come up. Why was that? She was the one reaching out to me behind the back of her spouse. Was I supposed to disclaim all knowledge of my own? We had talked about our marriages dozens, if not hundreds of times -- especially in that concrete bunker in the basement of our office building. Why was tonight any different? What was going on in Bethany’s head? In her heart?

Distracted by these thoughts I accidentally bumped into a passerby. I offered a quick apology, but the person was already gone. Nevertheless the altercation had spun me partially around and I found myself staring at and thinking about something fresh: a street sign, showing that I had arrived at the corner of Newberry and Clarendon Streets.

That gave me pause. Newberry Street. I knew this place. I had been here at least once before. When was it? Had I been to Boston before on business? I must have, I’d been just about everywhere that had a convention center, but I couldn’t put a specific memory on it.

I turned and began walking down Newberry Street itself and then it came to me. I had been here before but not on business. Jenny and I had come here once. We had spent a long weekend here, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts, walking the Freedom Trail, and shopping and eating here, on this very street, at that very cafe right over there. It seemed an absolute certainty to me, and yet I still doubted it. How could I not remember that? In all our preparations for this interview, never once had our previous trip to Boston even come up in our conversation. It was true, wasn’t it? I mean, I know it was in those forgotten years after our wedding and before Jacob’s birth, but how could it have slipped both of our minds like this?

I walked up to the cafe that I thought I remembered. There was a chalkboard positioned next to a simple rope line, on the other side of which were small tables with people enjoying coffees and desserts of one kind or another. The chalkboard told me their specials but before I could read them the hostess addressed me.

“Table for one, sir?”

“Huh?” I said, looking up at her, surprised to see that she was impossibly young, surely no older than fifteen or sixteen.

“Do you want a table?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” I said, and then forced myself to stumble away.

It was the cafe we had eaten at, wasn’t it? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Yes, of course, it was, I told myself. It had to be. Because there’s the clothing store I couldn’t drag Jenny out of, and there, farther down the street, there’s the used book store that Jenny couldn’t drag me out of. It was all so familiar and yet so foreign at the same time, as if I was seeing someone else’s memories, or maybe my own memories through someone else’s eyes.

I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed my home number.

“Hello?”

“Jenny, it’s me.”

“Hi! How are you? Is everything all right?”

“Yes. I mean, no. No, I mean, yes. Well, it’s weird.”

“Alan, what’s going on? Where are you?”

“I’m on Newberry Street,” I said, giving it special emphasis. “I’m standing across from the cafe where we had coffee and carrot cake in the dim years before Jacob was born. Do you remember that? Do you remember that at all?”

“Oh my God, Alan! What are you doing there?”

“Do you remember?!”

“Of course I remember. How did you get there?”

“It’s just a few blocks from my hotel.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“No, neither did I. How is that possible?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, in all the time we spent getting me ready for this trip, for this interview tomorrow, booking the flight, booking the hotel, writing the sample interview questions and practicing them -- the whole time we knew I was going to Boston, to the city we had visited and spent some time as newlyweds. How is it possible that neither one of us thought to mention that?”

“Alan, I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“Hey, Boston,” I said, not really talking to her anymore and just kind of talking out loud. “Isn’t that the place we went that one time? You know, that time we saw that Manet exhibit at the art museum and that time we ridiculed of all the idiots in the stupid swan boats and that time we made love in the jacuzzi tub in our hotel suite? You know -- Boston?”

There was no response from the other end of the line, and in that silence I noticed an elderly couple walking past me briskly and giving me some kind of frightened look.

“I’m ranting,” I said. “Aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are,” Jenny said. “Why don’t you try to calm yourself down? You shouldn’t be getting this upset.”

“But why, Jenny? Why did neither one of us remember? We had fun here.”

“I don’t know, Alan. Life is just so different now. Most days just getting showered and dressed seems like a big accomplishment. We’re busy. We forgot.”

She was right. She usually was. But still, it bothered me -- and I could tell that it bothered me in a way that it didn’t bother her. Probably because I was there and I could see it. I could see the cafe and the clothing store and the used book store, and I could see the people we used to be. There they were. Drinking their coffee and eating their carrot cake and doing their shopping. At one time they had been us -- Jenny and me -- and now we were something else.

“Oh, hey, Alan, one of your staff people called here a few minutes ago.”

That brought me back to myself in a hurry. “What? Who?”

“Bethany Bishop.”

“You spoke to her?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

My mind was racing. “When was this? When did you speak to her?”

“A few minutes ago.”

Yes, a few minutes ago, but how many? Thirty minutes ago? Did thirty count as a few? Because if it was thirty minutes ago then Bethany had called before she started texting me and she was probably just looking for me. But if it was ten minutes ago, and ten could probably more appropriately be called a few, then Bethany had called after she had already spoken to me, and why would she do that? Why would she call my wife? What possible reason could she have for doing that?

“How many minutes ago?”

“Just a few before you called. I thought it was kind of strange.”

So did I. “What did she want?”

“She said you had something she needed. She didn’t seem to know that you were out of town.”

“Jenny,” I said as calmly as I could. “Everybody at work thinks that I’m helping your mother move. Remember? That’s the excuse I gave Mary.”

“Oh my god, Alan. I forgot.”

She forgot. “What did you tell her? Did you tell her I was out of town?”

“No,” Jenny said quickly, almost too quickly. And then she said it again, as if to reassure herself. And then a third time, this time sounding as confident as anything else in her life. “I did not say you were out of town. I just said you were out.”

“Jenny, are you sure?”

“Yes, Alan, I’m sure! I said you were out and that I would take a message.”

“Did she leave one?”

“No. I’m mean, not really. Just that you should call her when you get a chance. And that she needs something you have. She seemed oddly insistent about that. That she needed something from you.”

I stood silently on the street corner, looking at a couple sitting at our cafe, wishing all over again that Jenny and I were them and not the people we were.

“Do you know what she’s talking about? Maybe you should call her?”

“What?”

“Maybe you should call her. If she doesn’t know you’re out of town it’ll look odd if you don’t call her back. Do you know what she’s talking about? What she needs from you?”

“I think so,” I said honestly, and then shifted into a convenient lie. “There’s a project we’re working on together. It’s probably something to do with that. I’ll call her when I get back to the hotel and pretend I’m home, that I was just out getting some groceries or something.”

“OK, that sounds good. I’m sorry, honey, if I screwed something up.”

“It’s okay,” I said, silently noting the irony of her apologizing to me. “It’s nothing, Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. I love you, Alan.”

“I love you, too. I’ll call tomorrow after the interview.”

“Okay. Knock ‘em dead.”

“I will.”

The line clicked off and I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. Call Bethany? I thought to myself. Not on your life. From that moment forward I planned to stay as far away from her as I possibly could.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather

Lucy felt drowsy and dreamy, glad to be warm. The sleigh was such a tiny moving spot on that still white country settling into shadow and silence. Suddenly, Lucy started and struggled under the tight blankets. In the darkening sky she had seen the first star come out; it brought her heart into her throat. That point of silver light spoke to her like a signal, released another kind of life and feeling which did not belong here. It overpowered her. With a mere thought she had reached that star and it had answered, recognition had flashed between. Something knew, then, in the unknowing waste: something had always known, forever! That joy of saluting what is far above one was an eternal thing, not merely something that had happened to her ignorance and her foolish heart.

The flash of understanding lasted but a moment. Then everything was confused again. Lucy shut her eyes and leaned on Harry’s shoulder to escape from what she had gone so far to snatch. It was too bright and too sharp. It hurt, and made one feel small and lost.

This comes early in Cather’s novel, pages 11-12 in the edition I read, and when coming across it I immediately flagged it as a kind of key that will help unlock all that is to follow.

Lucy is Lucy Gayheart, a young woman late in her teens from a small town called Haverford, and Harry is Harry Gordon, a kind of platonic beau of hers. They are in his horse-drawn sleigh, moving towards a frozen tributary of the Platte River, where they and others of their youth and enthusiasm have skated for years, both for exercise and as an expression of their youthful joy.

But Lucy will leave Haverford in the spring, moving to Chicago to begin a kind of career, studying music under Professor Paul Auerbach and providing piano lessons to younger students in order to make her ends meet. And shortly, upon the recommendation of her music professor, Lucy will go to a recital offered by a famous singer named Clement Sebastian.

The first number was a Schubert song she had never heard or even seen. His diction was one of the remarkable things about Sebastian’s singing, and she did not miss a word of the German. A Greek sailor, returned from a voyage, stands in the temple of Castor and Pollux, the mariners’ stars, and acknowledges their protection. He has steered his little boat by their mild, protecting light, eure Milde, eure Wachen. In recognition of their aid he hangs his oar as a votive offering in the porch of their temple.

The song was sung as a religious observance in the classical spirit, a rite more than a prayer; a noble salutation to beings so exalted that in the mariner’s invocation there was no humbleness and no entreaty. In your light I stand without fear, O august stars! I salute your eternity. That was the feeling. Lucy had never heard anything sung with such elevation of style. In its calmness and serenity there was a kind of large enlightenment, like daybreak.

The experience is a revelatory one for Lucy -- and very much in keeping with Cather’s perennial theme of art transcending beyond the ordinary.

Through the rest of the recital her attention was intermittent. Sometimes she listened intently, and the next moment her mind was far away. She was struggling with something she had never felt before. A new conception of art? It came closer than that. A new kind of personality? But it was much more. It was a discovery about life, a revelation of love as a tragic force, not a melting mood, of passion that drowns like black water. As she sat listening to this man the outside world seemed to her dark and terrifying, full of fears and dangers that had never come close to her until now.

Passion that drowns like black water. Mark that. We’ll come back to that. But for now, know only that this recital, this glimpse of the transcendent, awakens in Lucy a painful understanding that will separate her from the pastoral ideal that Haverford and the people that live there represent.

Some peoples’ lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property; but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughts -- that and nothing more.

Lucy and Sebastian

Near the end of the year Lucy will be taken on as Sebastian’s new accompanist, playing the piano and working with him as he prepares for an extended tour in Europe. In this capacity, the two will come to know each other very well, with each representing something important to the other. Cather captures this in two short portraits, juxtaposed on the same Sunday afternoon.

First, Lucy:

One Sunday afternoon near the end of February Lucy was sitting in her room looking out at the back of the next building, which came close to her window, -- a blank wall of bricks painted grey. Sunday was the only day in which she had much time for reflection. She gave lessons all day on Saturday, but on Sunday she was free.

This morning she was wondering how a month, nearly two months, indeed, could have slipped by so quickly. A strange kind of life she had been leading. For two hours, five days a week, she was alone with Sebastian, shut away from the rest of the world. It was as if they were on the lonely spur of a mountain, enveloped by mist. They saw no one but [Sebastian’s valet] Giuseppe, heard no one; the city below was blotted out. Then, after eleven-thirty, the city began poking in its fingers. The telephone began to buzz, and she heard him build up the rest of his day and evening. At about twelve she got into the elevator and dropped down into Chicago again.

The weather, which everyone grumbled about, had been exactly the right weather for her. The dark, stormy mornings made the warmth and quiet toward which she hurried seem all the richer. The dirty streets, as she crossed the town through sleet and snow, were like narrow rivers, shut in by grey cliffs where the light was always changing, and she herself was a twig or a leaf swept along on the current. As soon as she reached the studio, that excitement and sense of struggle vanished; her mind was like a pair of dancing balances brought to rest. Something quieted her like a great natural force. Things took on their right relation, the trivial and disturbing shut out. Life was resolved into something simple and noble -- yes, and joyous; a joyousness which seemed safe from time or change, like that in Schubert’s Die Forelle, which Sebastian often sang.

Lucy stopped looking at the streaks of rain against the grey wall, went to her shabby piano, and played that song again and again. There were other songs which she associated more closely with Sebastian himself, but this one was like the studio, like the hours they spent there together. No matter where in the world she should ever hear it, it would always drop her down again into that room with the piano between two big windows, the coal fire glowing behind her, the Lake reaching out before her, and the man walking carelessly up and down as he sang.

And now, Sebastian:

On this same Sunday Sebastian himself was going through a bad time. He happened to have no out-of-town engagement, so he was in Chicago, in his studio. This day, with a brutal rain beating on brutal buildings, had been one of slowly rising misery.

In the morning paper he had read a dispatch from Geneva, announcing the death of an old friend and fellow student, at a sanatorium in Savoy. He hadn’t even known that Larry MacGowan was ill; there had been a coldness between them for the last few years. But the moment his eyes fell on that black headline the feeling of estrangement vanished as if it had never been. The reality was their ardent, generous young friendship, their student days together -- which were only yesterday, after all. He put down the newspaper softly, as if he were afraid of wakening someone. It was like reading his own death notice. Like it? It was just that. The obituary would serve for both -- for their good days.

Nothing had ever made Seabstian admit to himself that his youth was forever and irrevocably gone. He had clung to a secret belief that he would pick it up again, somewhere. This was a time of temporary lassitude and disillusion, but his old feeling about life would come back; he would turn a corner and confront it. He would waken some morning and step out of bed the man he used to be. Now, all in a moment, it came over him that when people spoke of their dead youth they were not using a figure of speech. The thing he was looking for had gone out into the wide air, like a volatile essence, and he was staring into the empty jar. Emptiness, that was the feeling: the very objects in his studio seemed to draw farther apart, and to regard each other more coldly. MacGowen had slipped out of all this; grey skies, falling rain, chilled affections. Everything in this room, in this city and this country, had suddenly become unfamiliar and unfriendly.

He goes on in a kind of reverie, remembering what MacGowen had once meant to him; more, it seems, that any other person, even his wife, with whom he quickly grew estranged, and even his son, who he had sent away to school. He sits by his fire for hours, smoking until his throat is dry, trying to find one lovely, unspoiled memory.

In the present wasn’t there somewhere a flower or a green bough that he could hold close and breathe its freshness? His glance wandered toward the piano; perhaps there was one!

Sebastian got up and opened the windows wide, wound a scarf about his throat, and walked up and down the room while the wind blew out the tobacco smoke. He was thinking about Lucy; that perhaps he wouldn’t have got so far down this morning if she had been there for an hour. It was dangerous to go for sympathy to a young girl who was in love with one, but Lucy was different. As he paced back and forth he told himself that hers was quite another kind of feeling than the one he had encountered under so many disguises, It seemed complete in itself, not putting out tentacles all the while. He had sometimes thought of her as rather boyish, because she was so square. It was more like a chivalrous loyalty than a young passion. He didn’t believe she would ever be guilty of those uncatalogued, faint treacheries which vanity makes young people commit. He didn’t believe she would ever use his name for her own advantage -- not even in a harmless way, to make herself interesting to a crowd of students, for instance. That was a good deal to say for a young thing with her living to make, struggling to get a foothold in a slippery world. He hadn’t met with just that kind of delicacy before, in man or woman. When she gave him a quick shy look and the gold sparks flashed in her eyes, he read devotion there, and the fire of imagination; but not invitation, no appeal. In her companionship there was never the shadow of a claim. On the contrary, there was a spirit which disdained advantage.

There is clearly a special bond emerging between these two, something far more special than the simple and natural affections that women and men feel, or even those felt by students and teachers. To borrow a Catherian turn of phrase, for Sebastian, Lucy is a bridge to Youth, and for Lucy, Sebastian is a bridge to the Bright Medusa.

Indeed, in the very next chapter, Lucy goes at the appointed time to Sebastian’s studio.

At last it was five o’clock, the grey twilight was gone, and she turned towards the Arts Building. She was frightened as she went up in the elevator, and tried not to think at all. She lifted the brass knocker, and Sebastian opened the door. Before she had time to speak, just as she was, in her hat and coat, he took her in his arms.

They stood for a long while without moving, in the dusky little hall among overcoats and walking-sticks. Lucy felt him take everything that was in her heart; there was nothing to hold back any more. His soft, deep breathing seemed to drink her up entirely, to take away all that was timid, uncertain, bewildered. Something beautiful and serene came from his heart into hers; wisdom and sadness. If he took her secret, he gave her his in return; that he had renounced life. Nobody would ever share his life again. But he had unclouded faith in the old and lovely dreams of man; that he would teach her and share with her. When they went into the music room, neither of them had spoken.

There is much here that transcends words, that transcends the need to communicate through words, but shortly Sebastian will put exactly into words what Lucy does for him and his withered old heart.

“Send you away? I’m afraid I’m not so unselfish. Perhaps I ought. But it isn’t as if you were really in love. I am quite old enough to be your father, you know. You are merely growing up, -- and finding things. It was just that freshness which charmed me, I thought. But now I believe I love everything about you, Lucy. The mornings used to be dull and heavy here. You brought something sweet into them. I began to watch for you from the window, and when I caught sight of you tripping along in the wind, my heart grew lighter. I love young ardour, young fire. I had a nice boy in my house once; but he had to go away to school. What a difference you have made in my life here! When you knocked, it was like springtime coming in at the door. I went to work with more spirit because things were new and wonderful to you.”

Lucy is growing -- growing as a young woman, but more so growing as a young artist, as a young connoisseur of the beautiful and the sublime -- and in that growth, whether as its instigator or even just as its fond observer, Sebastian remembers and revels in what he once had, what life and art had once meant to him.

Becoming More and More Herself

But, of course, this growth, this change, has an impact on Lucy as well.

Lucy used to be sorry that her birthday came in March. In Chicago it was the most disagreeable season of the year; and at home, in Haverford, it was always cheerless enough. The ice on the Platte had either disappeared or gone rotten, so there was no skating. The wind never stopped blowing, and the air was full of dust from the ploughed fields and sand from the river banks. But this year March was the happiest month she had ever known.

The ice on the Platte. Mark that as well. But for now, let’s continue with the changes Lucy is discovering, the passing of another birthday just a milestone to mark such progress.

Sebastian was getting up his programs for his April concert tour in the East, and every morning was important. It was much more as if he were really living at the studio now. He kept the place full of flowers and growing plants because he found Lucy liked them. When he opened the door for her, he met her with a kiss. That embrace, often playful but never hurried, seemed to bring them at once into complete understanding: every sound, every silence, had the beauty of intimacy and confidence. The air one breathed in that room was different from any other in the world. Lucy thought there was even a special kind of light there, which kept a soft tint of gold, though the fog was brown and the smoke hung low outside. The weather was consistently bad. The ice cakes ground upon each other in the Lake, rain and wet snow beat down upon the city, high winds strewed the streets with broken umbrellas. But when she reached the Arts Building the elevator took her up into an untroubled climate.

It was at night, when she was quiet and alone, that she got the greatest happiness out of each day -- after it had passed! Why this was, she never knew. In the darkness she went over every moment of the morning again. Nothing was lost; not a phrase of a song, not a look on his face or a motion of his hand. In these quiet hours she had time to reflect, and to realize that the few weeks since the 4th of January were longer than the twenty-one years that had gone before. Life, it seemed, could not be measured by years.

It was not that she had been discontented before. She had been happy ever since she first came to Chicago; thought herself fortunate to have escaped from a little town to a city, and to work with a kind and conscientious man like Paul Auerbach. But that time was far away. She began a new life on the night when she first heard Clement Sebastian. Until that night she had played with trifles and make-believes.

Since then she had changed so much in her thoughts, in her ways, even in her looks, that she might wonder she knew herself -- except that the changes were all in the direction of becoming more and more herself. She was no longer afraid to like or to dislike anything too much. It was as if she had found some authority for taking what was hers and rejecting what seemed unimportant.

Lucy is becoming more and more herself. That, to me, is one of the essential points of this story. That Sebastian -- the Bright Medusa -- whatever it is that he gains from the relationship, is helping Youth grow, mature, and become the well-rounded adult that she has to become and be. And, to me, that idea prompts a dark and dangerous thought. Once Youth stops being Youth, will the Bright Medusa still find her appealing? What will Sebastian do when Lucy stops being the wide-eyed discoverer of what to Sebastian is old, but which to Lucy is new, and which is therefore new again to Sebastian?

The change in Lucy is even more apparent when she re-connects with Harry Gordon, that young man with the horse-drawn sleigh from back home, who by now is moving up in the world of business and who has set his eye on marrying Lucy, both out of true affection for her and out of a sense that such a match would be proper for a man of his enterprising spirit. On his visit to Chicago, they go to the Art Museum.

It was a rather gentle, sunny morning, and as they walked over toward Michigan Avenue they stopped to do a little shopping. Lucy caught at every pretext for delay. Last year when they went through the Museum together they had disagreed violently about almost everything, and had come away in a bad humour. Marshall Field’s was a much better place for Harry, and it was fun choosing handkerchiefs and neckties for him. But he kept looking at his watch, and got her to the galleries soon after they were open. He was careful not to make any comments that would irritate her; she could actually feel caution in his step and voice. What a fury she must have been last spring! Not once did she catch that smart squint in his eyes. He did, occasionally, square his shoulders before a picture and twist his mouth awry, as if he would like to call the painter’s bluff; but he did not try to be funny. When they reached a loan exhibit of French Impressionists he broke down, and began pointing out figures that were not correctly drawn.

“Now, you’ll admit, Lucy--” he would begin persuasively.

“Certainly I admit, but I don’t think it matters. I don’t know anything about pictures, but I think some are meant to express a kind of feeling merely, and then accuracy doesn’t matter.”

Yes, Lucy. Pictures, and sometimes novels by Willa Cather, too.

“But anatomy is a fact,” he insisted, “and facts are at the bottom of everything.”

She did not answer him impatiently, as she would have done once, but bent her head a little and spoke in a quiet voice which disconcerted him. “Are they, Harry? I’m not so sure.”

He didn’t reply to this. Something in her tone had made him feel very tenderly toward her. She must be tired, he thought. He saw a door open, leading to one of the stone porticos at the back of the building, that looked on the Lake. He touched Lucy’s elbow.

“Let’s go out on that balcony and get some fresh air.”

The morning had grown warmer, but a mist had come up which hid the sky-line. The water was faintly blue, and above it everything was soft; a silvery mist with changing blue and green at the heart of it, far out. Even the grey gulls flew by on languid wings. The air felt full of spring showers. On a morning like this… Lucy felt an ache come up in her throat. When she looked off at that soft promise of spring, spring already happening in the colours of the sky before it had come on earth, such a longing awoke in her that it seemed as if it would break her heart. That happiness she had so lately found, where was it? Everything threatened it, the way of the world was against it. It had escaped her. She had lost it as one can lose a ravishing melody, remembering the mood of it, the kind of joy it gave, but unable to recall precisely the air itself. And she couldn’t breathe in this other kind of life. It stifled her, woke in her a frantic fear -- the fear of falling back into it forever. If only one could lose one’s life and one’s body and be nothing but one’s desire; if the rest could melt away, and that could float with the gulls, out yonder where the blue and green were changing!

A far-away voice was saying something about lunch. She came back with a start.

“No, Harry, please. I have a headache, and I want to get home as quickly as I can. If I am to go with you tonight, I must lie down and try to get over this.”

Lucy may be more and more herself, but she is not the girl she was when Harry first knew her, but tragically she is also not yet the person Sebastian is helping her become. She sees how fleeting such an idealized person is, and how difficult the transition can be. Later in the week, when Harry does ask her to marry him, Lucy is forced to turn him down, first claiming awkwardly her love for another man. But of course, it is not actually Sebastian himself that Lucy loves. And, of course, Harry can not understand.

“Now, Lucy! Every girl falls in love with her singing teacher, but I thought you, for one, had escaped!”

She felt her cheeks burn with anger. “He’s not my singing teacher! He’s a great artist,” she muttered, angrier still because this sounded so childish.

“Very well, I’ve no objection; the greater the better! But you’ll soon recover, my dear.” He refused to be annoyed. He was glowing with tolerance. She gave him a defiant look and managed to get her hand away. He considered a moment, then leaned forward and spoke softly, in a confident, teasing tone. “Now see here, Lucy, how far has this nonsense gone?”

The dining-room swam and tilted before Lucy’s eyes. “How far?” she broke out in a flash of scorn. “How far? All the way; all the way! There’s no going back. Can’t you understand anything?” She did not see his face, her eyes were blind as if she were looking into a furnace.

Her words -- truer than any Lucy had ever spoken -- do not reach Harry Gordon. They cannot. In the awkward moment that follows, he excuses himself from the table, and then, strangely, never returns.

Two Who Would Never Meet Again

But, of course, Lucy and Sebastian are also not destined for each other. Sebastian is only in the United States on an extended tour. Eventually, returns to Europe, and in his parting with Lucy they both seem to know with extreme clarity what each of them will be missing.

Sebastian felt a heaviness of heart; he scarcely knew whether on her account or his own. He was wondering whether there was not some way of escape from his life: from concerts and hotels, from Mockford, and his wife, and his place in France, from his friends in England, from everything he was and had. In what stretched out before him there was nothing he wanted very much. And this youth and devotion would not be the same when he came back, he knew; what he held against his heart was for tonight only. It was a parting between two who would never meet again.

Mark that. They, in fact, will never meet again, but that is not what Sebastian is referring to here. He can entertain the idea that he and Lucy Gayheart may indeed cross paths again -- but this Lucy Gayheart, the one whose flowering Youth has rekindled his own, this Lucy Gayheart he would never, ever see again.

And Lucy?

Lucy knew what he was thinking. She felt a kind of hopeless despair in the embrace that tightened about her. As they passed a lamppost she looked up, and in the flash of light she saw his face. Oh, then it came back to her! The night he sang When We Two Parted and she knew he had done something to her life. Presentiments like that one were not meaningless; they came out of the future. Surely that hour foretold sorrow to this. They were going to lose something. They were both clinging to it and to each other, but they must lose it.

Lucy is losing her Bright Medusa. Think back on poor Aunt Georgina at the end of her Wagner Matinee. “I don’t want to go, Clark, I don’t want to go!’” Lucy will think something similar when she is back in Haverford -- sent back after Sebastian leaves for Europe, sent like an invalid by her caring landlady.

Mrs. Auerbach did all her packing for her, made explanations to the bakery people, got her railway ticket, took Lucy to the train. She had even made up a little package of “keepsakes” at Sebastian’s studio, before his lawyer came in to clean everything out; some of the handkerchiefs left in his drawer, a pair of his gloves, photographs of himself and his friends, a few of his books, scores he had marked. She selected these things without consulting Lucy and sent them by express to Haverford. They now lay in the bottom of Lucy’s trunk. They meant nothing to her; she couldn’t bear to look at them.

To have one’s heart frozen and one’s world destroyed in a moment -- that was what it had meant. She could not draw a long breath or make a free movement in the world that was left. She could breathe only in the world she brought back through memory.

She is no good. She tries to settle back into some semblance of her former life, but she cannot. She is frozen. She can’t advance in any way. It is as if Sebastian was the key to her future, and without him she can’t cross any more thresholds.

She tried to feel at peace and to breathe more slowly, but every nerve was quivering with a long-forgotten restlessness. How often she had run out on a spring morning, into the orchard, down the street, in pursuit of something she could not see, but knew! It was there, in the breeze, in the sun; it hid behind the blooming apple boughs, raced before her through the neighbours’ gardens, but she could never catch up with it. Clement Sebastian had made the fugitive gleam an actual possession. With him she had learned that those flashes of promise could come true, that they could be the important things in one’s life. He had never told her so; he was, in his own person, the door and the way to that knowledge.

And despite this frozenness, the suspension between what she was and what she still might become, her fate comes suddenly and -- despite my usual cynicism -- unexpectedly,

It is winter, and Lucy is walking home from someplace. It is hard going, with the wagon-ruts frozen solid in the dirt road. She is walking along the river, which, in her absence in a spring flood, had shifted its course, eliminating the shallow tributary when she and her friends had often skated. Behind her, Harry Gordon approaches in his horse-drawn sleigh, and, true to his persistent avoidance of her since her return from Chicago, he refuses to give her a ride back to town when she asks, claiming some urgent business in another direction.

In that moment, she makes two fateful decisions.

When Lucy next stopped to take breath, she found herself a long way nearer the river bend. For a moment she had leaned against the telephone post back yonder, but only for a moment. Such a storm of pain and anger boiled up in her that she felt strong enough to walk into the next county. Her blood was racing, and she was no longer conscious of the cold. She forgot to look where she put her feet; they took care of themselves.

She couldn’t have imagined such rudeness, such an insult! She was young, she was strong, she would show them they couldn’t crush her. She would get away from these people who were cruel and stupid -- stupid as the frozen mud in the road. If she let herself think, she would cry. She must not give in to it, she must hurry on.

When she reached the river bank she sat down just long enough to take off her walking-shoes, and put on the other pair with skates attached. Her hands trembled so that she could scarcely pull the leather laces taut and tie them. She was angry with herself, too. That she should have given him the chance to leave her in the road, as he had left her in the dining-room that night in Chicago! But how could anyone be armed against such boorishness and spite? Catching up a stick, she got to her feet and took a few long strokes close to the shore. She was not looking about her, she saw nothing -- she would get away from this frozen country and these frozen people, go back to light and freedom such as they could never know.

There they are, the two decisions. The first, to skate rather than walk home. The second, to get away, far away, and to never come back. It is a warm and hopeful image.

Without looking or thinking she struck toward the centre for smoother ice. A soft, splitting sound brought her to herself in a flash, and she saw dark lines running in the ice about her. She turned sharply, but the cracks ran ahead of her. A sheet of ice broke loose and tipped, and she plunged to her waist into cold water.

Lucy was more stimulated than frightened; she had got herself into a predicament, and she must keep her wits about her. The water couldn’t be very deep. She still had both elbows on the ice; as soon as she touched bottom she could manage. (It never occurred to her that this was the river itself.) She was groping cautiously with her feet when she felt herself gripped from underneath. Her skate had caught in the fork of a submerged tree, half-buried in sand by the spring flood. The ice cake slipped from under her arms and let her down.

And that’s it. Lucy is dead, drowned in a frozen river, as presaged in so many images and metaphors throughout the earlier text. But there is still a third book and thirty more pages to go in this novel. And Cather will use those pages to reinforce her basic theme.

The last section focuses almost entirely on Harry Gordon -- and begins twenty-five years after the tragic closing event of the previous section. It is retrospective, looking back over a life of decisions -- yes, the one that left Lucy to her fate on that cold winter day -- but other decisions as well, decisions having to do with business, marriage, and life. Through it all, Harry has changed dramatically. And Lucy?

He is not a man haunted by remorse; all that he went through with long ago. He enjoys his prosperity and his good health. Lucy Gayheart is no longer a despairing little creature standing in the icy wind and lifting beseeching eyes to him. She is no longer near, beside his sleigh. She has receded to the far horizon line, along with all the fine things of youth, which do not change.

Lucy has not changed in the slightest -- not in Harry’s mind, not for anyone else in the world. At the end of our dark tale, Lucy Gayheart is simply and still an eternal thing called Youth.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 60 (DRAFT)

In my Boston hotel room that night I tried to find some peaceful balance with myself. After a simple dinner at a little burger joint around the corner (yes, thank you, I’ll take the sweet potato fries for two dollars more), and an uneventful phone call with Jenny back on the front lines (Jacob is being a little sweetheart tonight, he even ate his peas at dinner), I had a good two hours to spend with myself prior to going to sleep at a respectable hour.

I went down to the sundry shop in my hotel, bought a bottle of beer (yes, I guess I’ll have the Sam Adams if that is all you have) and was sitting with my feet up, a glass at my elbow with two generous sips already taken out of it, and my Sinclair Lewis novel open in my hands.

What? Which one? I think it must have been Cass Timberlane.

No, most people haven’t heard of it. I hadn’t heard of it either. It was just something I had picked up at a second-hand book store somewhere, attracted more by the author’s name and the way it looked. It had lost whatever dust jacket it had originally had, and there was nothing even stamped on its dark cover. You had to look at the spine, and there you only saw four words. Cass and Timberlane and Sinclair and Lewis. Four names, I guess, but none of them really meant anything, at least not anything that would tip you off as to what you might find between the book’s covers. Unless, of course, you knew who Sinclair Lewis was and which direction his prose was likely to take you.

What was it about? Well, believe it or not, it was, as I remember, a novel about husbands and wives, and the difficulties they had staying married in the modern world -- modern, of course, in that case meaning the 1940s.

Yeah, I guess that is kind of interesting. But not really what I’m here to discuss, is it? Should we spend the rest of our hour talking about the books I’ve read?

No, no offense taken. Anyway, there I was, my stocking feet up on someone else’s coffee table, sitting in the corner of someone else’s sofa (a sleeper, no doubt, knowing that in a pinch this hotel room could therefore be converted to a double/double), a passable beer at my side and lost in the pages of someone else’s story, when, without warning, my phone emitted a vibrating pulse and the little red light on its front began blinking at me.

It was a text. That much I had come to understand. Someone had just sent me a text, and I quite consciously decided to ignore it. I mean, I was in my happy place. At that moment I was convinced that there wasn’t anything that anyone could text me that would give me greater peace of mind than what I was already experiencing.

But a few minutes later the damn thing vibrated again -- meaning that someone had texted me again. Was it the same person? Probably. Back then I didn’t receive a lot of texts and the idea of two different people sending two different texts in such a short span of time seemed unlikely. It was the same person and, whoever it was, they wanted my attention on something. Maybe it was Jenny. Maybe something had taken a turn for the worse at home. Maybe it was Pamela Thornsby. Maybe something had changed with my scheduled interview tomorrow. Either way, the speculation was enough to get me to put my book down and pick up my phone.

R U THERE? was the first text and it was from Bethany Bishop.

I NEED 2 TALK 2 U. was the second, and it was also from Bethany Bishop.

I sat there looking at the letters on the screen. They were small and non-descript, but they felt imbued with an unrecognizable power. They told me very little, but something had evidently happened. My mind ran through the scenarios. Had she been fired? Had she been injured? Had she left her husband?

The phone vibrated while I held it and new letters appeared on the screen. PLEASE CALL ME IF U CAN.

I pushed the button that would dial her number and sat there listening to it ring once, twice, three times.

“Hello?”

“Bethany?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Alan.”

“Alan! Oh my word. I wasn’t expecting you to call so soon.”

It was hard to tell. The connection was not the best, but I sounded to my ears like she had been crying. “Are you all right? Can you talk?”

“Yes, I can talk,” she said, and this time I definitely heard her sniffle. “The fireworks are over and he’s left the house.”

“What? Who has left the house?”

“David. We had a fight and he stormed out of here.”

David was her husband. She had had a fight with her husband and now she was reaching out to me. Not her mom. Not her minister. Me. What the hell did that mean?

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m all right,” Bethany said, “I’m just so sick of his nonsense.”

“What about Parker?” I asked, suddenly thinking about her little boy.

A pause. “What about him?” she said in a suspicious tone.

“Is he all right?”

“Oh, yes,” she said with expressive relief, “he’s fine. David would never do anything like that!”

“What happened?”

That opened the floodgates. For the next ten minutes I sat and listened as Bethany described the fraying edges of her relationship with her husband. It had started innocently. The laundry needed to be folded and she wanted him to do it. More explicitly, she wanted him to want to do it, to do it without having to be asked, and when he wouldn’t, she asked him, and he blew up at her. He swore, he raged, he shook his fists in the air. She cried, desperate for him to be more attentive to her needs, but unable to communicate that simple feeling in a way he could understand. They argued. They fought. He shouted some more. She cried some more. Eventually, he left the house. He took his jacket, his car keys, and just left. Where was he going? Away from her! And now she was alone. Did he leave her? She didn’t think so, not really, but he was gone wasn’t he? What if he didn’t come back? What if he was gone for good and she never saw him again? Could she handle that? Would that be the end of all things, or just another thing that happened? She wasn’t sure.

Throughout it all I did not say a word and did not even shift position. For most of it I simply watched the bubbles in my beer glass form, float to the top, and disperse.

“Hey, I’m sorry to burden you with this,” she said eventually. “It’s not a big deal, I guess. I’m just feeling down and I needed someone to talk to about it.”

“I’m glad I was available,” I said.

“Where are you?”

There was something mischievous in her voice that gave me pause. The first frightening thought that passed through my mind was “she knows, she knows,” but what she knew and what I was afraid of having her find out I couldn’t say.

“You’re supposed to be helping someone move, but you’re not doing that, are you?”

So she didn’t know. I mean, she knew I wasn’t doing what I had told Mary, but she didn’t know what I was actually doing. That was good, wasn’t it? No one at the office -- not even Bethany -- should know that I was interviewing for another job. If word should get out about that, things could get even worse for me than they were now.

“Alan?”

“What do you know?” I asked her. “What’s the grapevine saying about me?”

“Not much,” she said. “Just that you took two days off to help a family member move.”

“My mother-in-law,” I added quickly.

“Oh, okay, your mother-in-law. But that’s not true, is it? Are you going to tell me where you really are and what you’re really doing?”

“I’m in Boston,” I said, liking the illicit chill that the words sent up my spine. That was stepping up to the line but not stepping over it.

“Boston?” Bethany said. “Is that where your mother-in-law is moving?”

I stopped and reflected carefully on Bethany’s words. She had more or less just bared her soul to me -- talking about her husband and her marriage in a way that shouldn’t be shared outside a therapist’s office. And now she was fishing for something secret and private from me. Somewhere deep inside she knew I wasn’t helping my mother-in-law move, but if I insisted she would believe me. I could hear it in the way she asked her questions. Tell me, her disembodied voice seemed to say in my ear. Tell me with whatever you want. A truth, a lie, it doesn’t matter. Just tell me. Tell me something and I will believe it.

“No,” I said, making a fateful decision. “My mother-in-law isn’t moving anywhere.”

“Then why are you in Boston tonight?”

“If I tell you, Bethany, you have to swear not to tell anyone else.”

“Of course. I swear.”

“I mean it, Bethany. No one. Not even David. Do you understand me?”

“Sure, sure, I understand. What is it? You’re not interviewing for another job, are you?”

She sounded torn, like she both wanted to guess right and didn’t want her guess to be true.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. The interview is tomorrow morning.”

“OH MY GOD! ALAN!”

I had to hold the phone away from my ear, she shouted so shrilly.

“What are you doing? You’re interviewing? For another job? You can’t do that! You can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Alan! Because! What about all the work we’re doing to fix the company? What about our battle against Mary? You can’t leave now. How can I keep working there without you?”

Her words were emotionally-loaded, and it was a real challenge for me to sort them all out. Frustration. Anger. Betrayal. Those were the top emotions, coming through loud and clear. But under them were emotions darker and more sinister. Sorrow. Fear. Jealousy.

“I’m sorry,” I found myself saying, even though I didn’t really feel sorry, and then I found myself dropping all kinds of other cliches on her. I was just keeping my options open. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. I had to look out for me and my family first.

She listened, but didn’t really seem to hear me. When she spoke again, her voice sounded quavery, like it had when she had first started talking about her fight with David. This upset her. A lot. Maybe she was being silly, but still, she felt like I was abandoning her, like I was setting her adrift, like I no longer cared about her.

I told her I didn’t know how to respond to any of that, and that I now regretted telling her why I was really in Boston.

“Alan, do you remember that night on the beach in Miami?”

The question sprang up like a sudden threat, conjuring up images in my mind of sharpened blades laced with poison.

“Yes,” I said softly. “Of course, I do.”

“Did you not feel something that night?”

“Feel something?”

“Something between us. Did you not feel something happening between us that night?”

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. Of course I felt something. I felt a lot of things that night. The cool sand between my toes, the moonlight on my skin, Bethany’s warm hand clasped in mine. But more, she meant something more than that, and of course I had felt that, too. The connection, the comfort, the satisfaction of being at ease, at being in someone’s company without having to pretend, or strut, or hide. We had both felt that, and we knew that we had both felt that. That is partly what had made it so powerful, the knowing, and the not needing to speak about it.

But now she was talking about it. She was bringing it out into the open -- over a phone line, no less -- as if it was something to be discussed and analyzed. Did she not know that it, whatever it was, would not stand up to such recognition, to such scrutiny? Talk about it and it will die, and all we’ll have left is half-formed memories that could never be fully articulated or shared.

“I know you did, Alan,” Bethany’s tiny voice whispered in my ear. “I don’t need you to admit it, because I know you felt the same thing I did. Something changed between us that night. Something personal and meaningful and long-lasting.”

“It’s true,” I croaked. “But what does that have to do with me being in Boston?”

“It’s not that you’re in Boston, Alan, and it’s not even that you’re there to interview for a new job. It’s that you didn’t tell me. How could you not tell me! Don’t you think I deserve to know that you’re thinking of leaving the company?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, still not entirely sure if I was or wasn’t. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way. Jenny has done so much of the behind-the-scenes work on this, the fact that I’m seriously working to get out of the company hasn’t really hit home for me.”

At the mention of my wife’s name I could sense a stillness come over Bethany’s end of the telephone call, and then an almost crystalline iciness in the words she finally chose to speak next.

“Yes, well, I guess that makes sense, Alan.”

“It does?”

“Yes. Look, I think I just heard David’s car. I’ve got to go now.”

“Ummm. Okay.”

“Good-bye, Alan. Good luck at the interview tomorrow.”

Her line clicked off and I was left alone in my hotel room.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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