The Bear Is Not the Point

I Tried Not To Tell You This, However...

There’s a quote that has been attributed to Dennis Hopper that has been rattling around in my mind since I was a child: ‘Just because it happened to you, doesn’t make it interesting’. And once you’ve internalized its meaning, the words will recede gently into the darker recesses of your memory, and remain there, forgotten, until returning unexpectedly and with furious vehemence in the middle of some meeting at work. There you’ll be, listening to someone rattle on about themselves — and for much longer than necessary — and it’ll be all you can do not to shout across the room: ‘You know, just because it happened to you doesn’t ... but you know what? I can’t even with you people!’ And then you storm out of there, heading directly for the offices of Human Resources for yet another of those awkward little chats.

On the other hand, you might say nothing. Whatever is easiest, I suppose.

But I internalized this idea (about not everything that happens to me is interesting) at a fairly young age. I assumed I’d be living an ordinary life, because … well, in many ways, I am an optimist. In any case, I tend to politely assume that nothing happening around me would ever be of much interest to anyone. And yet, the thing is — the absolute searing truth of it all — is that my life has always been strange. I can’t seem to walk around the block without something bizarre happening, so this whole idea of keeping it all to myself stems from me being in denial. Deeply weird things happen around me, all the time, and therefore this reticence I have, which I try to pass off as modesty, is just a ‘whole lot of cope’.

But I suppose I should be grateful. I happen to know a few people who have awful luck; it’s one tribulation after another, with everything going wrong all the time. On the other hand, I have other friends for whom life is very much the opposite; their lives are fortunate and lacking in any kind of hardship. They’re financially secure, good-looking, and intelligent. I could introduce you to them, but they’ll make you very cross.

And then there is me, off to the side. In most respects, I’m also incredibly fortunate, especially when you consider where I started. But the difference is this recurring element of the inexplicable in my life. I have all this needless strangeness going on around me. I don’t seek it out, either, and I certainly don’t want or cultivate any of it. I try to live quietly, an unassuming life. I try to step carefully around any sort of nonsense when I can.

What I absolutely do not want is sturm und drang. Any sort of drama is just tedious and dull, and gets in the way of me reading books. But, you know, some people are different. A friend I went to school with, Cooldeep, is always in search of trouble. He’s from what one might call an ‘economically-privileged’ family, and never really knows what to do with himself. Quite often, he does silly things, simply for the sake of living an ‘edgy life’. I’d describe him as the sort of tourist who climbs into the hyena exhibit at the zoo, just to feel alive. I remember he used to take acid and use a ouija board, and then attempt to summon demons. To him, that’s a sign of an adventurous disposition; to me, it’s a sign of lacking any imagination whatsoever. I would never kick a hornet’s nest for the sake of alleviating boredom; then again, I didn’t grow up with money. And again, my imagination can furnish me with all the terrible consequences of climbing into the hyena exhibit at the zoo.

Back when I worked at Harvard, colleagues used to invite me skiing. I never went, out of a real concern that I’d probably break my leg. People would point out that Harvard had really good health benefits, and I’d reply, ‘I still don’t want to break my leg’. I’d grown up in rural Australia where people generally don’t learn to ski, which means I would have to learn (and do all the necessary ‘falling over’ business) in an adult’s body.

Now, my affluent friend Cooldeep would definitely have gone skiing, and think himself wonderfully adventurous for it, too. Here’s the difference between us: Cooldeep would absolutely — and obviously — ski into a tree and come back with some busted limbs and an otherwise mundane story to tell. If I went skiing, I would fly down the slope, mess up, and wind up off the trail, over the edge of a ravine, fall fifty feet and land atop a very surprised-looking bear. Because that, Reader, seems to be how my life actually works.

We’d be lying there, bear and I, each suitably dazed by the improbable nature of the universe. I, of course, am mysteriously unscathed. The bear is similarly unhurt, though he is obviously flummoxed, and quite rightly so. The bear stares at me indignantly, feeling justly irked by the whole business. He sniffs at my poor bewildered self a few times, then decides I am far too problematic to even look at. Yes, somehow I think the bear would instinctively realize that the hapless human being who had fallen into a ravine and landed on top of him was one of those irksome individuals to whom strange things must inevitably happen. And, after all, it never pays to eat somebody like that.

Two minutes later, the rescue team would reach me and I’d be pointing at the treeline and moaning, weakly, “Did you see the bear — the bear I landed upon?!”

They reply, “There’s no bear, don’t worry. Hold still, you might have a concussion.”

I, pointing madly at the trees: “God damn it, did you see the bear?! It was just here! I landed on it, it broke my fall!”

So they say: ‘Look at him — he’s raving. Must be a head injury. Better sedate him.’

Several hours later, I wake up in hospital, having forgotten all about the bear because, after all, denial really is the best coping mechanism. But years later, I am sitting in a café with some friend or other, and suddenly I remember the incident with the bear, as clear as day. I try to explain it, then. Words come rushing out of me, and my friend looks at me in a marveling sort of way, and thinks to himself, “Such a wonderful imagination...”

This is how my life seems to work. I’ve never fallen off a ravine and onto a bear, but if I had, it wouldn’t shock anyone close to me, though they would be concerned for the well-being of the bear.

“Forget the bear!” I’d say, stamping my foot. “The bear is not the point!”

“Well, it’s all very well for you to say. But imagine how you’d feel, if you were the bear?”

You see? It’s all so maddening. I have to change examples. Actually, years ago, I wrote two newsletters about the strange-but-true events that had happened to me during various train journeys. Like, that one time when the carriage caught fire and I didn’t notice because I was too busy reading War and Peace. That wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened to me on a train that year. I ended up getting arrested and — actually, it’s all a long, troubling story; I’ll leave a link down below.

Those successive newsletters were intended to be parts one and two of a series, but I did not continue with it because, soon after, things started to get really weird, and I couldn’t bring myself to continue. The difficult part is that it’s all true. I take great pains to tell the truth; it’s this morbid thing I do, I don’t know why. Even when writing novels like The Harvard Skull Fiasco, it was all mostly true, as my former co-workers will testify. I also try to avoid weirdness at all costs. But no matter what I do, that weirdness is out there hunting me in much the same way a leopard would hunt for a ham sandwich.

This is why I don’t like to talk about myself so much. The simple events of my life often sound implausible to me. In recent years, I’ve been trying to live a quieter, solitary life. I used to talk to strangers and make friends everywhere, but I do that much less nowadays.

We were living, until recently, near a really lovely nature walk, and each day I went out on very long and solitary rambles — you know, to enjoy the quiet, and look for birds and animals. No bears, mind you; one of the advantages of moving back to Australia is not having to worry about bears. On those walks, I’d see other people, but I’d keep my head down, and never initiate conversation, just in case anything untoward happened.

Then one day, after a year of avoiding any sort of conversation with a stranger, I was walking along on the trail and happened to pass by two older women. As usual, I tried to pay them no attention whatsoever. But as I went by, one of the women — she was in her sixties, and wearing, for some reason, a very colorful dress — reached down and grabbed at something on the ground. I made the mistake of turning around to look. The woman was holding what appeared to be a small mouse.

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting the two ladies’ conversation, “but did you just ... did I just see you catch a mouse? Like, with your hand?”

“Yes,” said the woman in the brightly-colored dress. “I saw one going by, so I caught it.”

“I see,” said I, perturbed. “Do that kind of thing often, do you?”

In my mind, I was thinking: Kris, what are you doing? You have a rule about this. Don’t talk to strangers…

“Oh yes,” said the woman. “Almost every day.”

She explained that she was a botanist, but that her husband was a zoologist, and the mouse she had caught, she happened to know, was an introduced species in Australia. In other words, an ecological pest.

“So you do this all the time?” I persisted, feeling a bit stunned. “Catching passing mice?”

“Oh yes, I’m very good at catching mice,” said the woman.

Admittedly, if I hadn’t seen her do it, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. So, I asked if I could take a photo of her with the mouse, because I knew I would have to tell somebody about this, and wanted some extra proof.

So let’s review: I was out on a walk and having, for the first time in almost two years, a conversation with a stranger. Again, I used to always chat with strangers — in fact, I’m very good at talking with strangers — but somehow, since moving back to Australia, my intuition has prevented me. I couldn’t exactly explain to myself why, I just somehow felt I shouldn’t be talking to anyone, and especially not this particular woman. But nonetheless, I couldn’t help it. It’s not every day you see somebody catch a mouse like that.

“So what do you do with these mice, when you catch them?” I asked her.

“Well, I do this.”

And then, with both hands, she wrenched the head off the mouse and threw both pieces of it into the shrubbery.

“This is why I don’t talk to people,” I muttered, setting off again on the trail.

I’ve been very good about not talking to strangers ever since. I’ve doubled down on living an otherwise hermetic existence. I’m writing novels, and these newsletters, and trying to avoid any untoward situations in which, for example, a nice old lady might unexpectedly decapitate a mouse in front of me.

Now, that was weird, but it was a mild sort of weird, and possibly a little bit sinister, but still a level of weird with which most of us could cope. It’s not High Strangeness. Nonetheless, the undue frequency of such happenings is what I’m trying to minimize, here. Also, it’s annoying having to explain them to my wife, when I come back from a walk.

Because I will, you see. Of course I will — I’m a storyteller and always have been. What happened with the old lady and the mouse, that isn’t the strangest thing that happened to me that year, not by a long shot. There was a day of High Strangeness, and I’m struggling right now between the necessity to tell someone about it, and the impulse to keep my mouth shut and keep it a secret forever.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. But I think I’ve decided that I should return to the newsletter series I mentioned above (and will link to, below) in which I described some of the odd things that have happened to me on trains. Then, in my next newsletter — which I hope to have ready for you this coming weekend — I’ll proceed into that unpleasant encounter with the supernatural which I still firmly do not wish to believe happened. And so you know, I don’t want to write ghost stories in this newsletter — I’d like to fixate on something else, but lately I can’t seem to keep it out of my mind. When that happens to me, my own recourse is to write it all down and hope for the best.

A sizeable number of readers won’t believe the events I describe in my next newsletter; I’ve made my peace with this. But I wanted to warn you in advance, because I don’t want to touch on High Strangeness here. I’ve just spent the past two-and-a-half weeks pacing about, muttering in agitation, and once again, I think the best cure for this might be to write it all down.

When people talk about wanting to become writers, I sometimes wonder if they fully realize that it’s not so much a profession as it is a temperament. I wouldn’t, for instance, volunteer to be a writer; I just happen to be one. I would much, much rather have become the only male heterosexual professional Australian ballet dancer. And I almost became that, at one point, but tragically, my disposition lacked the requisite seriousness, and I kept irritating the ballet instructor. Some things, I suppose, are not meant to be.

To be a writer, in my conception, is a little like falling off the edge of a ravine and landing atop a very surprised-looking bear; simply put, it’s not a situation you can easily contrive. Obviously, some would try. Some would fling themselves off a ledge, aiming for the bear. But even if they pull it off, the intention overshadows the story, because who, after all, intentionally throws themselves off a ravine like that? It’s reckless, and besides — aren’t they worried about hurting the bear?

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that. Also, I apologize for the delay in my newsletters; I would prefer to send one out every week, if not a few times a week, but I’ve been walking about the house, muttering and agitated.

Lean in closely, and you’ll hear: “You can’t tell them about the ghosts, they’ll think you’re mad!”

Then: “Well, that ship has sailed, don’t you think? And what does anyone expect? You’re a storyteller, and that means you were never right in the head in the first place.”

“But then again, who is?”

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