The People Swinging From Trees

“There will always be the people out there swinging from the trees.”

That’s what he said to me after another one of those meandering, dead-air filling conversations about the current dismal affairs. I was hunched over his computer, trying to resurrect a decades-long personal database of places and things from a corrupted hard drive and series of failed backups.

At the time I was delivering mid-level IT support to mid-sized businesses and aspirational non-profits when I was called in by a friend to help a guy out.

An ageing beatnik clad in earth-toned turtlenecks and corduroy, he was a former professor of something-or-another at Ohio State, a man in possession of a pottery wheel, ethnic knick-knacks from many travels, and shelves upon shelves of yellowing paperbacks.

He’d hit that stage in life where his days were filled with trips to various specialists. (“Off to interface with the Medical-Industrial Complex!” as he put it.) These insurance-siphoning practitioners hoovered up whatever energeries remained between naps on the day bed in the corner of his study, where he drifted off again as I ran another scan or tried another file.

His life was in that database. A diary of notes and meetings, dates of meals cooked, and friends entertained. “07/22/89; Richard & Cheryl; Discussed Tiananmen vis-à-vis student trip; Moussaka, Prawn Salad; Chardonnay, Chateau Montelena (78); Modified Focaccia with Greek Herbs.”

He was proud of his cooking, his bread-kneading bowl, and mostly that focaccia. He gave me a slice in the kitchen. “That’s good,” I said, “and you’ve saved a lot of money by making your own.”

“Who cares about the money!” he snapped back. “Think of how many times my hands have been in that bowl! Think of the people who’ve shared this bread here at this table. Think about that!”

He had a point. I was off-track once again. My head was a clenched knot of practicalities, anxious about billing out my expected hours against a now-hapless client on a fixed income, and a long way off from imagining anything besides keeping up with a new baby and new mortgage.

There was no explaining to him that it wasn’t always so, that just a few years back I’d had a band, studied literature, and spent nights up ’til dawn engrossed in some of those same revolutionary paperbacks that filled the shelf behind us.

No, the gap was too great. There would be no way to convince him that the guy now standing in his kitchen, baggy-eyed with a laptop bag, clad in khakis and an approved polo, wasn’t really me. He was just a waylaid laborer, an indentured servant, treading time between other dreams.

But the way back was, at the time, beyond me. Without words nor smart retort, I numbly dumb-mouthed another chunk of bread, nodding in abashed agreement.

In the end the effort was a failure. Years of data were gone, and he really didn’t need my help to pull up what was intact. I just charged him for the fixed costs, the new hard drive with our standard retail markup, knowing that I’d have to put in some extra time that weekend, billing a bigger whale to cover my tail at the office.

At least he wasn’t angry. He boxed up his frustration, knowing that I’d put forth my best, grateful in the end to have a new guy around for a while, to hear his stories, listen to his gypsy jazz, and share his bread on an otherwise dreary day. He’d been long since resigned to all things drifting away, to things falling apart, to missions never being fully accomplished.

These days, now that I’ve clawed my way back, I think about him often. I think about our conversation when I read the news and hear reports of bullets flying and institutions crumbling. I think about him as my urge to nap grows stronger. I think about him when I look around my room full of dust-beaten mementos from gone-by days, when I unearth notes from projects half-done, and prune my stacks of unheard songs.

I take comfort in his words. All data will someday corrupt, all foundations fail, be it through slow neglect, or some awed day when we usher in our own ignorant apocalypse.

But life will go on. Yes, “there will always be the people out there swinging from the trees,” as he said. And eventually they’ll wander back to what we’ve left behind. They’ll climb through the ruins, figure out how to fix the plumbing and shoot sparks through the wires. They’ll learn how to read the old books and write new ones of their own. They’ll think they’ve got it right this time, while our ghosts will laugh along.

But for now, daily bread. A shared slice. For such things are sufficient.