The Ampule - Episode Four - In which a friend visits

On the third night, my friend Jonathan came by. He let himself in and found me in my chair in the living room, surrounded by empty bottles of wine and take-out cartons.

We had spoken over the phone. (I finally answered the fifth time he had called.) He knew about the letter, the ampule and the incident at the diner. As he came in, I heard him stop by the fireplace, and then come join me in the living room, sitting across from me on the couch.

How's your hand?

It's fine, I said and held out my palm. The wound had scabbed over.

I want it out of my life, I said.

Give it to me, then.

It doesn’t belong to you.

What makes you think it belongs to you?

Someone knew that I understood it.

Understanding it implies having power over it, but it is controlling you.

I’m not superstitious.

But you think it has power.

Do you think I actually believe that if I open it, a genie will appear before me and grant me a wish?

You have been living under its spell for three days now.

Things, icons, aztec fetishes, crucifixes don’t have power per se, but they have meaning. And meaning has power.

So you don’t believe it is controlling you, but you are allowing yourself to be controlled by it?

It represents something. It represents potential. Hope. A belief that whether we deserve it or not, we can have one thing in life. Some one thing, that we don’t think we have the ability to get or to make happen on our own.

Why wouldn’t we deserve something we wish for?

Greed. Avarice. Guilt. It’s the Fisherman and His Wife. There are all kinds of reasons that make humans think they deserve something they don’t. We think life owes us. But it doesn’t. Even something that we have, life takes it away, and we feel it was unfair. We think life is unfair and that is why we think we deserve to even the score.

This is about her, isn’t it?

Nonsense.

You won’t get her back by wishing, you know.

Wishes are for the naive. This is about mankind. This is about all of history, all of human desire residing in this one small ampule. It’s about figuring out what that one question is. The one question that every genie waits for. The one question that will get to the core of his raison d’etre. That’s why genies, all throughout history, have been considered tricksters, jesters, cheaters, because they don’t give people the actual thing they wished for, but some twisted version.

Because they have been asking for the wrong thing?

Yes! Yes! They have been asking for more, better, prettier, richer, but never for the one thing the genie has no power to pervert, nor even any desire to pervert, but in fact has been waiting for some human to ask so that he can fulfill his mission to grant it. It’s the Faustian deal; it’s Pandora’s Box. It’s the same story, don’t you see? We are not supposed to open the genie bottle and ask, otherwise we will get all these evils instead of what we want.

But the last thing to come out of Pandora’s Box was hope.

Yes, yes, I know. Hope.

Then wish for hope.

Pfft! Hope is for the naive.

Then give it to me.

What do want with it?

I want to make a wish.

It doesn’t belong to you.

He sat there for a while. Then he opened the door to the patio, went outside and lit a cigarette. I sat in my chair and looked out into the dark night. Every now and then, like a harbor buoy that was flashing intermittent red, I saw his cigarette tip glow bright red.

When he returned he was holding a ragged page, almost torn at the fold lines.

Do you remember this? he asked.

What is this? This... this is a poem I wrote.

Right, read it.

I’m not going to read it. I’m not going to read my own poem.

Then I’ll read it.

Listen, I don’t need ...

Just be quiet and listen:

Before you blow

The power of wishes
comes with learning
they are not hopes
but acts of choice

The blessing of wishes
is awarded
when your acts
beget your choice

Yes? So? That's a poem.

You wrote it.

I write lots of things. Writing is to inspire. Do you think Moses never broke any of the commandments he was trying to enforce? My god, he killed a man! And I am sure he lied to his mother when she caught him with a sheep.

You don’t believe in your poem?

Nonsense. Of course I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t have written it.

You know you can’t get her back, that’s what this is about.

Nonsense. You don’t understand that poem.

It’s about acting, instead of hoping.

Wrong! That’s exactly wrong!

What then?

It’s about choice. It’s about making the right choice.

Maybe, but that’s not what you said when we spoke about it the night you proposed to her. Do you remember? You and I went swimming afterwards at midnight in the South Branch of the Middlebury River.

Don’t confuse me with what I said yesterday. I’m no different than any other reader of my works. One day I think I understand it, and then another I’m able to dig deeper and figure out its real meaning.

Fine. The poem still stands, regardless of the interpretation. Nice thing about good poems. You are depressed because you have to make a choice.

What choice? A choice is between options. What are my options?

That’s your choice. Any option you want. And that’s why you are depressed, my dear Hamlet. Make a wish, or don’t. Embrace it or throw it out. Or just keep it on your mantel and move on. Ignore it.

I can’t very well keep it on my mantel and ignore it, now can I?

Then give it to me.

It doesn’t belong to you.

That may be, my friend. But it may not belong to you either.