Scope

By Mike Manson

The road travelled along, a winding line of white dots and yellow dashes stretching away into the distant countryside. Scope McGlocklin stood beneath the blowing leaves of a large oak tree, his right thumb extended out perpendicular to the road. The mid-morning sun beamed strong in the clear blue sky. It was middle-June and summer was a reality.
Scope wore his hair long, was most comfortable in blue jeans and believed in marijuana. They were off-tangent beliefs in the light of computers, going to the moon and the urban overflow of the mid-1970 American technological society.
Born and raised in the sub-culture youth movement of hippies, drugs and rock n' roll, Scope was 21 years old and hitchhiking to California. Despite a firm belief in responsibility, morality and personal achievement, he'd voluntarily transformed himself into a bum. From his point of view, it was the best thing to do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Manson
• Release date: Apr 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301333295

Book preview

SCOPE

By Mike Manson

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Published by:

Mike Manson at Smashwords

Copyright (c) 2013 by author

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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PART I

GOING TO CALIFORNIA

The road travelled along, a winding line of white dots and yellow dashes, stretching away into the distant countryside. Scope McGlocklin stood beneath the blowing leaves of a large oak tree, his right thumb extended out parallel to the road. The mid-morning sun beamed strong in the clear blue sky. It was middle-June and summer was a reality.

Scope wore his hair long, was most comfortable in blue jeans and believed in marijuana. They were off-tangent beliefs in the light of computers, going to the moon and the urban overflow of the mid-1970’s American technological society.

Born and raised in the sub-culture youth movement of hippies, drugs and rock n’ roll in the 60’s, Scope was 21 years old and hitchhiking to California. Despite a firm belief in responsibility, morality and personal achievement, he’d voluntarily transformed himself into a bum. From his point of view, it was the best thing to do.

Across the 4-lane highway the Illinois farmland lazily meandered over a long flat plain to a tree-spotted horizon. He watched as a blue Chevy Nova went skimming by down the wide open roadway. It was middle June and summer was a reality.

He thought back. College students go down in history with tales of intellect and knowledge. Scope had just obtained a 2-year Associated Arts Degree from a suburban Chicago junior college. He was a Liberal Arts major with a minor in Psychology.

At one time he’d definitely known that the secret of happiness lay with the key to knowledge. He’d read 72 books of great literature, including Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatzby. Having acquired a great sense of accomplishment from this feat, he felt that he was aware.

Scope smoked marijuana. He knew what a lot of people said about weed, that it was a drug, that it was bad and would destroy his brain and ruin his life. But, Scope really liked to get high, and after three years of smoking it, he really couldn’t substantiate those claims. He really didn’t think that marijuana was all that bad.

He knew for sure that it wasn’t as bad as beer. And beer was legal. Every time he drank, he got a hangover. He always felt terrible and sick the next day, like his body was trying to tell him something .But that didn’t happen when he smoked pot. He figured it was because marijuana and alcohol were two completely different things. Getting high was nothing at all, like getting drunk.

Scope felt that drinking was a partyin’ high. When you got drunk you wanted to cut loose, get crazy and just have a good time. But marijuana was more of a thinking kind of a high. It was in the mind, quiet, mellow and more of a thoughtful altered state of consciousness. Sometimes he thought that smoking weed was like getting more into reality, whereas drinking alcohol was trying to get as far away from reality as possible.

He didn’t knock beer. Actually, he kinda liked getting drunk. It was usually a lot of fun and made him happy. But what he didn’t like about drinking was the hangover the next morning. So he rarely consumed alcohol, because he just didn’t want to pay such a heavy price the following day.

It was the same way with other harder drugs; cocaine, speed and downers. He did them on occasion, usually with friends for a social activity. Those highs, like liquor, also took you very far away from reality. But Scope’s philosophy was simple; the higher up you go, the further back down you gotta come. So when he did indulge, he knew that he probably wouldn’t be feeling too great the next day.

That was the one thing he really liked about marijuana. He could get high and it didn’t affect his daily responsibilities. This was very important. He couldn’t afford to be hung over and sick the next day when he had to go to school, do homework, and then go to work at night.

To Scope, toking a doobie really wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just a temporary escape from reality, and you usually didn’t go very far away from it anyway. He mostly liked to get stoned after work, go sit in a restaurant, drink some coffee, smoke some cigarettes and just mellow out.

Or he’d go home, kick back in his room and listen to music. Getting high was a time to relax and unwind, a chance to look back and reflect on the just completed day. It was an occasion to just sit around and think about things, stoned. Sometimes he thought of it as thoughtland. But whatever, he always looked forward to the lift. It was his little reward for having worked so long and hard all day.

The other thing that he liked about pot was the high that it produced. Being toked was reaching a certain state-of-mind, a mental place outside of reality that could be described as many things. Some of them were; beautiful, harmonious, ecstatic, lonely, peaceful, frightening, hilarious, surreal, grim, exhilarating, mysterious, stoic, spiritual, inspirational, esoteric, eloquent, luxurious, mystical, alienating, profound, revealing, intellectual, subterranean, happy,----, the list could go on forever.

Scope felt that marijuana was a perceptual high. When he was stoned, his mind suddenly came alive with thoughts and perceptions that he’d never had before. Pot seemed to heighten conscious awareness and intensify the thought process.

He thought a lot when he was stoned, about everything and anything. Everything seemed to be centered directly in his brain. Thoughts actually seemed to be more clear, vivid and real. Smoking a joint was like opening up a whole new world of thought, vision and feeling, like entering a whole new dimension of perception, emotion and sensation.

The perceptual high of marijuana was a kind of a here-and-now experience. When high, it was like his mind focused in entirely on the immediate present, on life at that precise moment, place and time. He remembered once being very high and seeing a house. He had been so arrested by the way it looked he’d just stopped and stared it, completely immersed in it with an unexplainable fascination.

It had been a big white house out in the country, standing serene on the top of a hillside, a sunlit silhouette against a clear blue sky. The front yard, surrounded by a white picket fence, was shaded by billowing green trees that gently swayed to the whispering rhythm of an afternoon breeze, on a warm summer day.

The incident seemed to define the essence of being high. His mind had been captivated in an unforgettable way. In reality, there really had been nothing there; just a plain old house on a hill. But what he saw when he was stoned was something else, something unreal that was alive and bursting with wonder, enchantment and beauty.

Scope reasoned that marijuana was creative. It stimulated his mind to make something out of nothing. It enabled him to view the world with a quiet awe and silent tranquility. He could see it better. Normal, everyday things that he saw all the time, but never really noticed, suddenly became more meaningful and significant.

It was almost like being high was being totally amazed by nothing more than the mere fact that something was there. It was like he was held, completely spellbound by the very phenomena of existence itself; that something was there, and that he was able to perceive it.

So, Scope continued to enjoy himself getting stoned. Then something really incredible happened to him during the second semester of his freshman year. To fill a GE graduation requirement, he had to take a Science class and he picked Physics 100: An Introduction to Physics, The Science of the Physical World. Scope had never studied Physics and he’d wondered what it was all about.

It was a big mistake. He’d never considered himself to be a brilliantly smart person, but he’d always been able to, pretty much, figure out and understand everything that he’d encountered in school. Until now.

Physics blatantly confused him. He was lost. No matter how hard he tried, he could not grasp a clear image of what an atom was, or a light wave, or force, or energy. Meaningful representations of these concepts were nowhere to be found. It made no sense to him whatsoever. Scope got a D on his first test and became genuinely concerned. Maybe he wasn’t as intelligent as he thought he was.

It was just about at the same time that he really got into smoking pot. If he really wanted to, he saw no reason not to get high every day. So he did. One day in class the thought occurred to him that he should try getting high and study Physics. Just to see what happened. He certainly had nothing to lose. So he tried it.

Something did happen. He wasn’t even sure what it was, maybe a new interest, or maybe just the inspiration of the challenge. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, but finally he started picking it up. Once he caught on to what Physics did, give physical qualities to things like air, light and energy, he realized what an ingenious idea it was.

The more he understood, the more fascinated he became. Soon he was looking forward to those nightly sessions at the library, getting high and studying Physics. In the end, Scope considered it to be one of his finest, and most satisfying academic achievements. He got an A on the finals.

In retrospect, Scope did feel the marijuana had helped. Before using it, he was trying to fit the concepts of atoms and energy into the framework of the reality he knew; which is why he failed. Those concepts did not exist in that reality. But the pot had helped break that reality down, thereby allowing his mind to open up and become more receptive to another way of interpreting the world.

He found the whole experience to be rather startling. He’d been sure that he’d stumbled on to something big, but wasn’t sure exactly what it was. As it turned out, due to the controversial nature of the issue, Scope never really said anything about it, or told anybody that it happened. But he never forgot it.

His liking of marijuana just grew and grew. Everything about it just seemed to work to make the world a better place to be. He kept waiting for reality to set in and ruin it. But much to his surprise it never did.

He could still remember one evening last spring, actually just a couple of months ago, that he would probably never forget. Having just smoked a joint on the way home from work, he was kicking back in his room and listening to some music.

He’d been feeling really good. Things were going really good. Gazing out the open window, the night sky was warm, clear and still, a sure sign that spring had finally arrived and dreaded winter was over. Plus he was close to graduation and everything in life seemed very fine.

Basking in the glow of an unusually good high, he’d just been sitting there, thinking about things when he started thinking about how marijuana slowed down the world. It temporarily stopped the hurry up, do as much as you can as fast as you can, it’s gotta be done now normal pace of reality.

When he was stoned, it was like, for a while, he could really have life. It was there. He could touch it, see it and understand it for what it was. Marijuana helped stopped the world from flying by too fast, gone before it was over, lost forever in the blurring maze of survival, time and reality.

When he was high it was as if time stood still. Captured were the moments and perceptions of life that would otherwise slip away un-noticed, un-realized and never known. His brain had been awed by the thoughts. They were real. The perceptions were important. They gave life a meaning that he had never experienced, or known before.

He’d realized the meaning was the moment. The meaning was just sitting there and feeling so good, at peace with the world, accepting it as it was and totally content just gazing out the window at the mellow spring night, high.

It was then that he’d decided that there was nothing wrong with marijuana. Actually it was something good. From that second on he knew that he would always be smoking marijuana, no matter what anybody said or thought about it.

A lot of his friends, and a lot of the students at his college felt the same way. It was considered very in to get high, sit in the college cafeteria and have intellectual discussions. Topics ranged from Psychology, Sociology, Astronomy, Art and Literature to just about anything else. There was a lot of criticism of contemporary society; its fakeness and over-emphasis on materialism, it’s political corruption and hypocrisy, and it’s animal-like conservatism, red-neck patriotism.

Scope and his friends tended to see The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Gracie Slick as the leaders of their cause. They believed that pot was a secret means of communication; it cleared out the head of social irrelevancies and synthetic formalities. To them being a real person was what was really important.

The idea was simple; just being together with friends anywhere, in the park, driving around in a car or sitting in a restaurant. Everyone thought of it as their non-violent social revolution. The whole trip was designed to make America a better place to live. But what they really wanted most of all was to just not be like their parents, sentenced to a 2-car garage, 9 to 5, 5 days a week, vacation ever year scene. But they knew they probably would be anyway.

Scope had once owned a hot car. He believed that it was proof that he could succeed in the silly social games of materialism and status. His part-time job as a janitor at Sears paid well enough for him to afford junior college and the car.

He decided that his parent’s economic problems were only a mis-management of existing funds. For six months Scope rode around in ecstasy, into a power/speed trip, until the car started falling apart; brakes, battery, exhaust---. He became trapped in a financial dilemma; needs were exceeding income.

Entering his sophomore year, other things around him began changing. He could not understand why his college friends were quitting school to get full-time jobs, and then buy faster cars. And those that remained, mostly Business and Economic majors, began profit-motivated pot-selling businesses on minor scales. Scope was bummed. His raps on social corruption and materialistic hypocrisy were laughed off. Everyone told him to get in with the times. But Scope felt that he did see a change for the worse.

To keep his car running he had to ask for additional hours at work. This was against his grain of thought; knowledge before labor. But he knew that a car was as essential to existence as air, and they cost money. Soon he found himself in restaurants after work, sipping coffee alone.

He didn’t have time to go out with his friends much anymore. They were all out partyin’. Many had started drinking beer, which Scope considered a definite social evil. But they all said, A high’s a high. So his car was running better, but now he was driving around alone a lot. So he decided to become a loner.

He had lived with his family owing to financial necessity while attending school. He considered it a big hassle, dealing with the generation gap between him and his parents and putting up with the frustrations of two younger immature sisters.

Scope adapted to it without saying much as a sacrifice in the name of knowledge. As he became older, family strings pulled tighter. He would never say that he did not love his family. But the reality of the situation bugged him. There were too many differences and not enough compromises.

Robert McGlocklin, his dad, was a manager at a Jewel food store. As a father, and as a man, Scope respected him for the family security and comfort that he had established for everybody. But Scope also believed that a point had come when his father’s life-long experience and knowledge no longer applied to him. He was 21 and knew how fast social standards changed.

The main conflict was hair, a cold war battle over length and the direct correlation with respectability. Scope had shoulder-length blonde hair. His dad kept telling him that if he continued to keep his hair long, he would be a janitor all his life.

Yet Scope was going to college because he had read that a college graduate earned significantly more money over an average lifetime than a non-graduate. He had statistical proof. Confronting his father with the argument was in vain. His dad replied, So you’ll be the most intelligent janitor in the world.

Scope learned to ignore the arguments. They resolved nothing and accomplished even less. He identified with the fact that he never once told his father to get rid of his pot belly. It was to each, his own, and Scope did not believe in judging other people.

Standing on the roadside, abruptly he came to attention. It looked like a car was slowing down. The turn signal was on blinking in his direction and the car was angling off the roadway. Instant euphoria energized him. He was about to get his first ride

Scope was just about to reach down for his backpack, when all of a sudden the turn signal reversed directions. All of a sudden the car was picking up speed and moving back on to the road. Within seconds it went whipping by him, blowing back his hair in an accelerating wind.

Scope turned and watched the rear taillights move away. What happened? The guy looked like he was going to stop. Geez, his hopes were dashed, really fast, big-time. He slowly turned around and stared back down the Interstate the other way. There wasn’t a car in sight.

He looked at his watch. 12:20. He’d been out here for almost two hours now. Aimlessly he turned his gaze to a grove of trees alongside the road. They were large trees, blowing in a slight breeze, a dusty green and dark brown color in the summer heat.

He turned back and stared at the deserted highway. Moments passed. In the far distance two dark dots appeared on the horizon, hazy through the wavy sheet of shimmering heat that rose off the sun-baked asphalt. They were headed toward him.

Scope wasn’t worried. He’d get a ride. This was the essence of hitchhiking; you waited until someone stopped and picked you up. Nobody said anything about how long it took. He might be here another five hours. He might be here until tomorrow for that matter. But who cared? He wasn’t going anywhere in particular anyway. He didn’t have to be anyplace at a certain time. He had all the time in the world.

Scope looked at the sun overhead. He was free. It was so beautiful. He was free without a care in the world. Not many people could say that. He stared at the vast blue sky, then at the miles and miles of rolling farmland that surrounded him. Still, he really couldn’t believe it. He was actually doing it, standing out in the middle of nowhere, hitchhiking to California.

Three cars, in rapid succession, went shooting by. Scope kind of nodded to himself. He’d get a ride. In fact, coming at him again, it looked like another car was slowing down. Or maybe it was just going slow. It made no inclination to move to toward the side of the road.

Scope watched as it approached. It was an old station wagon with big steel bumpers. He saw three figures inside. They had long hair. They were girls. The car was upon him. It was three girls all right. They were looking at him, but then they were gone, just another pair of receding taillights disappearing down the road.

Scope hung his thumb back out. He considered girls to be the paradox of his existence. He’d never thought of himself as being good-looking, but girls always seemed to be hanging around. Scope thought that girls mostly represented hassles, a loss of important time, overbearing money expenditures and just plain mental worry.

Girls confused him. He never knew what to say, what to expect or what they were thinking. Experience had taught him that the female mind was too unpredictable for an energetic young man out to conquer the world. So he didn’t mess around with them too much.

He had once gone out with a close female friend who seemed to be weighed down by strict social and moral attitudes on sex. Scope had told her that sex was a normal human act that was very pleasurable and was being more openly accepted by society.

The girl got mad and said, You just want my body. The rest of the night was pretty lousy. Later that night, sitting in a restaurant, Scope had stared into his coffee confused. At the moment that she had said that, he’d had no such intention in his mind. And then he wondered, why not?

Still into the flow of deep-thought and college-oriented intellectual strivings, he’d run head first into the future. In a spaced-out panic, he’d realized that he didn’t have one. He was stuck-in-the-middle. He didn’t want to be a rich, businessman playboy; too much social corruption. But at the same time he didn’t want to be a flat-out hippie bum; too much social judgment.

The last thought on his mind was settling down and getting married. Chicks blew his mind and a lifelong commitment to one was just a little too much to handle. The days and nights were turning sour. He found himself more and more in restaurants, overwhelmed.

For escape he had turned to knowledge. Scope decided to become a writer. The profession was unrestricted enough to escape strict social regulations, he could keep his hair long, plus he liked to write. The idea fit perfectly, because the world that he was looking at was so ridiculous, he was sure people would be intrigued reading about it.

He started a novel and began to enjoy the mysterious late-night writing sessions in his room. Time became an important factor. Overloaded with homework and janitor work, he decided to quit his job so he could have more time to write. Running the idea past his dad was a total disaster. He freaked out and said, You quit your job and you start paying rent for your room. Scope fell hard and headed back to restaurants.

But still, he had knowledge. Scope clutched on to it and decided it would be right up his alley to become a weird and spaced-out literary martyr, the sole purpose of his being to ponder and explore the mysteries of existence. He believed that he had one up on everybody else; mixing pot with Literature had shown him just how unreal reality really was. The secret of course, was in the perception.

It seemed like a brilliant discovery, and suddenly he was filled with thoughts of strong individuality, iconoclastic thinking and mental freedom. He started to identify with Thoreau and began talking walks in nature and long rides in his car out in the country. The trip lasted about two months. All the knowledge and power he’d gained from being a strong individual and mentally free lost credence. He had no one to tell about it.

Scope had desperation, burned out at 21, seeing no future and bogged down by a loner-like existence. He had no idea what to do. Grasping for anything he settled into music. Tuned in, tunes did ease his troubled mind. Winter nights, cloaked in snow and cold, were filled with endless miles of just riding around, his stereo blasting.

He began associating song moods with the landscape, finding emotion in the beauty of white fields and green forests. It was then that he longed to see purple mountains, sit on a dock in San Francisco and meet people in California. He had aspirations to travel and see America for himself. But mostly he wanted to get away from where he was at.

The more he thought about it, the more he really wanted to do it. But once again he was cornered by economic reality. It seemed that the only course of escape he could consider was by the road and the thumb, hitchhiking. The thought intrigued him, yet scared him. On a particularly wicked February night while changing a flat-tire in a minus10 degrees below zero Chicago freeze, he’d decided that he was probably a little too civilized to hitchhike to California.

He felt trapped. There was no way out. The days at school and the nights at work were overrun with depression, bordering on despair. He was beginning to worry about always being so bummed out. Then he ran head-on into Existentialism. It proved to be the fatal blow.

Existentialism all started because he had often wondered about the exact same questions that Existentialism asked. What was the meaning of all this, life? What was the reason for man’s existence? Why was he here? For what purpose did he exist?

Scope first spotted the word, Existentialism, in the class schedule for the Spring Semester of his final year at college. It was called English 275: Existential Literature. The little paragraph summarizing the contents of the course completely blew him away. It posed those questions almost as if it had been written exclusively just for him. He knew right away that he had to take the class.

The first thing that caught his attention after enrolling in the course was the professor. He was kind of a strange dude, but a cool strange dude. He wore dark sunglasses, smoked cigarettes while lecturing in class and talked about symphonies and operas.

Scope saw him a lot in the college cafeteria drinking coffee. He usually sat alone. But the thing that impressed Scope about him the most was that he was a very intelligent man who thoroughly knew, and strongly believed in the stuff he lectured about. Getting into the class, Scope sensed something; existence, the mystery, the unanswered questions, the challenging unknown.

Scope discovered that Existentialism was an uncomfortably serious subject. It was a doctrine of thinking, a loosely-defined philosophy that seemed to be best described in novels. It was laced with writings of despair, anguish, aloneness, and in general, some of the not-so-happy sides of life. One Existential philosopher wrote, Being is anxiety. Scope noticed that the depressing nature of the material turned-off a lot of his classmates, but he was curious to learn more and continued to pay attention.

The Existential doctrine seemed to be centered around three main principles; that man’s life in an infinite universe was meaningless, that his death was inevitable and that existence was absurd. Scope looked up the word absurd in the dictionary. Absurd meant ridiculously incongruous and unreasonable.

In class they read novels and short stories written by Existential authors. Existentialists were concerned that technology was alienating man from his own self and from the world. They felt that the loss of traditional values, customs and morals caused by technology was fragmenting man’s emotions and forcing him into an existence of isolation, alienation and dehumanization.

The existential stories were not about superstars or heroes. Instead they were about common everyday people who suddenly found themselves faced with an experience, or incident, that had no meaning, or definition in social terms. The existential figure became confronted by a situation, or realization that normal logic, or rational, could not explain.

Franz Kafka’s The Bucket Rider illustrated this to a surrealistic perfection. The story was about a man in a wooden bucket who was out riding around in it one bitterly cold winter night, trying to find some coal so he could keep his family warm. He came upon a large, well-to-do home and knocked on the upstairs window. A lady in a robe opened the wooden window cover.

Mam, the bucket rider said, Please, could you spare a little coal? It’s very cold tonight and I have none. My family is freezing.

The lady just stared at him.

Who’s out there? It was the voice of a man, her husband who bellowed out from inside the room.

Oh, just some man in a bucket begging for some coal. she replied, then turned back to the bucket rider annoyed, Don’t you know we’re trying to go to bed? Go away.

But mam, please, my family will freeze. Please, couldn’t you spare just a little coal?

Shoo, shoo, go away. She cut him off and shooed him away with her hands, sending the bucket rider floating away, off into the icy cold blackness of the night.

The story was only three pages long, but it hit Scope like a ton of bricks. He couldn’t believe something so simple could be so powerful. He had never been placed in the position of being the one shooed away before. But now that he had, it caused him to think about, and feel, what it would really be like. It wasn’t very pleasant. Scope decided that the little short story, The Bucket Rider was one of the most influential things that he’d ever read.

The next reading assignment was a short novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy called The Death of Ivan Illych. It was another chilling tale of the way it probably really was. The novel started with the death of the main character, Ivan Illych and the whole book was written through the eyes of a dead man.

Ivan was able to see everything after he had died, including his own funeral. There, he watched his wife and son, and all the others who had attended grieve his loss and say what a great man he was and how much they would miss him.

But Ivan was also able to see his wife and son after they had left the funeral. Watching them then was a little hard to take, because he saw that his wife really had wanted him to die because she had a lover, and that his son had been waiting for him to die so he could get the inheritance.

But beyond all that, Scope was greatly affected by the book in a different way because it made him realize that he was going to die. He suddenly understood that it wasn’t something that happened to someone else, or that it didn’t relate to him. It did relate to him. He was going to inevitably die. It happened to everyone. It was going to happen to him.

Scope came face-to-face with his own mortality. Like Ivan Illych , he saw that in the universal scheme of things his own death was totally insignificant, inconsequential and basically nothing. It was a routine, mundane event that happened all the time and had little bearing on anything.

Scope thought about this for a long time. The impact it had on life was immeasurable. It meant his whole life was pointed toward one thing; the end of it, a complete and final termination of everything. He was appalled by how vicious it really was. It made no sense whatsoever. It was like a cruel joke, a hideous, unbelievable irony. The final outcome of life was the absolute, very worst thing that could happen; which said a lot about life.

It was death that made life meaningless. Because no matter what you did in life, you were still gonna die. Death spoiled everything. It took the fun, happiness and reason out of living. Scope wanted to know; without those things what was the purpose of being here? Existentialists said there was none.

They were right. There wasn’t one reason to do a damn thing in life, including live. Which was exactly the existential point, because of death there was no reason to live. To deal with that, the Existentialists then said that that was the very reason to live, in spite of, or to spite, the meaninglessness and hopelessness of it.

Scope was mystified. In a very strange paradox, death took the meaning away from life, yet at the very same time also gave life meaning. In fact, death gave life the ultimate meaning. It was simple. You better live your life now, because one day it was going to end.

Suddenly Scope saw the light. It was an urgent message. There was no time to lose, not a second to waste. He had to live right now! To be alive was the most important thing there was. Intellectually he was electrified. This was invaluable knowledge. It was an essential instruction on how to live. Existentialism was right on about that. It was something he could use for the rest of his life.

Riding a wave of emotional inspiration, Scope became high on life. He tuned in to being alive, enjoying to the fullest every little thing that life had to offer. Once on his way to school, he was driving the expressway at 6 AM in the morning when all of a sudden he just started shouting out loud, Live! Livv-ee! Li-ii-vvv-ve! It’s all there was in life, to live. But as time passed, the high faded. Reality, and thought, soon settled back in.

Scope began to question whether the knowledge gained about living was worth the price he had to pay to do it. Because now that he was aware of death, he had to think about it all the time. Death was extremely depressing. Maybe it was better not to be so aware of it. He didn’t enjoy life as much. The clouds seemed grayer, his moods deeper and the dark winter nights definitely colder.

A somber grimness had invaded his once happy perception of life. The awareness of his death had changed the way he thought about everything. Scope got the feeling that his life would never be the same again. Death was a reality that he now knew, would never go away.

And, he was still in the Existentialism class. The third existential writer they read was Albert Camus. After reading it, Scope decided that what happened to Mersault, The Stranger, was not practical. The odds of it happening to anybody were astronomically remote. So why delve into such a tragedy? How could it apply to normal life?

But then again, maybe that was the point that it could happen. It happened to Mersault. And certainly it happened in the mind of Albert Camus. The Stranger, without any intention to do so, accidentally shot and killed a man. He was condemned to die.

The point was this kind of thing did happen. Throughout history there had been people falsely executed for murders that they did not commit. Camus was making a statement on the conditions of man’s existence. He was showing that it was a very unjust and tragically unreasonable existence.

Scope really liked the part of the book when Mersault, waiting in his cell a few hours before his execution, is told that the prison chaplain was there to administer the last rites. And Mersault cries out, Please, please not that. I only have a few more hours to live. Can’t I please spend them in peace and quiet?

Scope was beginning to see how these writers thought. He know understood what existentialists meant when they said that man was alone in existence. Man was alone because he was trapped in his own mind. By the very nature of his being he was isolated as one. There was the consciousness, the one, or him, his consciousness Scope, and then everything else that was outside of his consciousness, external reality, the objective outside world.

In an infinite universe the individual consciousness, or his consciousness, and therefore his existence, boiled down to just about nothing. It was like comparing one to infinity, which was absolutely insignificant and had no meaning whatsoever.

So, so far he had learned in Existentialism that in an infinite universe both life and death were meaningless. It was such a wonderful place. Scope experienced being the existential figure, alone in the night, staring at the black sky and facing a silent and empty universe. He realized that there was nothing really out there, just light, matter and infinity. It was nothingness.

Something was pulling very strongly on his mind. Existentialism was heavy shit. It went far beyond anything in society, religion and conventional knowledge that he had ever heard of. Existentialists were brilliant thinkers, creative geniuses who wanted to know exactly what was really going on.

They did not shy away from unpleasant realities or disturbing actualities. They confronted existence toe-to-toe on raw basic terms. There were no illusions, rationalizations or fake explanations. It wasn’t very pretty. But it was real. The plot thickened. The noose tightened.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, followed. He wasn’t as bizarre, or as off-the-wall as the other ones, but what he wrote was just as convincing. Sartre’s assessment was fundamental; the world had no meaning for man, therefore man had to take the responsibility and make the meaning.

This seemed to be the major crux of the whole existential message. It focused on the individual, stressing the importance of the self in coping with existence. Existentialists said that man had to turn within himself to find the meaning and the inner strength and courage to deal with an absurd and meaningless world. One existentialist wrote, Man has to turn within himself in order to be free.

Scope agreed with this. He’d been through it before and this only re-enforced his beliefs. It was imperative to be strong as an individual to survive. He likened the inner strength that the existentialists talked about to a kind of mental toughness.

In today’s world you had to withstand a relentless bombardment of battering problems, concerns and worries, day after day, with no end in sight. Being mentally tough was being able to take a lot of psychological punishment, and still stay happy.

Life was the individual consciousness pitted against the conditions of existence. It was a struggle to survive. But it was no longer a physical struggle. Technology had eliminated many of man’s physical threats; starvation, disease and lack of shelter.

But a new Pandora’s Box of mental threats had sprung up in place; stress, guilt, anxiety, addiction, and psychosis were a few of them. In a technological society the struggle to survive was a mental one. Waged in the mind, it was a bitter war to remain sane and stay happy in an insane world.

The task was not an easy one. Sanity was a very thin line, a delicate balance in nature, a walk on tightrope through life. It was so difficult to maintain because it was near impossible to be able to tell what to do. There were no set standard rules of behavior to success, no easy-to-follow directions to survive.

There were many theories, but no guarantees. It seemed like, no matter what, he always ended up getting fooled. He thought for sure it was one thing, but it always seemed to turn out to be the other. Nothing was ever certain. It was an existence of illusion and deception where nothing was ever what it appeared to be.

So who, or what, did you turn to in such a place? Nobody really knew the answers, not his parents, not his pastor, not his teachers, not even the President of the United States. So what else was there but his consciousness, that entity which was him, Scope, his mind, his existence? The only thing that he really could be sure of was his own existence.

Scope felt that it was pretty clear by now. It was kind of hard to accept, or totally understand, but in this life you had to do it alone. It’s just the way it was. If you tried any other way, or if you tried to depend on someone else, or something else, the world would eat you up at alive, then spit you out, in little bitty pieces.

Considering that kind of option, Scope decided that doing it alone was definitely the way to go. It really wasn’t all that bad, and it did have some good advantages. He liked the freedom, independence and control that came along with it. This was his existence and he wanted to make the decisions, to take responsibility for it himself. And besides, he was pretty sure that there was probably nothing out there that could help that much anyway.

Again, Scope was thoroughly impressed; Existentialism. This was brilliant knowledge, earth-shattering news, a kind of wisdom that just didn’t hang out at the corner drugstore. It was a high-powered intellectual philosophy that really seemed to apply, that really seemed to make some sense out of all the madness.

Nonetheless, despite all of this great knowledge, Scope was still confused, because there was still a problem. Instead of feeling stronger as an individual, he felt like he was getting dragged through a mental wringer, his brain being twisted inside out, upside down and outside in.

He’d begun battling himself in deep thought. The conflict centered on what he believed to be real and what Existentialism was trying to do to that reality. The more he fought it, the deeper he got sucked in. It was like quicksand. He began asking himself just what indeed does a person do when he starts seeing life as hopeless, insignificant and worthless. Scope was starting to get a little scared, fearing for his sanity.

Next up on reading itinerary was an old friend re-visited, Kafka. In Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awoke one morning, and much to his amazement, he found that he had somehow been transformed into a bug. Laying there terrified, trying to figure out what had happened, his father started pounding on the bedroom door. He was very upset.

Gregor! Get up Gregor! Bang! Bang! Bang! His father’s fist loudly beat against the door again, Don’t try pulling this again Gregor! Get up! You’re going to work today.

Being a bug, Gregor had no human voice and could not answer. He tried, but all that came out was an insect-like buzzing noise.

His father, without getting an answer, was growing increasingly enraged, Gregor, I mean it Gregor, answer me! He had grabbed the doorknob and was violently shaking the door.

Horrified, Gregor had managed to roll out of bed. Like any terrified but would do, he clumsily started crawling up the wall.

Gregor, answer me! his father was screaming, I’m warning you---.

Reaching the ceiling, Gregor heard his father slam into the door with his body, You’re going to work today Gregor---. Being a large, raving mad man, the second time his body crashed against the door, it tore it right from the hinges and his father almost fell into the room.

Looking around, he screamed, Gregor! Gregor, where are you!?

Standing upside down on the ceiling and trembling with fear, Gregor watched as his father saw nothing in the room and, in what seemed like slow-motion, raised his eyes toward the ceiling.

GREGOR!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? his eyes were bulging,Get down from there immediately and get dressed. Do you know what time it is? You’re gonna be late for work.

It was a disturbing story, inhuman abuse, savagery and a total lack of seeing, or even caring about, what was really going on. Scope could not believe how Kafka’s haunting surrealism made everything so real. But he began feeling the horrible meaning of it all, that not all people were really, completely human.

One student in class raised his hand and bluntly stated, Franz Kafka was warped.

The instructor replied, Franz Kafka was often considered by many to be emotionally unstable. However, what he is writing about happens all the time in modern society. These are not the words of a mere neurotic, believe me. Franz Kafka was a very perceptive writer, and a highly intelligent human being.

They continued on to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, another Russian author. It was Dostoyevsky who delivered the fatal stab to Scope’s heart. Reading Notes From the Underground told Scope more than he had wanted to know. It was the story of a sick and spiteful man who was destined to live his insignificant life alone. The man knew it. He was a lonely man who calmly screamed out the horror and injustice of it all, knowing full well that nobody was listening, or even cared.

What Dostoyevsky was saying was that there was a sick and spiteful man in everybody, that it was a condition of man’s existence. After finishing the totally depressing story, Scope could only think one thing, that there was something terribly wrong with the whole way everything was.

It was the spring. Color, warmth and life had returned to the campus walks and lawns. Flowers were blooming, birds were singing and people were making love. Scope would see it all, snub out his cigarette, gather up his books and walk out of the cafeteria to his Existentialism class.

In solitude thought, he began thinking that he hated the human race. But he really didn’t hate them Understanding was critical. Emotions were dangerous and he always wanted to stay mellow. But, nonetheless, in his thoughts there was a quiet disgust at the unawareness, and a frightening concern at the ignorance that everybody seemed to have. There was something really weird going on in this place, existence, but it was like nobody even knew, or cared about it.

Scope found himself hopelessly trapped. The harder he tried to find a way out of Existentialism, the more he realized there was none. He had found rationalization to be the reason for illusion. He could not rationalize. He began experiencing alienation, absurdity and sheer nothingness. The more he tried to explain to the people he knew, the more they misunderstood him. It was the existential victim cornered in an unsympathetic world.

Scope re-read The Bucket Rider three times. He questioned his obsessive interest, but still, he just couldn’t accept what he read. More deeply, what he felt. It was the total lack of humanity in a human being that really got to him. The lady in the window couldn’t be bothered to help a poor freezing man who was begging for just some coal, and warmth. It was such a cold and heartless act showing no concern what so ever, that he couldn’t believe anyone could be so mean, so foul. But now he knew it was that kind of world.

Why? That was the big question. Why? Especially in a place like this where everybody was destined for aloneness and death anyway. Scope didn’t know why. The real killer was, man’s mind had the capacity, the ability to change it, to be human, but he still didn’t. And, as far as Scope could tell, it didn’t look like he ever would.

He began wondering why it had happened to him. Why had he listened? Why had he questioned? Why had he understood? Now, the totality of existence was going insane. Franz Kafka was born in Strawberry Fields and the smoke made it so. The Beatles were absolutely right. Nothing was real.

Bright, sunny spring mornings were spent in smoke-filled lounges, sipping coffee, waiting for class and wondering why he didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. Scope felt like he was running along the distant edge of the universe. The infinity of empty space on both sides intrigued, yet terrified him. Yet, it also proposed an incredible challenge, to find out what was really going on.

Scope seriously wanted to know. What were these Existentialists trying to say about life. Could it really be that bad? He didn’t want life to be that way. But, unfortunately by now, he was pretty convinced that it was. There was no way he could just blot it out, or pretend that it wasn’t there. It was real. But there was no choice but to face it.

So, if that was the case, then there had to be an answer for it. If there was, he would find it. But then again, Scope wasn’t sure. Maybe there wasn’t an answer. It was all very confusing. It was like, he just didn’t seem to know anymore. And strangely enough, it had reached a point where it didn’t really seem to matter that much anymore, one way or another.

It was then that he decided to go. Early June brought surging emotions of rebellion, defiance and escape. Scope, in an airless vacuum outside of the people he knew, was going to make a stand. He had realized that there was nothing else left to do.

With an amazing fury he put his car up for sale and turned in his quitting notice at work. He informed his family and friends, I’m going to California. Those that believed him thought he was crazy. Those that didn’t persecuted him for his daydreaming.

He remembered taking it all in, knowing it was exactly what they would say, yet helpless to express it. Despite building vibrations of uncertainty, insecurity and then out right fear, Scope did feel a personal pride. He was doing, and not contemplating.

At some point in their life, all men had to make a stand, regardless of what it took. He was. A raw exuberance in him kept screaming out, Fuck all you social bastards. Screw your hot cars, status and money. I’m splittin’ cause I’m free. The words gave substance to his existence, and he could not help but relate it to Existentialism and the individual.

The week before he left, hot summer hit Chicago. The leaves on the trees grew bright sunshine green and the warm nights turned soft and electric. He sat in his restaurant staring out the window at the freeway across the street, beaming in a romantic mystery. The glowing white street lights and moving headlights of the cars began taking on qualities of fate and destiny. He was hitchhiking to California.

So he sat and waited, pondering the things he was going to do, as it kept moving toward him. The excitement was getting unbearable. Really, it was something that he’d always dreamed of doing, just doing it. And now he was leaving in a few more days. It was a totally unreal thing.

But it was also double-sided. In the deeper moments he remembered intensely asking himself, Am I crazy? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Do I know what I’m doing? The questions cut to the heart of his soul. But he could only come up with one invincible reply, Because I have to.

He knew there was no sound logic or good reasoning to any of it, and at times that really scared the hell out of him. But his defense was good. His head was in a place where normal thinking and logical decisions no longer applied. Rational thought had been dissolved away by Existential absurdity.

On his last night, Scope walked through his home town smoking cigarettes, not really believing it, but convinced. It was the right thing to do. There was no other way. His mind was made up. The neon road lights held his eyes. They drew him in like a magnet.

It was freedom that he sought. He had his sleeping bag, blue jeans and hippie ideals. He was going to travel, meet people and see the United States, for himself. He knew he could do it. He would survive. It wasn’t that big of a deal. And the way things were, really, he had nothing to lose.

Nearing the end, it was the lingering thoughts of Existentialism that pushed him on. What he had read, what he had experienced because of Existentialism was an outrage, a blasphemy of real life. The stuff, no meaning, nothingness, no reason to live; he had had enough.

It affected him too much. He had felt it all, the long, nowhere dragged out days, the people looking strange, alien and fragile and himself feeling weak, not normal and weird. Everything around him was so negative. It was no way to live. There had to be something better.

He wondered, who was he? Who was he and what was he supposed to do? What was his relationship with what he had learned? What was it supposed to mean? Existence had become one big question mark and it didn’t look too good because there were no answers in sight.

Scope only wanted to get away from it all, to defy it by denying it and to move on to just be living. The dream that was a dare became an obsession, and there was no longer any other choice, or alternative, or second option. So, he was going to do it.

Early that morning he had left. The parental concern was there, but he squeezed around it with smiles. So the farewell had been a little quietly tense, but overall okay. His brother had driven him South to Joliet and Interstate 80. They parted with a strong handshake.

Then, Scope had suddenly found himself standing there on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere, alone. He had choked back the sickness because it was irrelevant and he knew it really didn’t matter anyway. The long road took off through the morning, into the unknown.

A ghostly gold ocean sunset was slowing down. It was painted on the side of a purple van that was pulling off the road right in front of him. Scope stood there blinking in surprise as the van rolled to a stop about ten feet away. He hadn’t even noticed it coming.

Scope couldn’t believe it. Somebody had really stopped. It was his first ride. Realizing that he was just standing there, he grabbed his backpack and hurried over to the passenger’s door.

Stepping up, he peered through the open window, Howdy.

How ya doin’ The dude in the driver’s seat was smiling. He was a freak. Long curly black hair and sunglasses covered a boyish face.

Aa-ah--, Scope wasn’t sure what to say, Where ya goin’?

Minnesota, man.

Oh. Scope looked down.

Where you going?

Aah, California.

Yeah, well hop in man. I’m staying on 80 all the way to Davenport. I can get you across Illinois.

Oh yeah? Scope brightened instantly, Cool. Okay.

Yeah, throw your stuff in the back. The guy motioned with his head to the back of the van.

Okay. Scope stepped back and slid open the side door, listening to the smooth rumbling of headers. The guy really had a nice van. Throwing in the backpack, he saw that the interior was even nicer, plush with a flowing carpet, leopard skin seats and big speakers in the dark panel walls.

Sliding shut the door, Scope scrambled into the front seat, feeling relieved that someone had finally picked him up. Hey, thanks for stopping. He pulled shut the door.

Hey, no problem dude. It’s what I’m doing nowadays. The driver was peering into the outside rear view as the van started moving and picking up speed.

Looking around, Scope saw that the van was still near brand new, probably custom-designed and kept immaculately clean. He was sitting on an extremely comfortable, soft-cushioned bucket seat that swiveled. Dark shaded leaves of trees gathered speed up the windshield as the van merged back on to the Interstate.

Hey, how’s it going? The driver extended his hand, My name is Bird.

Scope shook it, Cool name. My name’s Scope. Glad to meet ya.

Heading out to California huh?

Yeah. Scope nodded, Still gotta ways to go yet. His first impression was that he liked Bird. The guy was friendly and talkative, and seemed like an all right dude.

I’ll make it out there eventually. Bird casually grinned, Where ya coming from?

Chicago.

Oh yeah? Well you’re still pretty close to home base then.

Actually you’re my first ride. Scope leaned deeper back into the tall bucket seat. Peering out the front window he followed the silver highway to a vanishing point on the far off horizon. He couldn’t believe it. He was on his way.

He turned to Bird, So, you’re going to Minnesota?

Yeah. I got some really distant relatives that I haven’t seen for like 15 years, and I’m going to visit them. I’ve never been to Minnesota before, so I thought I’d stop by for a while and check it out.

Where are you from?

Place called Tifton, Georgia. It’s South of Atlanta. Bird looked at him, No southern accent cause I was born in Michigan.

Scope nodded, Boy, am I impressed with your van. This is really nice.

Hey, it’s my baby. Bird was happily grinning, It’s my home on the road and I like to live in comfort and style.

What, you’re just travelling around the country?

Yup. I’ve been on the road for four months now. There’s no better way to live.

The obvious question was so apparent, Scope didn’t even want to mention it. The travelling lifestyle and luxury of the van spoke of big bucks, but Bird hardly looked like a wealthy business tycoon, How can you afford it?

Bird looked at him, expressionless for a moment, then he slowly grinned, Well, I lucked out and came into a large sum of money. Bird paused, Hey aah---, do you ahh--, get high?

Yeah. Scope liked the sound of that.

Great man. Wanna smoke a number?

Boy, that sounds really good to me. Scope couldn’t think of a better thing to do right now.

Bird reached down into the console compartment and pulled out a rolled stick of marijuana. Using a lighter, he ignited it, took a hit and then passed it to Scope.

Bird exhaled, "Yeah man, about three years I was in a motorcycle accident. Some dude in a truck ran