The first thing I did after the pandemic was over was go visit a museum. There's one down the block from me; a big grey stone building with gargoyles on the top of it, glaring down
on the city like they want to destroy it.
It's called the International Museum.
I walked in, expecting to be caught up in a surging crowd of celebrants --
but there was nobody inside except a man in a dusty gray jacket.
"Hello!" he said cheerfully. "I'm the curator of the International Museum. Welcome to our grand reopening!"
"Where is everybody?" I asked him bluntly.
"The engraved invitations had a typo -- so everyone thinks the grand reopening is tomorrow, not today. But it definitely is today. Can I show you around?"
I shrugged my shoulders, indicating I didn't really care one way or the other. Living by myself for so long, without outside contact, had taught me the importance of noncommittal.
"That will be fifty dollars for the entrance fee, please" the curator said briskly.
"What? No! I'll give you five dollars -- tops!"
The dusty curator seemed taken aback by my response.
"You can't haggle with me, the curator of high arts and crafts" he said reproachfully. "I'm no fishwife."
"The pandemic has shown that everything is negotiable -- even life itself" I replied a bit sententiously.
"Very well" he sniffed. "I'll take five dollars."
"Sorry" I grinned at him. "I didn't bring any cash with me. Will you take my wrist watch instead?"
I handed it to him. It hadn't run properly in five years.
He put it on his wrist like it was a Rolex, then beckoned me down a long dim hallway.
"This is our Pandemic Memorial Room" he told me proudly.
There was nothing in it. The walls were blank, except way in the distance there was a yellow sticky note on the wall. I walked over to it. It was blank.
"A yellow sticky note, is that all?" I asked severely "And it's not even a real Post-it Note from 3M."
"Their Post-it Notes are made in China" the curator informed me haughtily. "This sticky note is hand crafted in Kentucky by veterans and their widows."
"How much do they cost?" I asked.
"Six hundred dollars per note" he said.
Suddenly I felt ashamed for dickering with him about the admittance fee. I knocked the heel off my left shoe, which was hollow, and handed him the hundred dollar bill I kept hidden there for emergencies.
"Please forgive me for being so hard" I asked him humbly. "I guess I haven't recovered very much of my humanity yet."
He handed me a t-shirt that read "International Museum" and patted me on the back.
"That's okay" he said kindly. "If there were more people like you around we could probably buy a wooden bench."
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An email response to this story from an English professor at BYU:
Hi, Tim. Okay, I'm going to actually ask you sincere questions about this little piece you sent, though some slightly sardonic comments may come out despite my attempts to squelch them.
First of all, this is, like much of your writing, strangely fascinating, with a clear narrative flow yet with unexpected twists and turns along the way. Also the persona -- the speaker -- is, as usual, a quirky fellow who seems disconnected from what are generally accepted as rationality, reality, and morality, yet who holds at least to the form of logic and who makes a gesture or two that seem to have a degree of humanity and goodness, or at least the form thereof. (I could make similar comments about the other character in the vignette, but I'm already threatening to go over my word limit.)
Granted all of this, I'm wondering what, except for being an interesting, semi-fantasmogoric trip through an imaginary lane, the point of the vignette is. I like to read things that have a point -- insight or illumination of some kind. But even lacking that, I could ask what is the point of spending my time reading this -- in other words, what makes it worth my while to do it. Is it merely the play of words, images, and imaginary events and personages, merely tasting again the quirkiness of it all? (I realize I'm asking something like, wow, that was a really weird dream -- I wonder what it means. But the dreams come unasked for, and this vignette I made the choice to experience, and it took up part of my waking time. So I'm looking both to find some sense in it and to decide whether it was worth the time it took.)
So here are some more specific questions: Why an INTERNATIONAL museum? The vignette seems to be making some comment on (or at least use of) the pandemic and also of a reopening post-pandemic. So what is the point about either or both of those things? Is there any point to the typo that makes the narrator the sole visitor, or is that there just for quirkiness and to facilitate a one on one encounter? Why the haggling over the price of admission, apart from simply the plot interest of a tussle over what's a reasonable vs. an unreasonable price for entry?
The previous questions may be a bit pointless. Those items could be there simply for local (or non-local) color or for the flavor of quirkiness. But here are a couple of questions I care more about. Why, in the Pandemic Memorial Room, is there nothing but a blank sticky note? Is that just what popped into your head, with the pay off being mainly that it's a bit of a surprise (and disappointment)? Or is there any more of a point than that?
Is the dispute over 3-M made in China vs. made in the USA by veterans and widows significant in any way other than (1) again being quirky and odd (wow -- I just noticed that the sticky notes were apparently made by DEAD veterans since they were working alongside their widows) and (2) maybe being a comment on the USA-China trade disputes (but if it's a comment, what IS the comment? maybe it's just an allusion; one can make an allusion without making a point -- T. S. Eliot does that all over the place in The Waste Land)?
Is the narrator's offer of $100 to the curator after learning that the one post-it note cost $600 significant in any other way than providing an occasion for uncharacteristic (for the narrator) generosity and even empathy? Just another little plot twist? Well, I guess this twist does connect with the pandemic again by suggesting (via the narrator's own words) that the pandemic has had a hardening effect on some people, if only fictional ones.
I have an opinion about the T-shirt: besides being an item familiarly associated with museums, it does give us (poor readers) a bit of satisfaction, almost a sense of resolution, as we see the narrator get something tangible after spending way too much for admission (at $100 a pop, the museum would only need five more people to totally cover the cost of the post-it note) and as we see the curator showing a spark of generosity.
Probably the meatiest sentence in the whole vignette is this: "The pandemic has shown that everything is negotiable -- even life itself." Though I don't believe that statement is entirely (literally) true, I think there's at least a shred of truth in it, and the statement connects with and prompts thoughts about a variety of pandemic-related issues. And so it does at least prompt me to think about some of what I've experienced and learned these last few weeks.
It appears my questions and comments are a good deal lengthier than the vignette itself. (That could be taken as a microcosm of -- and commentary on -- literary criticism and commentary in general.) But my questions are sincerely asked. If your response is, this was just a whimsical little fantasy, then that's fine. It's just that the vignette has several features that tempt readers to look for meaning. And if this is done only to tease and then frustrate us -- like what some people do with cats and some cats do with mice, or what some people say the gods are doing with us ("As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods: they kill us for their sport") -- then I would prefer there be a warning label that would help reduce the frustration by lowering my expectations.
Though I have no right to press you on this, I would prefer a substantive rather than flippant or evasive response. Or you can simlpy berate me, if that's more appropriate.
All best wishes,
Bruce
