Dehsyne

Rolfe says “deh syne.” He’s sort of German, I guess. He wasn’t born here. He says, “Dere is no deh syne. Dehsyne is a fiction made by dose who are invested in the status k’voh.” He says invested more like infested.

“No, no,” I say. We’re having coffee. I just told him how the whole thing is a design. Of course I said “dee zyne.” “I mean like a design, like by a blind watchmaker. It’s all mechanical, only, like put together by a blind guy. He just keeps putting in wheels and gears and stuff until he gets a watch.”

Rolfe is just visiting. Almost the only seat left was at my table. I’m a friendly guy, so when he asked if he could share the table I said sure. When he didn’t say anything I asked if he was visiting. He said yes, from Germany, and eventually we got around to philosophy; meaning, being, and other metaphysicals.

“Dere is no blind vatchmaker,” Rolfe says. Doing all this vernacularizing is a pain, so from now on I’m translating. “Designing is something people do. Designing, meaning, being, is all mental activity by the only creature whose mental activity we have any clue about. Us.”

I gotta say he had me stumped. I mean, I know he wasn’t right, or I knew there was something that didn’t feel right about what he said.

“So,” I say, “how did we get here?”

“How did anything get here,” Rolfe says.

“That’s what I mean,” I say. “Everything got here somehow. Something pushed something, and that pushed something else.”

Rolfe waved his hand at me. “What are you invested in?” he asks. “What do you have that you’re afraid someone’s going to take away?” I shrugged. “You’re a writer, right?” So, I’m a writer. I nodded. “Are you a successful writer?” Not very. I shrugged. “How old are you, forty, forty-five?” Actually, forty-eight. I nodded. “You have a gift, right?” He was starting to piss me off. I looked at him superciliously. “You’re afraid, maybe, some twenty-year-old kid is going to become the next Salman Rushdie while you’re still teaching civics at the adult school, right?”

“So, if he’s gifted, why shouldn’t he,” I say. I took a big slug of my espresso and leaned back in my chair.

“So,” Rolfe says. He’s maybe thirty-five. Blue eyes, buzz cut, he’s got a gold stud in his left eyebrow. “What if everyone is gifted?”

I swallow. “So?”

“What if everyone is gifted, and it’s only a matter of circumstances who succeeds and who doesn’t?”

“Success is all a matter of definition,” I say.

“What if success is purely a matter of chance, of statistics. One person succeeds with the first story. Another writes for twenty years and finally sells his first story.”

“One’s luck, the other is perseverence,” I say.

“And we say they’re both gifted.”

“Right.”

“So as to maintain the fiction that success is based on being gifted, not purely on statistics.”

“A lot of it has to do with the zeitgeist,” I say. I never had the chance to say this to a German guy before.

Rolfe gets this kind of sad, generous look on his face. The stud is tilting at a forty-five degree angle.

“Everyone wants to feel special,” Rolfe says. “It’s natural. There’s nothing wrong with it. Everyone creates a reason to feel special.”

“So, what’s your reason to be special,” I ask. He shrugs.

Rolfe stands up and holds out his hand. We shake. “Best of luck to you,” he says.