There was not much hope for the cosmos. Terry took what looked like a beer to what felt like his lips and had what was, indisputably, a drink, and then he sighed. Terry's sigh was the sort of sigh you walked away upon hearing, as the odds were high that reflection would follow. The bartender, unfortunately, was deaf, and continued flipping the glasses over the electric glass washer with impressive dexterity, his mind miles away somewhere in Montana with a pipe, a barn, several horses, and a wife––none of which existed at the moment, except for the pipe; which state of affairs he bore with chiaroscuric stoicism, reflecting the ebony counter and the ebony booths of the dim-lit pub. It was after 9 o'clock, and Terry realized, mournfully, that the kitchen would be closed by the time he recovered enough lust for life to consider ordering a meal. He swiveled passively on his chair.
"I don't suppose you've heard of Hesiod?"
"What?" The bartender pointed to his ears.
"Heard of Hesiod?"
"I've heard barely anything all night," the bartender shook his head. "Presbycusis. Comes from Greece."
"The word does, or the affliction?"
"Beats me." The bartender shrugged quizzically. "I read it somewhere."
"Either way," said Terry, "it makes no sense. It should be presbiacusis, because the whole point is you can't hear. Imagine if everybody only began hearing at age fifty! Old men would blabber like twenty year olds." The quirks of his interlocutor had roughly unsaddled his angst, a fact he noted now with some irritation, as he remounted into speculation.
"Have you ever heard of the cosmos?"
"Sure I have." The bartender paused, waiting. "You want one?"
"Do I want the cosmos? No, no––cosmos, with an 's.'"
"I can only make you one at a time," frowned the bartender. "You expecting somebody?"
Terry sighed, a little louder this time (for courtesy), as the bartender inched away.
"I'll have another beer!"
The bartender sighed back and, as the Guinness dripped, he leaned his elbows on the counter in resigned anticipation.
"It's like this," Terry continued. "The whole possibility of knowledge––of science in the old sense––depends on believing the world is predictable. They say back in the day the farmers would pray to the gods for rain because they didn't realize moisture collected in the air cyclically. I don't think farmers were that stupid––I mean, not stupid because they didn't know meteorology. People underestimate the scientific character of worshipping the gods. I think it actually takes a highly developed cosmology to negotiate for rain with a deity. Either way, you've got to assume the world is predictable; you know, runs on regular rules. Hesiod's Zeus had to institute a bit of law and order for the gods. But here's the catch. Modern science is clearly destroying itself because of an overdeveloped sense of predictability. Intuitively, we realize reality isn't all predictable. Newton tried, and now we've got quantum mechanics. Kant tried, and now we're stuck with postmodernism. And the trouble is, you can't simply go back, because medieval scholasticism was on the same path, just a few steps behind. You see the problem."
"Yes," said the bartender, sincerely, but referring to a different problem that would not have gratified Terry.
"It's awfully hard to get anything done," said Terry, "when you haven't sorted out the basics. Like painting without a canvas––or opening a bar without any alcohol. How are you supposed to know anything in a world that can't tell you what knowledge is; or progress in a world without ends?"
"Everything ends, eventually," said the bartender hopefully.
"'Change and decay in all around I see,' as an Anglican once put it. But that was well before the digital age. A little decay would be a nice change of pace. 'Systems, solutions for everything but me.' That's how the line would go if he wrote it these days. Take yourself, for example."
The bartender, who was in fact quite amenable to being taken anywhere else under the circumstances, had allowed his brain a brief sojourn to Montana, where his wife was scolding him for smoking his pipe under the kitchen window. He felt he had a right to smoke his pipe where he pleased, considering that his wife was fictitious and the pipe wasn't. He jolted back as Terry sighed rather more aggressively.
"Take yourself."
I was, thought the bartender, but smiled and nodded heartily, hoping the absence of challenge would obviate any further exegesis.
"Your job is riddled with meaning," explained Terry. "To the lovesick and lonely you represent reassurance, stability, the consolation that in life's somberest moments there will always be a bar. To the disenchanted corporate peon you signify adventure, relatively speaking of course––the alluring prospect of a tryst, a tussle, a bar fight, even an eavesdropped-upon conspiracy––and, to the lover, rapt with romantic exhilaration, you serve as a kind of ballast, a charming dash of the ordinary in an otherwise poetic world. You extend unfailing medicine, the occasional novelty, and you wash the glasses with soothing personal care, like a mother coddling her infants. Your contradictions are your strength."
The bartender was prepared to object that he never contradicted anyone, but thought better of placing himself in such a logical conundrum and reached, instead, for Terry's stein, which he stabbed vigorously over the electric washer without looking anywhere in particular.
"But now, you see," Terry continued, "that's only the one half of it. The other half is that you're just a middleman––or, if you like, a middleman to a middleman; a middleman once removed. You're simply the man who gives the drink that gives the feeling, and the feeling is what matters, after all. You represent the inefficiency of symbols. A quick injection of calm, or lethargy, or excitement, could easily accomplish what you break your back in eight hours to administer, and with fewer dishes. You represent the human factor of clumsiness in an otherwise well-oiled world. You, my friend, are the kink in the cosmos."
"Hey, watch it," said the bartender.
"If you're going to insult the man, have the courage to do it concretely." A voice next to him took Terry by surprise, and he spun around, a little less passively than before, only to lean back in shock, and trepidation, at the sight of a beautiful woman extravagantly dressed in a floor-length brown dress that was unusually heavy and wide. She wore a tilted flat hat with feathers sticking out of it, and held a cloth fan in one hand and a Red Bull in the other; pouring the one into a glass of dark liquor, while with the other she fanned her neck, dappled in small beads of sweat under a generous constriction of lace.
"I can't stand cowards," she complained, without looking Terry in the face. Her nose was long and sharp, but her cheeks were pleasingly puffy, and her mouth was a little small, and her chin dainty. While located over a rather large body, her face communicated a certain innocence––her soft, receptive cheeks and naïvely officious nose––which hung about her interjections like the translucent skin of a box jellyfish.
"I'm not a coward," said Terry. "I'm a philosopher."
"That's all a good coward is," she continued, now stirring her mixture energetically with a cocktail umbrella. "Somebody who can airlift his observations past the ordinary line of fire. Nothing so safe as a generalization, or, better yet, a pointed judgment masquerading as one. But don't worry," she sighed, "your method is safe with me." Through the course of her brittle reflection, she had not once looked at Terry, evincing an absence of curiosity that could not but stimulate his interest. Terry, like most people, operated on the firm yet unsubstantiated assumption that he was fascinating––and, like most people, he was inevitably impressed by those who treated what was fascinating with disdain. We must not be too hard on him if his beguilement was forced by premises, albeit ignoble, common enough. His next blunder was to ask what she was drinking.
"Direct references to what we consume are indecent on a number of fronts," she continued, keeping her eyes on the counter. "Unless you have something especially enlightening to add about the drink––which you clearly don't, being unable to identify it. They don't bode well for your conversation, or (if you want me to recommend you a drink) for your faculties of arbitration. I suggest you resume blitzing the bartender. Remote combat is safer for you."
