The Angle of Observation

“We have to believe in free-will. We’ve got no choice,” said Isaac Bashevis Singer. I have always liked Mr. Singer’s story telling. He said those words years ago in a television interview. I can’t remember who the interviewer was, but Singer in his impish manner clearly was having fun with the host.

 I started thinking about that quote recently when I was talking to a customer who used to buy wine from my store. For no apparent reason he began to discuss religion and stated emphatically that he was an atheist. So I asked him if that meant he had no religion. He looked at me as if I were an idiot and said, “Man, I just told you I’m an atheist.” To which I replied, “Well, to not believe in god—isn’t that a tremendous leap of faith?” I just lost a customer because when you win an argument with a customer, you lose a customer.

 In that regard I have always collected such witticisms. The effect they have on the human spirit is also worth observing. I liked Dadaist painter Marcel Duchamp’s credo: “There is no solution, therefore there is no problem.”

 J. P. Donleavy, Irish-American writer: “Writing: Turning one’s worst moments into profit.”

 “You know, there must be happiness somewhere, when a lawyer dies.” ― J.P. Donleavy, A Fairy Tale of New York.

 Reading such pithy wisdom in 25 words or less—puts me in a bipolar state. I get so much enjoyment over the prose and so much depression knowing I’ll never be that clever. I’m just going to have to attend the Excelsior School of Dynamic Writing, Padre Island Campus. I discovered the school on the back of a matchbook…”Hey, if Dostoevsky can do it, so can you. After seven easy lessons you’ll be writing prose…and there’s no telling what the eighth lesson will bring—maybe an ode worthy of inscription on a Greek urn.

 “ And one of my favorite quotes: “Come here till I tell you. Where is the sea high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling.” ― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man.

 Man, that’s writing!