Old New Hampshire

1.

I didn’t answer.

But the difference is failure. Consider War and Peace: When Andrey is dying — that’s literature. But in the final chapters, when Pierre and Natasha live happily ever after, it’s schlock. A trite claim — great art is about unhappiness — but if language is going to be true, it’s going to have to fall away from events, and that’s the definition of failure.

(Those who can, do, etc.)

2.

Cutting across the hills near Eastbury, New Hampshire, is a transmission line. A swath of property runs beneath it, over the hills, down the hills, like a god has shaken a wave into a dirty doormat and left it crumpled on the floor.

I like to hike here. In the springtime, before the thorns get too thick, you can step through the vegetation. A brook runs half a mile down the line. I make for it; and think that if I ever break down and cry, this would be a peaceful spot to do it.

The topography is dominated by granite. Huge, moss-covered rocks shoulder out the hillsides; and if you wander far back into the forest, you’ll run into a wall. The settlers pulled these stones from the ground, one by one. They stared into the abyss; and it stared back into them, except that it was rock and it made them rock. First their bodies; then their minds. And so it is for me.

New Hampshire feels like the most conservative place in the world.

3.

New Hampshire’s a “blue” state, you say? Allows gay marriage? It only allows previously “queer” people to codify their sex into a conservative arrangement; and a vote for the Democratic Party (i.e., “blue”) is a vote for the oldest surviving political party in the United States.

But these are speculations; let me give you facts.

There are more turtles per capita in New Hampshire than in any other state.

The state flower is the rose.

Liquor in New Hampshire is sold only by the government. The liquor stores close by 5:30 pm on the weekends.

There is no income tax.

There is no sales tax.

Consequently, the entire budget is collected by the highway patrol. The only public space, the road system, is tightly monitored.

Women in New Hampshire are not allowed to work.

The state motto is “Live Free or Die.”

The chairs in New Hampshire are required to have four solid legs. If you own a chair with fewer than four legs, you are shot.

There are no high schools.

4.

Just down the road from Eastbury, in Woldingham, New Hampshire, lives the most conservative person in the world. I visited with her while I was out canvassing for Obama. She introduced me to her daughter.

“This is my daughter,” she said.

5.

The only black man alive in New Hampshire was sentenced to death. The legislature attempted to stop the execution. But the governor took it upon himself to threaten a veto, scuttling the bill.

This was one of the most popular governors in New Hampshire history.

But responsibility is hard. If the governor had signed the bill, another police officer would have been killed and the governor would have been blamed. Another police officer will always be killed. It can never be the case that removing a capital law is good. Another everything will be killed. Our earth is in decline. We must save it. Another parakeet will be killed in December. Count on it. I am willing to bet you that a parakeet was killed this December. And someone is to blame.

6.

My old literature professor found me today on Facebook. He said that I’d been his best student ever. He’d had a crush on me, even. I gave him my phone number. He called me immediately.

“How are you?” I said.

“I’ve been researching the paradox of executive power,” he said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Well,” he explained, “the paradox of executive power is that you can’t protest the executive, because he protects your right to protest the executive.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought the Constitution did that.”

“I’m not talking about political bodies only,” he said. “Anyway, the Constitution gives you the right to protest, but it doesn’t protect that right. The executive does.”

“That’s fascist,” I said.

“Yes, but it’s how most organizations work.”

“It’s conservative.”

“Yes, but I love you.”

“No really — it’s fascist.”

“I know. I love you.’

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” I repeated, then hung up.

7.

There are sylvan places in New Hampshire. Just five minutes from my apartment, there are a thousand Greek mythologies. Water seeps from the ground and forms rivulets, creeks, streams, and oceans. I sit alongside Mount Olympus and watch it tumble through the trees — looking for a source, somewhere up the mountain — where did all this goddamn water come from! If I built a windmill, I could make toothbrushes.

I think of Disneyland, where I saw my first mountain stream. Maybe it was at Cedar Point. An amusement park, in any case.

Then I consider my job. If only x could quit being a jerk to y. My colleagues are loathe to unionize. Do they think they’re cutting off their noses, guillotining the king? Silent and shy, I am Zarathustra, and I make good and evil.

It’s time to come down! Back to life! Back to the filth!

I love Facebook! I want to join! Yes!

I love my neighbor! New Hampshire! Old New Hampshire! Old, old, fascist and homogeneous New Hampshire! Let the environmentalists take my chest size!

Hallelujah!

8.

There is always a return. I walk down the trail, my sneakers squeaking and squishing, across the electric lines, through the green hills, and I see my quaint lovely New Hampshire again. Blue roofs and white people, old, older than the hills — older than me, anyway. So it was for Gilgamesh, and Odysseus.

My literature professor once asked me the difference between literature and fiction.

Motivating his question was guilt; for he was unwilling to tell lies — to draw us away from the fantasies we’d been given for other, colder, truer fantasies.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to listen.

“And then,” he signed to me, “there was the Eastbury Historical Society. I was walking — the dandelions were shattering the green; lovely — and I found ancient barns and outbuildings, rebuilt on a new property. There was an old red schoolhouse there. Inside it was still 1647 — the last time New Hampshire executed someone! I was a professor of Russian literature and of remedial English. I opened the McClatchey’s Primer and spelled the letters, A, B, C, D, E, a, b, c, d — and then I saw the sexism. The boys ran amok while the girls sat and watched. Pat has a hat and Ann has a fan, and she fans Pat. And I wondered, is there anything in the world at all? Will my shame ever, ever subside?”

Meanwhile, in Woldingham, my daughter is crying. Even with the baby monitor muted, she can be heard through the door.