LAUGHTER

Of all the secrets Eduardo Galeano knows, this is the best: "‘The important thing is to laugh. . . and to laugh together.’"

He was told this by Jose Luis Castro, a carpenter, who heard it from his father, a man who made everyone laugh with his tall tales and love of life.

The old man knew that the one who laughs alone laughs at his wife and neighbor, at the child who scrapes his knee in the gutter; laughs at the worker demonstrating for a better life and the banker suffering from toothache; laughs equally at the man with a country and the man without one, at the dwarf, the stutterer, the hemophiliac. For he is the one expunged from the Bible, who laughed in the Garden to see God on his knees breathing the breath of life into the clay figure.

WHAT HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT TODAY


What have you thought about today?
You must ask yourself that question
at least once each time the Earth, your planet,
rotates on its axis as it whirls around the sun.
That is, what have you thought about
in the last 24 hours, in the last 1,464 minutes,
in the last 87, 840 seconds?

If you sleep eight hours every night
that leaves you 16 hours, or 960 minutes,
or 57,660 seconds to think about something.

I believe that if you think about something
every 24 hours, if you think about it
with your liver, your lungs, your large
and small intestines—if you think about it
with your whole being—then you will not lose hope.

I’m not talking about just any thought,
like whether you’ve left the stove on
or if you took the one white and two red pills,
but something that will make your heart
lurch for a moment like the engine of a car
that for thirty years has been wearing
a shroud of cobwebs in the garage—something
that will make your mind start clicking
like the clock on the living-room mantle
that hasn’t worked in a decade or two.

So, what have you thought about today?
What realization of universal sorrow
has so weighted your eyes that your tears
have fallen like bodies buried at sea
on a moonless night off a foreign coast?
What thought caused a smile to stretch on your lips
as if it had just woken from a long sleep—
the same kind of smile that was on the lips
of the princess after the kiss woke her:
you know, the smile that began just before
she opened her eyes to behold,
wonder of wonders, the whole world,
brimming with its 24 hours, smiling at her.

I VISITED JOSEPH HAYDN IN A DREAM

I visited Joseph Haydn in a dream. He was so old and small that he seemed enclosed by the high-backed armchair where he sat in a powdered wig, pink silk waistcoat, plum-colored velvet jacket with matching britches, his silver-buckled shoes dangling almost half a foot above the floor. With his rouged cheeks and talcumed face, he resembled a genial eighteenth century wind-up doll waving welcome with choppy strokes.

"Tell me, Papa, what is a symphony?" I asked.

"A symphony is a universe, my son, " he said in a soft voice, "and each moment is another note. Planets, galaxies, and stars, and eruptions in deepest space are a gigantic orchestra playing that symphony note by note."

"And who is the composer?"

"I am, you are, the planets, the stars, even the cockroach in the corner of the kitchen. From moment to moment, we simultaneously create and play the symphony and thereby determine what the next note will be."

THE MAN WITH THE MOUSTACHE

The man with the moustache is heavyset and browned,
tanned by days of sitting with his companions on the wharf,
joking, smoking, and drinking beer on the shores
of this Balkan village on the Adriatic Sea. "Pivo, pivo," he calls,
and his admirers scoot to get him can after can
from a nearby store. Scars on his arms and cheeks,
calloused, grasping hands—he’s a rough one in a rough crowd,
and the first day my wife and I appear, our eyes lock
as we size each other up—middle-aged men
from different countries, if not from different worlds.
Then, having seen enough, his gaze slides to my wife.
Oblivious, she spreads her towel and settles recumbent
and sighing in the sun. He mutters something to his friends,
who laugh, then turns to me and lifts his chin, jaws tight,
and glares. My jaws tighten too, and I glare back.

The muttering, the laughter, the stares—for four days
it’s the same. Even today, the ritual is repeated,
but more as a formality, a weary greeting between men
who recognize each other in passing but do not share
language, customs or any common thing.
The hours pass in the hot, sun-drenched afternoon.
The man and his friends drink, swim, shout and laugh.
He dog-paddles, dives, splashes and swoops, and an hour ago
rose to the surface with an object in his hand
that he placed gently on the pier—a black spiny creature
big as his palm. The man remained in the water,
only his head and shoulders showing above the wharf,
as his hands caged the spiny thing, coaxed it this way and that
or nudged it forward with a finger to make it move.
For all that prodding, the animal remained inert.
But the man never grew impatient, and his examination
was so intense that every so often, as if coming up for air,
he would dart an almost embarrassed glance around the pier,
or toward his preoccupied companions who roughhoused
on the landing twenty yards away. Then he would return
to his find, turning it over and pressing it gently,
all the while bending his head close to the quills
like a watchmaker studying the interior of a clock.

He was so absorbed, he never noticed me watching him
from beneath a tree, as his thick fingers first
became a cradle, then pushed the creature forward
as if it were an infant he was teaching how to walk.
The man’s jaw went slack as his absorption rose
and he became oblivious to everything around him.
Once he rinsed the animal below the pier.
Next he lifted it to the slab again and caressed
the spines and belly. But no matter what he did,
the creature lay there and wouldn’t move.
Finally, as if releasing a bottle with a message inside,
the man lifted it again, turned, and offered it to the sea,
watching it for several minutes as, I guess,
it got its watery bearings and crawled away.
The man shivered, shook himself free, looked up,
and caught my gaze. His chin hardened. He glared.
Then, suddenly, he relaxed and nodded. I nodded back.