“That wasn’t flying. That was falling with style!”
— Woody, “Toy Story”
The street was really noisy, but it always is. Then I overheard these words you see printed above, a quote from a character in a movie I’d never heard of, and wrote it down on a gum wrapper I found in the gutter. That’s the way it happened. But by the time I realized that what I had actually overheard was “FALLING with style,” I had changed the lives of millions. And I had bilked several hundred thousand out of 900 bucks apiece. At least that’s what he said the charges were.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said sensibly.
I wanted to talk with my hands, because I like to talk with my hands, you know, but they were tied to the chair, and had been for some time.
“Yeah?” said my assigned interrogator, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“Get talking then. When you’re done telling me everything you know, start with kindergarten, I’ll tell you what you don’t already know.”
It was the wrong thing to say. But I had to say it because I knew I’d get fireworks, and I’ve always liked things that explode, no matter how close I’m standing when they go off. You see, I’m a truth teller, and there’s nothing like the truth to piss people off.
“You little shit!”
The taste of that word made him drool. A slip of nicotined saliva was the last thing I saw before he smacked me with something that might have been an ashtray (or maybe a brick, but it felt too round to be a brick).
Look, I had found the secret to success and I had gotten it to as many people as quickly as I could because it was too good to be true, and I knew it wouldn’t last for long. And I knew it wouldn’t last because true things never last long because people refuse to believe the truth, even if it is right in front of them. And once no one believes it anymore, it is no longer the truth.
I know that you know that this is true…
So truth sometimes angers, sometimes soothes, and will certainly and absolutely set you free, but only if you are willing to believe the actual truth that is given to you before it is gone.
And this was Truth I heard: “That wasn’t flying. That was FAILING with STYLE.”
How could I have missed it? How could any of us miss it? We all fail. It’s inevitable – even if we don’t ever try anything we could fail at, we fail because we didn’t try. And if we do try, well, we all know where that usually ends: failure. And failure is not graceful, is it? But wait! What if I told you that you could fail — fail with style, and turn your whole life around doing it?
So I told him.
“Shut the fuck up.”
He hit me on the other side of my face, this time with his fist (fist, yes, no question).
“Look you’re failing at hurting me. Because you’ve got no Style.” He was surprised I could even speak at this point, so he leaned in and examined me more closely. I went on…
“Pain is pain, but death is just another thing that’s coming, right? So what’s the diff if I fall in front of a train now or in ten years? I know what I know, and I’ve seen what I’ve seen.”
He shoved my chair hard against the green, chipped, lead-paint wall, and as my head hit (again) I mused on the fact that there used to be warrants and due process, and other things most people don’t much remember anymore.
“Shut it or I’m gonna find something heavier for you…”
“And you?” I said, “You’ve seen what I’ve seen: Hundreds of people failing better than they ever have before! C’mon, tell me you didn’t see that carrot-haired grandma burning all the brownies, but doing it with a Style she never knew was possible.”
“Don’t matter what you say,” he scribbled something in the Security and Justice folders, “you’re gonna do a long, long time for this. But you deserve much worse…”
I decided to go for it. Because he clearly didn’t understand what was at stake here:
“And the kids, all those young kids that were there? You know the ones that never catch an even break because society is setup to screw them specifically? You saw them, you were there!”
He pulled out another folder.
“They learned, and they learned from ME, before you came along, they learned that they can fuck up – yes, they can fuck up, that they can fail, even fail multiple times, but if they do it with Style, everything changes. Everything.”
He was looking at me now. He put the pen down.
“If… if these kids, well, any of us, would just listen to the Grace that tells us so clearly that all God’s creations, all colors, all living things together are a total, freaking failing mess doomed to decay into the forgotten mulch of history, unless our failing is touched with the primordial Song of Style deep, deep in our hearts.”
I felt something was moving in him. He was ready for the essence of all I now knew:
“With the Grace of Style, all is elevated. All is perfect in its Failingness. With Style, to Fail is Divine.”
There was a black hole of quiet. Several times he started to form words, then pulled them back like a dollar given for a kiss unfairly snatched away after the deed had already been done.
“You. You still broke the law.” He finally shoved his fat finger at me. “You are a lawbreaker.”
“And what law is that? The one from Black’s Law Dictionary, or the Universal one that says nothing fails except by Style and nothing succeeds except by Failing?”
He laughed, “And people paid you for this crap?”
“What? I didn’t charge anyone, it was all donations.”
“So wait, you didn’t actually sell this?”
“Of course not! No! Who sells the truth?” (I had to stop and think about that one, because many, many corporations have indeed tried to sell “the Truth.”)
“So no one actually paid for whatever it was you were selling?” He was truly confused now.
“I sold nothing: you give away the truth for free, that’s the way it works. I’m giving it to you right now!”
He stood and paced the short length of the dark, sweaty room. Old shoe leather working cigarette butts into the cement. He stopped, deflated.
“Geez, that’s not what they told me when they brought you in on Tuesday…”
“So you see,” I said, “this whole thing has been a complete failure, but all is not lost! All you have to do is let the Song of Style into your…”
He hit me again so quickly I didn’t even see it coming – it was all blurry glacier. It was cold. It was really, really hard. It made my head spin. I saw stars, and planets, too (I know because planets don’t twinkle).
And it was…different. It had something new and powerful in it. And it hurt like bloody hell.
“Wow! Now that had some Style!” I gushed. “See? You, sir, have found your own personal Child-of-the-Universe Style! And whamo! so to speak, you have made a divine success out of the ashes of inadequate Failure. How do you feel?”
He stood very close and smiled a wide, warm smile. A smile that exuded a knowingness about his very place in the world. And my place in the world. And the shadows of all things to come. His breathing was deep and heavy, yet measured.
Finally, he centered himself and whispered, “I feel like… like a Failure. And that is the ultimate success, isn’t it? I never, ever thought I would feel this way in my lifetime, so powerful and so clear…”
“Okay,” I said, “so what’s next?”
He threw me in front of a train 10 years too soon.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t really ready to leave this life, but it sure did have some kind of crazy Style, and who am I to argue with the Truth?
***end***
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