Chapter four: The Tower Room

THE TOWER ROOM

Part One

Once upon a time there was an artist whose medium was farming. He was famous for his cannabis farming in particular: connoisseurs of his crop admired the way he had always worked in a cellar, flooding his harvest (it was always in harvest) with UV rays and immersing them in baths of nutrients, couching them—this was his mark--in ancient four- legged bathtubs, the older the better; very traditional. He thought that that was what his customers and critics would think. And they did. They trembled with nostalgia, even before they inhaled or ingested or even just e-haled his produce. He was a very famous artist.

For he was quite a business man, even if business was a matter of credit only; for without the critics the credits wouldn't accumulate, and he had, and needed to have apparently, a huge accumulation of credit. The critics and the creditors both loved him and the double whammy couldn't be beaten. He knew nostalgia was the opium of the masses right now, and this was so even when right now lingered into the unforeseeable future; that is to say, instinctively he knew nostalgia would never be a strictly now thing. For customers to be nostalgic about a practice which had outgrown its stigma so long ago that people were thrilled to pretend they understood its abuses was a great boon to Reynaldo. There were those who thought he even might have made nostalgia itself an art unto itself; but for the time being they were remaining quiet on that.

His customers indulged in the product of his art even while they thrilled to its authenticity--even while, that is, they grew nostalgic about his knowledge of ancient customs of cannabis evolution and cultivation and co-acculturation, the latter being a hot topic right now. Like his own, Reynaldo's customers' knowledge of cannabis was extensive; and they found his exhibits (from which they sampled samples and extended credit to an exorbitant degree to do so, you bet) both precious and priceless. Though some critics claimed this was true (about the overextended credit) to an almost banal degree, they were in the minority. Most agreed only barter might approach true value in this case. But no one knew what to barter, for Reynaldo was a very private person and always had dismissed without any consideration whatsoever any suggestion of barter. He insisted on credit only.

His own use and his customers' use of his art's by-product (namely, the produce) was, naturally, irrelevant to its real value; its use by a critic, on the other hand, meant something. These things were considered not nice to talk about, though perfectly understood by most educated people, the sign of an uncouth and perhaps unsavory sensitivity to the subject of value, certainly an unpleasant and even unhelpful subject to discuss in any event, either in public or in private. How could use, abuse, e-use or indeed any other practice-value/event-act have anything whatsoever to do with art a priori? Such an idea had to be consummately and inherently ridiculous: Reynaldo's art was measured by and registered in the feelings it evoked in the critics (and secondarily the customers') souls entirely. This, they agreed, made Reynaldo's art priceless. Classical, some said; at the very least, radical. Certainly, most credit-worthy customers agreed, for all time,

But now he yearned, strangely enough, for a tower room in which to cultivate his crop. He imagined sunshine instead of ultraviolet waves wafting with the breezes over the buds and flowers, doves and grackles instead of the inevitable spiders which came with all cellars, and best of all the blue sky beyond. The bathtubs were, during such moments, all but forgotten. What could this mean?

Sometimes it seemed to him to be a great bell room he imagined himself growing his crop in—sometimes there was no crop at all in what he imagined. For brief moments he would become the hunchback of Notre Dame, or the girl in the Marble Faun, experiencing an epiphany of peace in the face of the sun pouring in through the imagined tower room window, or aperture, or opening, located as they were on all i9ts sides. Other times he would stand in the imaginary tower room rapt, listening to the imaginary downpour from a perfectly terrific thunderstorm pouring down on the eaves, his eyes closed (imaginarily) just inches from his face, its damp stray occasionally rolling over him with a scent he remembered from childhood. Often, of course, he thought of Rapunzel.

For Reynaldo's other passion, twin to that for art, was reading. He read real books, the older the better, and had he not kept this fact a secret so well, more than a few customers might have offered him whole libraries of old, ancient books and manuscripts in barter for his art; but they did not know, and he did not know that this was so, and so it never happened. It is easy to see how and why Reynaldo's credit accumulated exponentially.

Credit was not Renaldo's problem.

Where to practice his art, which in Reynaldo's case meant where to farm his cannabis, began to form a problem, however, where one had formerly not existed--at least that he knew of. Where to practice his art, in fact, was fast becoming his obsession. For Reynaldo's art was as public as it could be, but his private life was as much his own as the world allowed it to be in these days. The correct term for Reynaldo was, and remains, reclusive.

And in his private life the tower room was beginning to pervade and occlude even his private, daily, reclusive routines as an artist. He forgot to answer the door (manual); he did not turn on the house at 5 am as usual, but neglected it until noon some days; he forgot to hydrate the plants, with unpublishable results ensuing; he even neglected the ancient Egyptian bathtub ring (he owned the oldest) he had known for months desperately needed re-ringing. And that wasn't all: he misplaced seeds and clone-lines, and even actually lost the stem cells to the ancient strain of 1969 gold Sancho had spent nearly three years tracking down in 'Columbia. All this because of a tower-room he couldn't get out of his head. But it got worse.

When he forgot to credit the energy bill (hydro vent, deep earth) and got shut off just when he was ready to reheat a late night bio-bun, he knew he had to take notice of his real behavior. His mild-mannered and relatively innocent-seeming daydreams of a new working space had evolved into a full-blown obsession, and he realized the implications. But what would—or could-- he actually do about it? Nothing. He told himself what friends and family would have told him if he had had any, which he didn't: artists are by nature obsessive--so what was the big deal? He indulged his obsession as freely as he accumulated credit. He just didn't didn't do it in public.

Obsession, you see, was not Reynaldo's problem either. Or so Reynaldo imagined.

One day he drove himself in his universally recognized white mid-20th. c. Mercedes (another obsession, one he could of course afford, and even afford to admit—he rarely allowed a car to drive him anywhere, even to the nearest biodome) into a valley across which beams of light chased one another colorfully and artfully through stands of sun washed and natural scenery hazily and mistily shrouded by, if not actually set off in deep, dark relief by, an enormous shadow.

It seemed to him, in fact, he was always coming out of that enormous shadow into still another perfectly beautiful vista when—bam!--back he would be under the shadow again. It was quite dazzling and beautiful, really, and he was reminded him of a Turner painting (Turner was his hero). The shifting light and shadow—not merely the road, that is--led him up and over gently sloping hills shot through with brilliant pale yellows, and subtle violets and greens. Everywhere he looked, indeed on every side, darkly mysterious, and mysteriously understated browns (infused, he rather though, with inner space) abounded.

These—with no regard to design at all-- seemed continuously and contiguously run through with shades and hues of colors he had never even seriously considered before, much less seriously considered actually using, had paint been his medium instead of farming. Each vista-venue of sublime and sublimated liminality sounded themes of common humanity deep within his heart. Everything he saw around him, that is, affected a resonance in his soul such as he hadn't ever experienced in his lifetime, or at least since art school.

He thought for a moment of his teacher then, the great master Rafaela Ernesto- Racine, of whom he always spoke with reverence, though he could not quite visualize what she looked like anymore, despite the crush. But only for a moment.

In a way Reynaldo was feeling reborn; but delivery hadn't quite happened yet. Indeed, color theory and SAIS (soul affect infusion syndrome), hitherto experienced only at the National Gallery in London and once at the Louvre while still a student, intruded so badly at one point he almost missed a turn in the road; and quite suddenly, under the grip of AAOD (auto automotive operational disorder), he realized he had arrived at his destination. Or, to be be entirely truthful, almost realized it; it took him a little time to register and therefore recover even his own consciousness at this moment. Of course, for Reynaldo this was his modus vivendi, and nothing out of the ordinary. He was, after all, an artist.

He actually thought for a second or two of allowing the car to drive him home again later, despite the possible threat to his personal autonomy. It was that bad. He looked around him, and to some extent continued his contemplation of his surroundings in terms of a lingering consideration of color theory, augmented by just a thought or two of design theory triggered (or so he thought at the time) by the slant of light through the limbs and leaves of the nearby towering beech tree. It was not to last.

For it was to a little collection of cottages nestled under a hill that he had driven, and to which he finally awoke, fifteen or twenty seconds later, from his reverie of color theory with a tad of design theory mixed in; and then he saw the tower building. In fact, he appeared to have parked directly across from it under the shade of a great beech tree. (That it was a beech eluded him at the time, but a beech it surely was, I assure you).

The sight of the tower, and the building upon which it was set simply took his breath way: surely it was the one in his dreams!

It was large and squarish and looked the way he almost always imagined the Alamo to look whenever he heard the epic recited, which was as often as possible; it and The Iliad, and maybe Gilgamesh were his favorites. Reynaldo was himself a connoisseur, not of cannabis history, but of poetry fests, and indeed received quite a few jabs from jokesters at roastings, something the famous could never avoid it seemed. He never missed the epic fest in Dallas every April. He actually allowed Sancho to take over the bathtubs for the ten days he would be gone each spring. The Alamo was one of his favorites, and privately Reynaldo aspired to be an epic poet himself, though few knew this, due to his reclusiveness. It was one of his most enduring, and secret, imaginary aspirations. He looked again up at the Alamo through his car door window. Slowly he rolled down the window and took a better look.

Its door was old, tall and wide, and located on the side. The side which was always toward him in his dreams–for indeed it did seem he had seen this very building in his dream—had no doors and windows. And it was the same with this real building here. It presented to the parked viewer a great square side of yellow stucco, unbroken by windows, pale and luminous in the light of the dusk descending. All around it were gardens, each with fireflies flickering from its darkening leafy recesses by the time Reynaldo rolled up in his Mercedes and rolled down his window. At the top of the building (Reynaldo had already inwardly pre-titled it The Alamo) was a large square tower, which must have been large enough to frame one ordinary sized room, a loft; reached, perhaps, by staircase.

And that reminded him. His dreams lately, besides the tower room, had been full of staircases too. Stepping off into the blackness from one was a common dream event; missing the top step, which turned into the bottom step, another; missing steps—all ordinary staircase dream fare. He yawned with the ordinariness of it—who hadn't had such dreams that he had read of? One time he was jumping off the stairs to catch a chandelier, to save himself by swinging up to....? What else but the tower-room? He was sure of it. He felt a certain, growing excitement and stopped mid-yawn. Where else could it lead--the staircase--but to some wonderful spacious tower-room landing in which to practice his art.

The door did not open when he approached and asked it to, so he assumed it was locked. Then he noticed the knob—not on display but apparently real. A real working manual doorknob—Reynaldo peered at it, intensely curious as he was about all such ancient technology. He knew in theory you were supposed to turn it, and push—or pull-- but had never actually turned a knob which was in actual operation, i.e. effecting the opening of a door, at least one which was not in an exhibition, as this one certainly appeared not to be--Reynaldo knew exhibits when he saw them and there was something too functional about this place, not just the knob, but everything. Everything around here seemed—what was the word?--too authentic. Dare he think it? Everything here seemed too real. Natural almost. He couldn't quite wrap his mind around it.

He reached for the knob—an old white, highly polished one of cracked enameled ceramic, attached by what appeared to be a single brass screw to the hob, just large enough to fit in his hand. He stood admiring it for a moment, and then remembered, just as he was getting ready to turn it: you were supposed to knock first. He knocked, though it made him slightly embarrassed, as though he was doing something he didn't understand how to do (and it was true, he didn't), or performing an ancient rite he hadn't the slightest idea how to perform (this too was true)--four or five raps, then two more.

No one answered the door of the building when he knocked, but he found the knob did turn when he tried it, and he pushed the door in easily, and found himself standing in a cool and slightly musty-smelling great huge dimly-lit room, the whole interior of the building apparently. Its floor was wooden, its wide-boarded floor painted in (he leaned close to inspect them) spatter paint drops of many colors, the whole spectrum in fact, including white. The whole long and wide expanse of the room was lit by windows on the south and east, and now that it was twilight, from the west, the north side being all wall. From far above somewhere fell a light in ambiance around him as he moved out into the middle of the floor. It was like a ball room—no, a gymnasium. Light seemed to be coming down from straight overhead, from high in the ceiling above him. He thought of New England meeting houses, of Spanish manor houses surrounded by haciendas and honeysuckle hedges, of the Globe Theatre, of a Roman atrium, though no pool was here, and it was not open to the sky--or was it? He couldn't quite see what was up there. Last of all he thought of the Parthenon. Yes, that was closest, though why he couldn't fathom. That and York cathedral. Natural light. He loved natural light. Why had he been in cellars so long with those damned ultraviolet rays?

The building was, in fact, open above him. In a single storey it rose up to a large square of light at the top of the ceiling where a perfectly square four -sided balcony framed what clearly looked like a room--or a space--above. He could not see, but he could imagine, the a room up there, iand it seemed to him it must be the tower room of his dreams he had found.

Reynaldo rushed back to the car and made it call home. Though Reynaldo loathed the phone, and loathed in particular making his authentic, antique car work like other cars (in phone mode), he knew the phone was Sancho's favorite mode of communication and so did it anyway. He informed Sancho that he would not be home for six days and told him to keep the current exhibit going for him. He found Sancho had already received and banked credit from one hundred and forty-four customers just since he had left that morning, but he hardly gave this a thought, so intent was he on exploring the old building, so empty and deserted he found it. He rather liked it that way, and he was thrilled to think that that he had actually discovered the tower room—he was sure—of his dreams!

He hurried back in to explore further. It half expected to locate staircases behind the two tall doors he found just to the side of the door as he went in. He imagined there would be a spiraling wooden staircase behind each giving access, surely, to the tower room far above. Unfortunately, when he opened first one and then the other, the doors revealed behind them empty stair well—or he guessed they were wells for stairs, though of course he was not really too familiar with them. He looked as far as he could up each. Empty.

Reynaldo was used to e-lifts and automatic atomizers to get from level to level, like most people, and didn't know exactly what to do with such ancient artifacts (even if they were in this case only imaginary)—stairs. He had seen them only before in exhibits and, of course, in the home of the nostalgic, his customers. He was a practical man, he told himself, and going from here to there by the most efficient means made sense. Yet here he was at a loss what to do. He had to get up to the tower room somehow—what was he to do? Short of hiring a hovering helicopter, or ordering an automatic atomizer installed. The utter vulgarity of the thought made him shudder. Anything was better than that—possibly not even going there at all, though he didn't entertain that possibility for more than a minute or two. It was just that this place seemed wrong for conveniences of the common kind, even if it was what he was used to. It would seem like some kind of violation, though of what he couldn't

Reynaldo did what any artist would do—he sat down to think. And because Reynaldo was a famous artist and practical businessman, he thought about what people would give him credit for and what the critics would like, which naturally was art—but in this case, art that would give him access to that tower room. Before he knew it--but not before he was tired enough to blow up his tent (larger on the inside than on the out) and pitch it on the lawn beside the iron garden gate outside and take a little nap in it--he had thought up a solution.

He would find out whose exhibit this was (for surely someone's exhibit this place he had driven himself to must be, despite its almost too pure authenticity)--and acquire it. For credit hopefully, or (Reynaldo allowed himself to think for the first time perhaps in his whole life) barter. Then, whatever it took, he would design and build—create and install stairs up to the tower room himself. And what would that involve? He thought he knew. Then he had it. Carpentry! That was it—carpentry; where you used those ancient tools: saw, hammer, plane. He'd seen it once, performed in Maine. It left, as a residue, a sort of by-product, most marvelous-smelling, called sawdust. Yes, only though carpentry could he preserve, or at least not disturb, perhaps, the magnificent integrity of this place, wherever this place was (and of course of that he was not sure).

Reynaldo did not even think about the fact that he himself was not actually a carpenter, though there were many artists who were; he knew many whose medium was archaic plumbing and electricity, that ancient power source: the nostalgia craze made much credit for many artists. Reynaldo had 'tr'action with many such artists professionally; or, at the very least, was aware they were out there. He would find out. He would find someone to bring in supplies and help him do the building and. Somehow he would do it, even if he had to consult professional HRS's (historical restoration specialists). But he didn't think he would have to go that far. If all else failed he would shut down the house and cellars and bring Sancho in on it. Sancho could do anything--even carpentry. He was sure of it. How difficult could it be, after all?

And, even if it did turn out to be difficult beyond imagination, it would all be worth it in the end, because he would finally be able to get up there. The tower room—the sunny loft, the deluged eaves, the doves and grackles: the sun! And, he was fairly sure he could do it all--all that he needed to do--in six days, per usual. There were few projects Reynaldo hadn't been able to successfully accomplish in six days or less, after all. Reynaldo didn't believe in doing things that required more than one week's effort. That was another of Reynaldo's trade marks.

That night, happily contemplating his new stairway construction under the stars he made shine on the top of his tent (which he had pitched in the grass outside the tower building by the gate of its garden), with Sancho at home running the business and maintaining the bathtubs, Reynaldo fell asleep and had a long and wonderful dream.

But while he was sleeping, an enchanted fog descended upon him and his seemingly invulnerable tent. For this was a witch's garden beside which he was encamped, and the tower room was hers. Of course Reynaldo had no way of knowing this and innocently enough thought upon waking that something was wrong (inconceivable as that was) with his dream holder.

Since early childhood, when he had received it from his parents for his fifth birthday, it had held and analysed his dreams for him automatically, without fail, every morning, organizing each one as it came among all the others in terms of its symbols and possible implications with a print-out for happy contemplation later (he loved to read and scorned audio results). Now, apparently, it wouldn't work at all—it didn't even think he had had a dream! Of course there was no way to get into it and fix it. It was not ever supposed to need fixing, which was an archaic concept obviously. “Fixing”--what was that?

Reynaldo was more than fond of his dreams and his dream holder, it goes without saying but must be emphasized nevertheless. Now as he stood in the dawn of the new day with a brand new dream apparently unknown to the dream holder, Reynaldo shook his head and looked around. Where was this place? How had this happened? What now?