Earth Hangs Heavy Beneath my Feet

By Adam R Jagiellowicz

A young man seeking love, money, and adventure instead finds a spiritual awakening. This is the story of Max Wiez, an artist-philosopher with insatiable wanderlust, and an intense disdain for anything superficial and dishonest. Frustrated with living in a cold technocracy, he leaves his country after being blacklisted from the teaching professio

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fringe Books
• Release date: Jun 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739047016

Book preview

Earth Hangs Heavy Beneath my Feet

Earth Hangs Heavy Beneath my Feet

Earth Hangs Heavy Beneath my Feet

ADAM JAGIELLOWICZ

Fringe Books

Copyright © 2023 by Adam Jagiellowicz

Cover artwork Untitled by Peter B. Hastings

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2023

But the Emperor has nothing at all on! said a little child. Listen to the voice of the child! exclaimed his father. What the child had said was whispered from one to another. But he has nothing at all on! at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was upset, for he knew that the people were right. However, he thought the procession must go on! The lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold, and the Emperor walked on in his underwear.

- Hans Christian Andersen

For my parents and for all our children…

that they should no longer have to fight for what belongs to them.

This is a work of fiction based on historical events.

PART 1

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

- Albert Camus

Chapter 1

St. Bruno Quebec, May 2003

I was surrounded by birds pecking at the ground; a strange assortment of them: crows, jays, magpies, and various permutations of black and blue that a semi-conscious mind might conjure. They were everywhere: perching on branches, latching onto the trunks of giant oaks, and swooping from hedge to hedge. One of them was pecking at my rear end with its blunt hammer of a beak…and it cawed at me, or talked, or so I thought. Then came a whacking jolt and a harsh voice waking me, swearing at me.

Calice tabarnak! Dégagez de mon jardin, putain!

I rubbed my eyes to be sure I was not hallucinating. A guy in a white T-shirt with bulging muscles was standing over me swinging a baseball bat.

Who are you? I asked.

You're an anglophone? Tabarnak! What do you mean, who am I? Who the hell are you? You’re sleeping in my backyard! 

Huh? I thought this was my brother’s house.

It’s my house, smartass. You can’t sleep here. There are kids around!

‘Kids.’ I repeated in my head. It’s like a cliché now. When one sleeps on a park bench, or by accident in someone’s backyard, it seems they immediately become a menace to children. Well, we don’t want any children seeing me here now, do we? I replied. The guy furrowed his brow deeper yet. Nothing annoys an aggressive person more than a sarcastic tone. So, you must have bought his house, eh? Theo is my brother’s name. Does that ring a bell?

Don’t know your brother’s name, don’t give a fuck!

So, I guess asking you for his new address would be pointless, eh? The guy was about to hyperventilate. His nose was flaring, and he had the face of a drunken and angry hockey fan. He raised his bat. I got the point. Could I trouble you for some water? I asked, hoping he would blow a fuse and scare his kids.

Buy some! he shouted. That way. Walk. Now! Take your shit and go!

I got up from the hammock, threw the duffle bag over my shoulder, and dragged my suitcase over the flagstone path toward the yellow brick road. I paused for a moment to examine the faces in the window of what used to be my brother’s kitchen. The guy’s wife and kids were staring at me without emotion, though I surmised the kids seemed a bit curious. I noticed this by the way the youngest one looked up at her mom, as if to say: ‘who is that man?’ I was hoping they realized I would not upend their paradise.

I’ve never been good with faces, try as I might to understand what the subtle rippling of skin tissue, eye movement, and gesture might connote. I’m frequently mistaken in my assessments of people, as perhaps they are of me. It doesn’t help that humans often say the opposite of what they really mean.

Voices are another matter entirely. Perhaps it is because I’m a musician - or was a musician - that I can feel and hear vibrations that others can’t. I can tell a lot about a person by the timbre and tone of their voice, and if I’m not distracted by love, loyalty, or facial movements, I can discern quite a bit from the words that subconsciously escape people’s mouths. That skill has allowed me to make a decent living, but it hasn’t compensated for the things that really matter.

My eyes lingered on the guy’s wife longer than I would have liked, longer than I thought she deserved. She would have been very hot to me if the context were different. I examined her blank expression and found myself projecting what I wanted to believe: that she knew her husband was an asshole, and that she realized she had made the tragic error of choosing the security blanket over the flying carpet. And then I thought what effect this momentary encounter might have on her kids and the foundation being laid for the future: the perpetuation of a societal trend of either being a dickhead or marrying one.

I have difficulty shooing away memories like this. I’ll likely remember this incident thirty years hence. Memories such as these occupy my mind. They buzz like flies banging against a sunny window, unable to see, or feel, or trust that there may be an open door just a foot away. It is often the case that our focus, what we want, and what is directly in front of us is a distraction from the infinite that surrounds us.

I walked through the cedar gate and didn’t look back. Perhaps that guy was still swinging his bat from side to side or twirling it like nunchaku. It’s possible his pretty wife and kids had now moved to the other side of the house and were watching me through the living room window. It’s possible I would now be the subject of gossip for the next few weeks in this tranquil neighbourhood of superficial perfection. It’s possible that a new ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ sign would appear on the corner on account of me. But I would never know any of this because I would never be back in my brother’s ‘Paradis Perdu.’

I dragged my stuff up the road toward the gas station where the plexiglass bus shelter had always been. It was still there waiting for people like me. I checked the schedule and saw that the 200 bus still went into Montreal every hour on weekends. I had a bit of time, so I walked to where a girl was unloading vegetables at a farmer’s kiosk in the parking lot. It being spring, I didn’t expect much: asparagus, fiddle heads, some lettuce, but she also had strawberries for $3.50 a quart.

Strawberries! I said, Isn’t it too early for them?

It’s the first week of the season.

Interesting. So, do you start them inside? I asked.

Yes, and you know...it’s also the Global Warming.

Ah yes, of course, I replied, Global Warming. When I was your age, it was the next Ice Age everyone was afraid of.

Huh? she exclaimed, perhaps not understanding what I was talking about. I guessed she wouldn’t be much interested in paleoclimatology, or historical and literary references which showed the world’s climate was cooler now than the average of the past 2 thousand years, most likely due to soot in the atmosphere.

Forget it. I replied as I handed her a 5-dollar bill for the strawberries and waited for my change. She put the money on the counter, poured the berries into a small plastic bag, then picked up a large calculator and began tapping into the machine.

What are you doing? I asked, horrified.

What do you mean?

I mean, the strawberries are $3.50, and I gave you a 5-dollar bill.

Yesss… She drawled, sounding perturbed.

Do you use a calculator for everything?

Yes.

Want to see a trick? I asked.

Huh? she replied, confused by my question.

It’s a dollar-fifty. Check. I forced out a smile. She pressed some buttons and then looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher. She seemed bothered perhaps, even a bit flustered. Even smiles are misinterpreted these days, as much as words. It seems that it is not so much language which separates humans from each other, it’s the multitude of facial expressions we have developed over the years to conceal what we really think of each other. 

The girl gave me back the dollar-fifty and nodded to confirm the amount was correct. She seemed to be about 17 years old. Next year, she would be going to college. I shook my head. My former grade 3 students could have calculated that in their head in about a second.

I walked back to the bus shelter and sat down on the bench to face the sun and feel its warmth on my face. I stared just above the sun, blinking my eyes rapidly to awaken myself. With nothing to do but wait, I opened my duffle bag to get my headphones and began reading a new book that was given to me by an interesting girl I met the night before on a flight back from Amsterdam. As I flipped through the pages looking for the last chapter, my phone began to ring. The call display showed it was coming from Thailand. I didn’t recognize the number, but I still had some friends there and hoped it might be one of them. It was difficult to resist a ringing phone.

Hello? I answered.

Max?

I recognized the voice. It was someone I had met back in Thailand…someone I had become quite friendly with, but his voice was terse, and I felt this was no social call.

You know who this is? He asked.

Yeah. What’s up Murph? I replied, sounding as casual as possible and pretending I hadn’t taken notice of the ominous timbre of his voice.

Don’t say anything Max. Murphy’s voice was hard, and so my ears perked.

I know we had a good connection back in Phuket, and you might be a smart kid, but you’re being stupid now, very stupid. I want you to keep your mouth shut and listen closely. You got it?

Yep… I replied coolly. Perhaps I sounded a bit too nonchalant, even arrogant.

Brett asked me to call you because he’s tired of dealing with your shit. You have no idea what you’re messing with. You know I have some people in Montreal that you don’t want to mess with. You don’t want any one of these guys knocking on your mom’s door. So, I’m giving you my first and last warning. Just stop what you’re doing. Stop everything. Got it?

Uh huh. I replied. I didn’t want my voice to sound shaky, but it likely did. I reminded myself this was one of those times where it was best not to be too cocky or sarcastic.

Don’t make me have to call you again.

I heard the click at the other end, listened to the silence for a moment, and noticed my hand shaking. I knew Murph’s roots with the Irish mob and Hell’s Angels ran deep here. I knew why he was calling, but the chain of events which led to it all was absurd. It didn’t seem possible that a friend I had gone out of my way to help was trying to destroy me. It was even more absurd that a moment of drunken flippancy on my part had led them to believe I was trying to rip them off. When I got on the plane to come back to Canada, I was hoping to start afresh with a clean conscience and the chance for a normal, less adventurous life. But here I was again, my wings being pulled down by a heavy load of other people’s emotional baggage. It seemed I couldn’t escape it.

Sartre was wrong. Hell isn’t being stuck for eternity in a room with the two people one hated most, for this, there is always the hope of reconciliation. Hell is the helplessness in knowing that whatever act of charity, or love, one may do, or have for someone, the other person will inevitably respond with ill will…eternally.

Chapter 2

Montreal, 1996

I’ve been told that a drunken stupor can prevent one from breaking bones if they fall from a building. Even from four stories, it is possible one may break no bones at all. There is a story, perhaps a legend by now, about a student at my university who had fallen from the roof of a small apartment block one night during a party. After the fall, he was almost able to laugh about it, having suffered nothing more than a separated left shoulder. Apparently, he was inebriated at the time, and it was his lack of rigidity which saved him.

The argument supporting drunkenness may appear rational, but it is also a premise conditioned by the lazy tendency to accept the consensus opinion. I should know what really happened; it is no legend. The guy who fell was me. Those experts and gossips missed something important in their conclusion. I was not inebriated. When I fell off the roof, I had only had two beers. Also, there was no way my body could have been relaxed after having seen what I saw inside Seta’s window as I fell past. I became solid rigor before the expected mortis. Seta was with someone.

I thought we were dating…sort of. I guess not. I suppose I had waited too long. Now, in a fraction of a second, I could see through the illuminated window how hard she was squeezing him. Her ample breasts pressed against his naked torso as her arms reached around his back. She was facing the window at the same time I flashed by in the night.

I first met Seta on a staircase as we were heading to our first econometrics class. She said ‘hi’ to me with a broad and generous smile, which left me puzzled initially. The second time we had met - outside of class - was between the two sets of doors that prevented the frigid winds of a Montreal winter from entering the Blackader-Lauterman Library at McGill. Our smiles met and we stood face to face in the middle of human traffic talking long enough that she had missed most of her class. For my part, I completely forgot where I had originally been going. From that day on, we would spend our days studying in the library, and then on occasional evenings, back at her place, solving problems that more resembled haiku translated into ancient Greek, than they did economics.

I realized after a couple of weeks that I should never have signed up for the master’s program, but I stayed anyway. I had no idea what I was doing, or why, as it was never discussed. I just did the math, over, and over, and over again, for up to 15 hours a day, drinking a half dozen pots of tea to keep me awake until past midnight. Why I stuck it out for a full year was as much a matter of my resolve to conquer something I had previously failed, as it was the need to find a career and get my shit together. Less than a year before, I had been teaching history at high school. Teaching was my vocation, as many friends had told me, but due to an unfortunate confluence of events, I was let go and effectively blacklisted from ever teaching in the province again. Then the need to pay my rent forced me to get a job at a call centre. At least the call centre gave me greater focus in knowing what I did not want to do with my life. So, I worked part-time and spent my days and nights writing and rewriting formulas and functions developed by Green and Bernoulli and Poisson, using letters like lambda and chi and epsilon. It was math without numbers. I understood economics, but this was something else entirely and I felt stupid for the first time in my life.

Then there was the main reason I stayed in the program: Seta. We shared feelings that transcended biology, comfortably spending hours together without exchanging a word. I began to develop a keen interest in all things about Seta and her homeland, a place she had only spent a half-dozen years. She told me about ancient churches in Ethiopia that had been hewn out of the earth so that they could be hidden from marauders. And she introduced me to berbere – that perfect peppery concoction that could make newsprint palatable. We would cook together while listening to Lucky Dube or Bob Marley and then eat from an immense brass plate that was set out on an antique coffee table. She taught me some Amharic and showed me how Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ album used Amharic letters to resemble the word Ethiopia. It was a beautiful language and I wanted to learn it. We even had plans to visit Ethiopia. In the end, we never did. It’s something I regret, like a lot of things.

Seta and I were studying together one night, sitting with our legs crossed under the large table, when she mentioned she was taking belly dance lessons. I had difficulty imagining her in a belly dance outfit and was curious. Show me what you can do! I said, expecting some shyness on her part. She smiled at me in an unfamiliar way and skipped off to her bedroom to change. As she was changing, I searched for some belly dance music, but didn’t see anything in her limited collection. What I did find was some traditional Sufi dervish music, and so I replaced the mixed tape I had made for her with it. She appeared outside her bedroom in a sexy sort of dress and began to twist and rotate her hips in front of me, about six feet away. She was out of sync with the music, which was slower than I had expected. I immediately regretted putting in the tape as she had difficulty adjusting to its slow beat. Being a perfectionist, she decided to end the spectacle after a couple dozen revolutions of her hips and went back to her room. Perhaps she was embarrassed or was expecting a different reaction from me. I don’t know; I’m not a mind reader. When she came back and sat next to me, she suddenly became silent, like a shyness had come over her. It was quite unlike her. She had transformed. I wasn’t sure how to react and felt like the past 4 months of natural, and unquestioned friendship was laying on a precipice. Now, it was up to me whether it would take flight or fall. There is a moment when a woman becomes like a girl again. Her voice becomes weak, and you wonder if you’ve done something wrong, or if they have suddenly fallen in love with you. Thrice before, in the last two years, I had assumed the latter, and had guessed incorrectly, so I kept my hands to myself, fearing that the close connection we had might die entirely. It died regardless, and here I was staring up at her window, crushed to see she had given herself to that other guy, and now, there was no chance to go back in time.

A fall of this magnitude could be expected to induce amnesia, but I remember everything. Time had slowed down to the pace of a snail as I fell. I recalled, frame by frame, the movie we all watch before we die. I should have hit the ground and crushed my skull. Miraculously, this didn’t happen. When I opened my eyes, I was very much alive and could make out a half dozen silhouettes illuminated by party lights from the top of the building, right above Seta’s flat. I heard deep gasps through the ringing in my ears and then shouts. Despite the pain, I was sure nothing was broken, but my shoulder was numb and immobilized. The silhouettes then disappeared and reappeared on the street to surround me. I searched for Seta’s face, but hers was not among those looking down at me. She was with that other guy. Everyone looked stupefied. One person quipped how surprised he was that there was no blood pooling beneath me. Someone else remarked that the grass must have cushioned my fall. It was the annoying guy with the Che Guevara T-shirt. He had been using a lot of in-vogue academic words at the party, most of them out of context. I didn’t have much energy to talk, but I managed to whisper hoarsely, Yeah, that’s it…must be this 4-foot strip of grass, and I nodded my head once in agreement. Then someone ran into the building, calling for an ambulance I supposed. Meanwhile, I was still thinking of Seta, which set off a melancholy Jeff Buckley song to play in my head. I wished I had died.

Earlier in the evening, I had mentioned to this Che Guevara wannabe that I had a picture of Guevara taken in China where he was leaning over a table showing something to chairman Mao. Guevara was dressed in battle fatigues and two Rolex watches hung from his wrist. Why would an anti-imperialist need, or want, 2 Rolexes? I asked him. He said the photo must be fake because Guevara was never in China. But Guevara was in China, and the photo was taken by Guevara’s interpreter. I know this because it was given to me by my cousin who was the interpreter’s neighbour on Lamma Island in Hong Kong.

Someone else from the party asked me if I could move, and when I whispered, Yeah, I think so, he told me not to move. Only Seta and I would have laughed at the irony of such a remark, but I couldn’t laugh now without hurting my ribs further. Then the ambulance came without a siren, as the hospital was only two blocks away. The paramedics told me again not to move and I wanted to crack a joke but thought better of it. I ached all over, and was nauseous, so I asked one of my friends who was peering behind the shoulder of a medic if he could go to the dépanneur and get me a Mars bar and a pack of smokes. I felt I was about to pass out. What kind of cigarettes? he asked. I don’t care. I told him. You know I don’t smoke.

Landing like that - alive and intact - when probabilities would suggest I should have broken several bones at best, had awakened my interest in the supernatural, and about things we could not see, but could feel. It was then that my interest in the fuzzy and mutable border between the possible and the improbable became insatiable.

Something strange happened just before I hit the ground, but I never mentioned it to anyone other than my mom, not even Seta. I felt as if my body had slowed down just before impact. It wasn’t the first time something strange like this had happened to me. Once before, I had had an out of body experience while I was taking a nap and felt myself drifting out the window and looking down at my body. People had told me I was delusional, or that I must have done too many shrooms. I was tired of explaining to people who claimed to be rational and scientifically minded that it’s not scientific to hide sigma 6 and sigma 7 events in a gymnasium, put a lock on the door, and post a sign saying: Superstition, Do Not Enter simply because you are uncomfortable discovering something which does not fit your schema of the universe.

Strange synchronous events were not uncommon between Seta and me. When we were not together, we would often find ourselves picking up the phone to call each other at the same time, only to hear each other’s voice at the other end asking Hello, hello? Such occurrences were frequent, and both of us regarded it as more than coincidence or statistical anomaly. Then, about a month before I fell from the roof, something happened which would further reinforce my quest to find what lay beyond the horizon of our consciousness. It is perplexing to so often witness events that lie at the far end of the probability curve. At least it should be. But many people would disregard such events and pass them off as chance. They won’t ask why something happened. Yet it is this very curiosity which is the foundation of all scientific discovery. It is the constant quest to understand the ‘why’ or the ‘how’ of an event that distinguishes shepherds from sheep, and those who evolve, from those who putter along imbibing some new variant of soma.

I was in a billiards hall on Ste Catherine St. and had reluctantly agreed to play in a 5-round pool tournament. Entry was twenty dollars, which may as well have been a donation because, without a doubt, I was the weakest player in the room. I won my first two matches as my opponents had scratched. I don’t think I dropped more than three balls in those two games. I was lucky, but now the tougher competition would be coming up. That’s when I realized something. If I could just keep all my balls on the table and hide the cue ball or the black ball behind one of my balls, I had a chance. I was able to do that for the next 3 rounds and ended up winning the tournament and 400 dollars.

So, what’s the chance of this happening? I asked Seta one night when we were studying.

That’s beyond me, Max. There are too many unknowns.

I agree, but the odds are pretty damn astronomical, right?

On scratches? Absolutely!

So, my question to you is, if you feel you can’t win a game because the probabilities are stacked against you, what do you do?

You mean figuratively speaking, and not just in billiards?

Yeah.

Then you shouldn’t play the game.

I agree. That’s what I would do. But imagine you were forced to play, in the same way that we don’t choose to be born on planet Earth. And imagine you were able to manipulate the forces of chance.

How do you mean? she asked, her eyes squinting out of curiosity.

I mean by changing the probabilities of highly unlikely events by recognizing them as genuine possibilities. I paused as I studied her face for a reaction, but none was forthcoming. I’ll give you an example. You’ve heard of Roger Bannister?

No. Never heard of him.

"Well, he was the first person to run the 4-minute mile; at least the first recorded instance of it. Before him, everyone believed it was a human limit. They thought nobody would ever be able to run a mile in under 4 minutes. Then he

Reviews for Earth Hangs Heavy Beneath my Feet

[richa tepprman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the few books I've actually finished and read within a few days. (I am very choosy about what I read). This a humorous and somewhat tragicomic story that is also quite philosophical. The plot can be described as labyrinthine, while the characters are all quite unique and believable. This writer uses short paragraphs and avoids extensive and unnecessary description. The result is a book that reads like a movie and is very easy to read in spite of its deep subject matter. If you have an interest in generational and cultural clash, moral philosophy, and the nature of love, this is a book you will definitely want to read. I'd also recommend it to teachers as it has many historical and literary references.