Loose Living by Frank Moorhouse Page A

make the world laugh along with you,’ he said, ‘for if you laugh and the world does not laugh with you, beware.’
    I felt a chill.
    â€˜We come now to the matter of the bear.’ The other comrades of the camp fire laughed among themselves again. ‘This is the question of the carnal, of the way we live with, and accomplish and delight in, our lust.’
    At my obvious embarrassment, the others made jokes in their colourful argot.
    The elder said that my answer had been a befitting appreciation of the apprehensions and ordeals of the carnal. It was of interest that I had chosen to see the bear not as small, not as something to befriend, not as a fellow creature of the wilds, not as a dancing bear.
    True, my reaction had been to share the things of my haversack but with the intention of disarming the threat. It was a deliberate approach, showing guile, craft and the application of the prudence which came from experience. But his advice to me was that I must learn to partake of the cup of good spirits and to learn that it must be partaken with another. ‘Learn to embrace the bear but learn also that there is always the risk of the claws.’
    I blushed as my comrades guffawed.
    I had never been intimate with a bear.
    â€˜Finally,’ he said, ‘we come to the wall of stone and the unknown sound. This is the wall which marks the boundary of life and death and the beginning of the unknown. You heard the cry of the coyote.’ He said that from what he knew of the mythology of the coyotes, they were animals which made great plans which came unstuck.
    I nodded. I had sometimes made great plans which came unstuck.
    â€˜No,’ he said, ‘everyone who makes great plans hears the coyote. It is the anxiety of failure, not failure itself, that you heard.’ He said that I climbed the wall to scout, which showed that I did not fear death, nor did I fear what I saw ahead.
    I said that in my will I ask that my tombstone bear the inscription, ‘Come, my friends, join me on this next adventure.’
    He nodded and perhaps smiled.
    The party fell quietly serious now as they all recalled their own answers when they had first been catechised with the forest questions.
    All saw their own lives passing before their eyes, the forking paths, the obstacles of thorns, the ways blocked by the log, the bear and its puzzling nature, the inevitable stone wall, the strange sound beyond the wall.
    They saw in the camp fire the nature of their own selves, their inadequacies, their fortitude, their strife and strivings. They looked, briefly, upon the countenance of death.
    They did this for about ten seconds and then were soon drinking, storytelling and singing again.
    When I awoke in the morning in the cool bright sun light of the Juras, my comrades had left and for a moment I believed that I had dreamed the forest catechism, but I saw that they had left behind the cask of Cognac.
    They had risen at daybreak and had gone their ways through the forest to their work of cheese-making, forestry, wine-making, the hunting of sanglier , the smoking of meats and the making of watches (that is, those with uncalloused hands).
    As I made the morning fire and coffee, I thought what nonsense the wise mountain men of the Jura talk with their babbling about forking paths and encounters with the bear.
    Back in civilisation I told my Lacanian analyst about my meeting with the mountain folk. I tried to joke it away, seeking from the analyst that rewarding laugh for which the ingratiating analysand hungrily looks with sad desperation.
    She did not laugh. She stared at me thoughtfully but said nothing.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Our HERO
further considers the
irritating practice of
visual ARTISTS who
use WORDS; he introduces
the BAD Breakfast Theory
of creativity

    I HAVE an ongoing aesthetic interest, as well as a vested interest, in the painting of words.
    Indeed, in art museums in many countries I have sometimes become involved in