Daydream Told by Another

Buongiorno, are you looking this way? Of course, I can see how it may be intriguing that my accordion-playing monkey, little Marian in his red suit and cap with the shiny buttons, plays good enough for passersby to toss money into my hat. Think of what they say about the ten thousand monkeys who could type for ten thousand years and would eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. What of all the pages and pages typed before Shakespeare's works are reproduced? Are all of those pages full of gibberish, stuff good only for the trash can? Or, if you look closely enough, read between the lines of meaningless nonsense, the pages and pages with nothing but “sdlclei;disafn” and other such random strands of letters, would you find the poetry of Shelley, or Keats, or Dickinson? If you expand your definition of what is acceptable to be typed by monkeys who don't understand one way or another, expand it so that Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, and Dickinson are all acceptable, is it not more probable that in ten thousand years, when you comb through the pages you will likely find more you consider of value than if you just considered Shakespeare, and Shakespeare alone, to be of value? Which writings are of worth is something determined by the one who will skim through them and throw out the ones believed to be unworthy.

Me, I would be impressed if a monkey typed something as trite as a horoscope. Exit my analogy of ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years and focus now on Marian. You consider the notes he plays on his accordion to be fine, acceptable music. I say that everything little Marian does is life, and life is the most musical experience of all. Marian's music is not played consciously, though you may be impressed enough to think so. Marian's music is composed in the same way he does everything else: impulsively. You see, we stand always outside this coffee shop, because my monkey plays songs when he gets a treat, and his favorite treat goes with coffee. So he smells the coffee, and knows his treat must be near. He’s like those dogs. Marian, so long as he does what he wishes, is in the same state, whether he is playing songs, biting squirrels, collecting shiny gum wrappers in his paws, or eating mushrooms that he shouldn't. Marian, get away from the mushroom! That ditty he plays on his accordion is played with the same feeling as these other things he does. His life, his every action, is music, though not all performed for you and not all understood by you. His music is his life, his mushrooms, his squirrels, and his gum wrappers. Every movement he makes is a divine note, by what I think, but you filter his every movement so and only want the Shakespeare, only the tunes he expresses through his accordion. Imagine hearing this noise day after day, hour after hour, like you got a kid playing his trumpet exercises in your house. “Do re mi fa so la ti do out out brief candle lifes but a walking shadow do re mi fa so la ti do out out brief candle lifes but a walking shadow” all day long. Maybe I’ll train him to write horoscopes instead.

Still, you think, “What a marvelous little monkey that Marian is, and how talented! Perhaps we humans truly are descended from such beings.” But, you love Marian because you see only the adorable side of him that is on this street corner, not the flea-bitten usher of cacophony who picks fights with the squirrels outside my window and makes a mess of my kitchen when I go out to buy bread, nor the violent banshee who has given me scars from trying to wake me up to get him water. You see only the Marian I have tamed by slipping him a biscotto once in awhile. I love Marian though I have the scars of his nightly scratching, a messy kitchen, and little enough money to afford all the biscotti I need to keep him in line. I love Marian with full knowledge of the devil that he is, but you love him just as much with only scant knowledge of him.

Still, you think not of what you may be missing, but are blinded to all of him except the bright and shining Marian, the Marian who barely exists here in the city, but is now living with you, playing a character in your daydream. You can just see how your friends will coo over him, and how much money you will make from him, because you are so enterprising and of course simple Riccardo Guilliano on the street corner has never even thought of getting an agent and will be glad to accept money for the taking of his little friend. And you are so delighted because Riccardo will never even know he is being gypped but will be happy to take the money to buy himself a new suit. How easy it will be to take Marian for your own! No searching phone books or classified ads, no need to develop connections with the sort of people who know just where to procure a talented monkey and will then overcharge for him. Why, in ten minutes you will have your very own monkey with no phone calls and not a drop of sweat. Marian will just jump on your shoulder and he will always be there whenever you go out, because the “No pets allowed” signs in the city don’t apply to a creature who plays the accordion.

Yes, you dream of how easy it will be to have Marian, and how easy to keep him. Once you have him, you will only have to give him a pillow to sleep on and some scraps of dinner. Why, he’s just like a small person in his little suit! He’ll not have any of the usual pet needs, such as being neutered, immunized, trained, and cleaned up after. He’ll only have lesser human needs, such as food you throw him from the table and a dish of water you leave near his pillow. Of course, you know he must be toilet trained. A cute creature like that in a nice little tailored suit is civilized, you are certain, not a wild animal swinging from a tree and throwing fruit. He’ll never get sick, since it’s all perfect in this daydream of yours, but if he does, you’ll bring him to a doctor for humans who will depress his tongue with no struggle at all and then fix him up nicely with some medicine that he will take after he eats chicken soup politely with a spoon and doesn’t spill all over your beautiful kitchen.

When he gets better, he’ll be just as jolly as ever and he’ll take you to the park and you’ll stand on a little white bridge with honeysuckle growing at the base while the clearest trickling brook out of all the clear trickling brooks will flow beneath, on top of perfectly oval stones with not a hint of mildew and no clumps of debris and litter with a dead fish floating on top. Then you’ll stroll through a glorious terraced garden with tendrils of wildflowers sprawling out of their garden beds and as you hear children playing ball and tag, not “kill the evil space invaders” or “imprison the kids on the other team and beat them with a stick when they try to run away”, you will have your first kiss and it will be just like all the morning glories in the world have bloomed at once and burst with such a vibrant blue that they cannot be contained by the very planet they grow on and vine all the way into space where they take Venus and Mars in their tangled embrace and pull them back to Earth and into their centers in the manner of a carnivorous plant in a bad science fiction movie, as if it is entirely possible for planets to be enveloped by plants less than a trillionth of their size. But this impossibility, like many others at the moment, doesn’t matter, and after a magical month or so of moonlit walks on the beach and elegant dining he will propose to you in some creative and romantic way, such as a fireworks display which declares his love across the sky, or an article in the newspaper, or a public proposal when he has an interview on TV about his best-selling book, or his new movie, his Nobel prize, or some other spectacular accomplishment of his that makes you love him even more. Without a doubt you’ll say “yes,” since this is, after all, true love, which turns everything in its path into a sparkly, magical moment and is never interrupted in its winding through golden hills beneath clear skies, not even by a crosswalk. So you’ll be married in a dress like a silken cloud with all your friends and relatives looking on with tears in their eyes and you’ll say “I do” as the sun passes by the window above you and illuminates just the two of you with a diffused light that can only be interpreted as an omen of all the wonderful times to come, starting with your honeymoon to some paradisiacal place or another with postcard-perfect scenery and sunlight which warms and soothes your skin without frying it to a painful pink. When you are back home, you will put all the pictures in an album with shiny trim, which will later hold pictures of your well-mannered children, Mary Anne and Rick, who graduate high school without ever having had a zit and become well-adjusted adults with lucrative, enjoyable jobs and marry beautiful people whom they have your grandchildren with. All is well, and the grandchildren are spoiled beyond belief until he has a heart attack during the night and you wake up to his body lying next to you, cold, yet smiling.

You cry torrents of salty water onto your ever-clean sheets, poke the body to make certain it is dead, and then cause such a commotion when you wail that every single one of your neighbors call 911. His memorial service is a gala affair, with droves of loving friends, relatives and acquaintances crowding around towers of catered sandwiches and retelling old favorite stories, such as the time he mislabeled his Christmas presents and accidentally gave Aunt Mabel a slinky negligee, or the time when his boat broke down and he hitched a ride back to shore with a pontoon boat flying the Jolly Roger. By a month after his death, your home is so full flowers and cards that the only walking room in your house is a narrow path from the front door to your bedroom and you have to eat out at fancy restaurants every night, for fear of burning the pile of sympathy cards near your stove and setting your memory-filled house on fire. As he would have wanted you to, you spend most of the money he left you on charities, but leave a few million or so for your own pleasure. Now that the starving children have been fed, the cancer patients cured, and the entire continent of North America cleansed of all air pollution, you can gloat at your less-fortunate acquaintances as you drive in your flashy convertible with power-everything and two cup holders for every passenger. You shrug as you press the button to put down the top of the convertible and the new designer gown you bought for the Queen of England’s birthday flies out the window and lands on a hotdog stand. Sometimes the rich life becomes difficult, such as when you can’t remove your diamond necklace from your neck and you have to cut it off with your experimental, beta version laser sword which you bought from your friend, a prominent scientist. The laser sword is only one of two in the entire world, so you feel a bit down when the diamond necklace melts onto the control switch and you have to shoot it with some of the anti-aircraft guns on your roof, because you can’t have a perpetually-on laser sword hanging around. That would be quite a safety hazard. You must have had some bad karma leftover from a past life though, because even with all your charity donations and the occasional one hundred dollar bills you give to homeless children to blow their noses with, you contract the one disease in the world that your immeasurable fortune would not be enough money to research a cure for.

Instead, you use the last of your money to gather a small band of highly skilled professionals to accompany you on your quest for the Holy Grail, which you find and drink from, thus becoming healthy and immortal. Now that you are immortal, it isn’t too difficult for you to become Supreme Overlord of All The Known Universe and…

You are thinking, “This Riccardo is just a ridiculous man in the street. What is he talking about, all this jabber about marriage and money and being Supreme Overlord of All The Known Universe? What does this have to do with the little monkey?” Those daydreams you have about love, money, and power are no less ridiculous than wanting to buy a monkey, when you know nothing about owning a monkey. Taurus: All of your daydreams are equally idealized, and equally impossible, so much so that you have no idea of what anything in them really is. You think I am Riccardo, the simple street musician with his little monkey, Marian? In your delusion, how can you be sure that I am not Richard, that’s pronounced REE-shard, but spelled “Richard” who has just come to America from France and opened up a dog kennel in Maryland? And, if this is that case, would you be trying to buy the entire state of Maryland from me? Or, how do you know I am not Richard, that’s Richard pronounced “Richard,” who has a sister named Mary Anne? What shall you call me: Richard, Richie, Rich, Richie Rich, Ricky, Dicky, Rick, or Dick? And what would you have with Mary Anne? Will you go to Rick and ask him to sign up Mary Anne to be the first ever CVS cashier to go to the moon? Maybe pay a visit to Richie Rich, who has run out of money, and in exchange for a handful of Magic cards or some Scotch tape, have Mary Anne as your housekeeper?

Now, even if your daydreams were to come true, how do you think Marian and me, or whatever names we are called that you may never know, would feel about it? Who are you to say that our daydreams are the same as yours? I am your means to an end, and I am not so easy as that floozy across the street. Taurus: Shakespeare cannot be found on the same page as Dear Abby and the comics.