Did I Meet Pynchon?

[MichaelB]

I saw Thomas Pynchon the other the night.  I did.  I was walking
fairly late out on Venice Beach.  It was cloudy, nobody was around. 
When of a sudden the clouds, near the horizon, began to brighten. 
And then swirl.  And then spiral down and open, agape, like an
elephant's trunk.  And indeed there was a loud shrieking, a horn, a
trumpet blast and from the trunk slid an alien space pod.  It landed
where the water licked the shore.  Blue, red, yellow lights.  Some
smoke.  The pod sort of belched and Pynchon walked out.  He was
carrying a bottle of beer. 

I asked him if he was Pynchon and he said, ‘Yyyyyyyyyyup’.  He had a
shovel in his other hand.  He gave me his beer and began to dig.  The
space pod remained at the waves, blinking.  Pynchon dug until his
head was beneath the ground.  Then he tossed the shovel onto the sand
and asked for his beer back.  I gave it to him, and he disappeared
into the hole.  The space pod left the way it came.  I tried
following Pynchon into the hole, but didn't get very far.  I checked
the shovel, but it was just a shovel.

It’s Pynchon.  Or it was Pynchon.  It always will be Pynchon.  The
one that writes those novels, those novels that compare with Joyce. 
That’s why I didn’t give up with the shovel.  He was there—Pynchon
had landed.  He’d gone underground, that’s all.

I sniffed the air and scanned the horizon.  My hands were placed on
my hips, and I assumed a rather haughty air.  I may be an average
wannabe writer who is not worthy of squirting the mustard on to his
hot dog, but I saw Thomas Pynchon—I saw him land, and I saw him go
into that hole.  Perhaps the stuff of a story?  What irony!

I was on my knees and hands, crawling in circles around the hole,
searching for direction.  It was quiet, quiet like Venice Beach gets
at night.  But you know how those city store fronts slide down, like
a scaly steel dragon closing its eyes.  Late, quite late for the time
an eye was batted, and I looked up.  It was one of the Venice tattoo
parlors, if that’s what you call them.  The person who pulled the
steel covering over the glass door to the ground stood back up and
turned to me, across the beach.  He raised a bottle of beer to me,
took a swig, and sauntered off.  It was Pynchon.  I got off my knees,
stepped over the hole and followed him.  On my way across the beach I
scanned the sky for turbulent, alien lighting.

He was quick.  It was disturbing in fact, because he walked with such
confidence.  He walked not like a genius of paranoia.  Did he know I
was there, tailing him, or did he not?  Then again, we didn’t get
far.  He turned a corner, an odd corner—the sun was shining, a
night-time sun, on the corner.  Sideburns appeared on Pynchon I had
not yet seen.  He disappeared a moment, and when I turned the corner
after him, there he was, facing me.  It was a silly cliche, on the
order of slipping on a banana peel.  Yet there he was.  There was no
genius in his eyes.

‘Nor is there genius in my brain,’ he said.  ‘I haven’t got a
thought.  Things come, things go.  Sometimes images, but mostly just
feelings, of some sort or another.  Have you got that?  It’s not
emotion I mean, it’s not perceptual.  It’s....a feeling?  I know not,
for all I know, know that.  And you?  Have you got that?  That
feeling?  Is it from nothing, ex nihilo?  What is its source?’

I had no clue what he meant.  I was more aware of his breath.  ‘You
are human,’ I said aimlessly.

He walked past me, in the direction he came.  I scanned the sky
quickly for twisting clouds, space pods.  I knew not what.  I turned
and followed him, back down the slim road, towards the beach. 
Pynchon was just ahead, hands in pockets.  He passed a dog, a quiet
little thing that looked more like a squirrel, and paused.  He
laughed at the silly creature.  I pulled a pen from my pocket and
held it out to him, dabbing it back and forth in the night air.

‘Mr. Pynchon,’ I said.

He turned from the squirrelly dog and faced me again, wordless,
expressionless.  I stopped slightly further from him than I would a
friend.

I said, unsure, ‘I have....read your works.’

‘Splendid,’ he said, uninterested, it seemed.  ‘Do they make you
feel?’

‘Naturally,’ I spat, becoming confused.  ‘Yes, they, have
that....effect.’

‘But feel.  You see I have this feeling.  But it’s not a feeling.  It
is....I know not what.  Do you have that?  Have you gotten it from my
work?’

I was lost.  ‘Yes, of course.  I....feel.’

‘It’s why I write.  The mind, you see, it is nothing.  The intellect.
 What one feels, what I feel is....I know not what.’

I nodded quickly, pressed the push button at the end of my pen and
dropped my head to take notes.  I’d forgotten my pad, so I began
scribbling on my palm.  Pynchon turned and walked on towards the
beach.  I was thoughtless, full of energy.

‘But sir,’ I stumbled, radiant, clueless, ‘is it....the
universe....that you feel?’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, without turning.  ‘I’ll find it.’

He turned a corner, and by the time I had turned it after him he was
gone.  I stopped and furiously scribbled into my palm, ‘F e    e l.’ 
Over and over, until it hurt.

A light appeared over the roof of a house facing the beach.  I raced
around the corner and down to the sand.  The elephant’s trunk had
returned, and the space pod, blinking.  Pynchon was sitting beneath
the pod, drinking another beer.  As I approached behind him he
indicated the dark ocean licking the shore, ‘This may end, good and
well.’  He turned to me.  ‘But this feeling....do you have it?’

There was a space pod above me, and Pynchon beneath me.  I was
nonplussed to the point of honesty, though I spoke with elegance.  ‘I
know not what you mean.’

He smiled, I think genuinely sympathetic.  Perhaps relieved.  He got
up and walked into the ocean.  He fell to his stomach and began to
swim.  A white spot light came from the space pod and lit solely on
Pynchon.  It followed him as he swam.  I didn’t know what to do; I
walked to the water’s edge and sat on the wet sand, watching him.  He
continued to swim, wave after wave, illuminated by the blinking space
pod just above him.  I watched.  Pynchon swam.  The space pod
followed.  He kept swimming, and eventually both disappeared past the
horizon.  I stood up, brushed off, and realized what I’d written on
my palm had smeared away.



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