The Hitch

The Hitch

You know.

You know more
than you let on

Much more than you betray

Great slimy angel-whore
you've been good to me

You really have

been swell to me

Tell them you came & saw
& look'd into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
Thoughts in time
& out of season
The Hitchhiker stood
by the side of the road
& leveled his thumb
in the calm calculus
of reason.

-Jim Morrison, from "Paris Journal"
published in THE AMERICAN NIGHT
(Among the last lines he ever wrote)

The Hitchiker stood by the side of the road and leveled His thumb in the calm calculus of Reason. In a light and airy season, I eased up on the accelerator, and stopped, by that side of the road.

Thinking.

The Hitchhiker got in, on the passenger side. And I was thinking, about something I might talk about with him. Thinking, that there once was a house, a house that Plato built.

The construction materials weren’t his, of course. He’d stolen them from Pythagoras, who’d stolen them from Arjuna, who’d stolen them from Gronk-a-a-Obunk. Still, as I looked at the Hitcher, I for the first time was sure, from the knowledge voluminous reading had given me and taken away, that Plato was responsible.
Perhaps the Hitcher had, for kicks, tried to break on through the walls of the Cave, but now, all he seemed to be doing was going down a road. The road was the only way home.

In Plato’s world, I remarked to him, like a Russian doll nested inside a bigger doll, ad infinitum—ad astra, ad nauseum--was the continent called Mathematics. And the biggest republic in Mathematics was a society called Calculus.
This society was ever in change, given its amazingly powerful economy. And, self-centered as the citizens of that society became, the culture devoted itself to, well, itself. To the study of its own change.
At least how this should be done was open to debate. One tribe, who called themselves Derivation, looked to living in the present and wanted to know what the immediate rate of change was. They liked to preach that they lived in the here and now.
I think I knew one once. Apparently living in the here and now involves dressing in all manner of saffron gowns. Or chanting. Or lighting one’s self on fire.
I wouldn’t know, you know. I don’t live in the here and now. In fact, I’m not even here, right now.

The other tribe in the kingdom of Mathematics did quite the opposite. Reactionaries that they were, they kept asking: “Where did we come from?” They wanted to return to their Golden Age, an age that never really was--though apparently it did involve gold, especially that sent by little old retired ladies who watched a lot of TV and liked the word “Hallelujah.”
Ms. Rigby, we hardly knew ye.
Though the reactionaries could have been called Reverse Derivation, they were ashamed of being inadvertently associated with Derivation--and “their kind”--and called their own tribe--of course--Integration.
I think they thought it was a free act of will. But in that belief, like the act, I think they had no choice.

The Hitchhiker leveled his thumb, as if to ask whether I was even there.
I told him no, and I told him to get back in.
He did. It was an easy step.

Reason is logic. Logic has steps.
Each step butts against the one before and after. Nicely, there is no room in-between to sneak in the “great unwashed.”
On this, at least, in the Cave where those had stepped outside a model of a cave could believe they had broken on through, the tribes of the Derived and the Integrated could agree. The republic of Calculus might be split, yet e plurius unum.

It was One. It had to be One. Because The One was Perfect.

It had better be Perfect. In the world of Plato, everything genuinely “real” was.
And if they weren’t in the world of Plato after all, if there were no such world, that would be really, really bad.

For one thing, all the road signs would need to be changed.

I pressed the pedal and turned the Great Wheel in the calm calculus of the season ...

Reason is calm. Reason also can be Discrete. Or Reason can forgo privacy.
That, by the way, in the republic of Calculus, is called being “Continuous.”
But in either case, Reason’s steps of change are constant. If you can get over the tricky hurdle of agreeing to stick to discretion or continuity.

Occasional troublemakers always seem to step out of line, but they are caught and sent to gulags. Or reservations. Or Cleveland.

The Derived staked their claim to Reason’s constancy by saying if you derive anything enough times, you get a constant.
Of course, when you Derive one more time, you get Zero, Zilch, Nada. Nothing.
Did I mention Zilch?

This made the Integrated nervous. Reverse course too late, when you’ve derived down to zero, and try to integrate zero ... well, hell, you can’t.
It could be anything.
You know, it could be Everything.
It could be Nothing.
Ex nihilo ... nihil?

The desert moon was bright, an eye in the Void, and I drove the Hitcher on. We had seen no one for miles, but, all smiles, he sang, like he had all the Time in the world.
“Tiiiime,” I sang back to him, “is on my siiiiide ...”
He looked at me as if to say, No, it’s not. Wrong poet.
I looked back, as if to ask what he meant. Me being out of Time.
Perhaps I had met my killer, on the road. He squirmed like a toad in the leather seat, and nodded back in my direction. Indicating me.
“Well, I’ve never met myself,” I said. “At least, I’m not sure I’d recognize me, if I did.”
And, as if eager to be hitching a ride back in the other direction from the passenger seat of my car, he stuck out his thumb again.
“Smart-ass,” I said.
He brayed. As if to say it’s good to be a large mammal.

But maybe he was right. Maybe, just maybe, if we turned back--maybe, just maybe, with a little ... (luck?) ... we’d make it to L.A. before the dawn.
Slamming shots, with any luck. With luck, we could even be to the Whisky-a-Go-Go, before it finally closed for the Night.
With Luck. I always liked Luck. She has nice legs.

We could even keep going, a convertible sailing out over the water, into the West, until we crossed the Pacific to the other side, until we ended up in Tokyo, maybe, or Shanghai; into the West, until it became the East. Until all polarities ceased.
Like it or not, the Hitcher was with me now. We were going my way, down my road.
My way, where the liquor is quicker, the blood is thicker, and old Uncle Albert is waiting for us to say we’re sorry, playing Schrodinger cradling some Gordian Cat, as we beat Uncle Al with his own dice once again.

And the only thing that matters is chasing down the sunset, until it becomes the world’s first unwasted dawn.