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Giant Country

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Emory R. Frie

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“I think,” I said, “that there are so many words and labels for who we can be, and what we can be attracted to, and what we can identify as, that it’s sometimes easy to forget ourselves. The important thing isn’t the word or the label. The important thing is YOU.” “Me?” said Holden, confused. “And me,” I said. “And Wynonna. And Imogen. We’re all human beings. I think we’re more complicated than a single word: gay, straight, boy, girl, whatever. Most days, I identify more with a dot in the middle of a blank white page than anything else. And my life could start moving in any direction, and I don’t even know what direction that is! Only that it’s happening. I identify with the blankness. But…I think that’s okay.” “Because the important thing is you,” said Holden. I grinned. Returned my attention to the road. “Exactly.” The important thing was me.”

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”

“One final thing,” my older version said. He put a hand on my shoulder, touching me for the first time. “Do us both a favor and remember that people are more important.” I scrunched my eyes with uncertainty. “More important than what?” “More important… period. More important than pride. More important than ego. More important than being right or being first or being the best. More important than a job, a salary, a want, a desire. The people in your life are more important, son. Remember that. Promise me you will always remember that.” “Okay,” I nodded, “I’ll remember.”

“Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. ‘Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same—only to save oneself from it as best one can,’ thought Pierre. ‘Only not to see it, that dreadful it!”