Read Online B Is for Beer by Tom Robbins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tom Robbins
Tags: Satire
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and even your family represent; that there ’s something grander and stranger, more alive, more free and more real than what any ordinary situation has to offer? Something way beyond ? And that it seems to be calling to you, calling even though it doesn’t know your name, your address, how old you are, or give a rip if you’ve washed behind your ears or finished your peas?”
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b is for beer
“I guess so.”
“The older you get—and this is a good thing to remember on your birthday, Gracie—the harder it is to interface with the Mystery. Yet adults still thirst for that connection, that alternative to the unsatisfying reality men have constructed for themselves, and which they feel locked into like a dungeon.
“So, they resort to all sorts of things—a few enlightened, many destructive, most ineffective, some just plain silly—that might allow them even a breath or two outside the prison walls. To a certain extent, that explains the appeal of beer.”
“It unlocks them?”
“Well, it temporarily loosens their ties to the stressful world of work and responsibility.”
“Like loosening shoelaces that are tied too tight?”
“Exactly. That ’s pretty smart, kiddo. How do you come up with these things?”
Gracie blushed. “Hi de ho,” she said.
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Tired of sitting, perhaps, the Beer Fairy suddenly rocketed up in the air, where she performed an acrobatic triple loop a few inches from Gracie ’s nose. By no means, however, was she done talking. “Let me be clear,” she said as she hovered, “beer is not a part of the actual Mystery or even connected to it in any direct way. No, no. Beer is merely a vehicle.
“On rare occasions, and for very brief moments, that vehicle may carry a person beyond the state of being glad and dizzy (and I’m all for glad and dizzy, you know, glad and dizzy is my neighborhood); may shoot them through an opening between the glad and the dizzy…”
“Is it like Alice ’s rabbit hole to Wonderland?”
“It ’s much smaller than that.”
“Like a mouse hole?”
“Smaller. More like a crack in the egg of a barley beetle.”
“Oh.”
“Beer, if it ’s just the right amount—not too little and definitely not too much—may on occasion transport one through that 96
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crack and carry one close enough to the gates of the Mystery so that one ’s granted a quick but entirely rapturous peek inside.”
“What ’s it look like?”
The fairy smiled and rotated her wings. “Everything. And nothing. Both at the same time. What does the electricity inside your atoms look like? What do forever and laughter and liberty look like? It ’s the face everybody shared before they were born and the joke they’ll finally get after they’re dead. It ’s the meaning of meaning, the other that has no further, and the which of which there is no whicher.”
While Gracie was trying vainly to picture such a thing, her wee guide said, “Be warned. When considering beer as a vehicle, one had better bear in mind that it ’s hardly reliable transportation. It ’s a very old cart, in fact; a wagon pushed and pulled by forgotten forces, by agricultural spirits, the ancient spirits of grain and the land. It ’s a wagon, my dear, that can easily swerve and run off the road.”
Now, kids, if that grandpa of yours hasn’t given up and wandered off to watch a ball game on TV, he may well be skipping over this part of the story, believing that you couldn’t possibly relate to all this stuff about a Fifth Element, about 97
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the Mystery, about magic, ancient grain spirits, and so forth.
He ’s wrong, isn’t he? Because almost every child between the ages of, say, three and twelve (and a few lucky ones much older) seems at least vaguely aware of the presence of a separate reality: some half-familiar, magical Other World that, even when spooky or threatening, both thrills and nurtures them more than the reality that modern
94
b is for beer
“I guess so.”
“The older you get—and this is a good thing to remember on your birthday, Gracie—the harder it is to interface with the Mystery. Yet adults still thirst for that connection, that alternative to the unsatisfying reality men have constructed for themselves, and which they feel locked into like a dungeon.
“So, they resort to all sorts of things—a few enlightened, many destructive, most ineffective, some just plain silly—that might allow them even a breath or two outside the prison walls. To a certain extent, that explains the appeal of beer.”
“It unlocks them?”
“Well, it temporarily loosens their ties to the stressful world of work and responsibility.”
“Like loosening shoelaces that are tied too tight?”
“Exactly. That ’s pretty smart, kiddo. How do you come up with these things?”
Gracie blushed. “Hi de ho,” she said.
95
t om r obbins
Tired of sitting, perhaps, the Beer Fairy suddenly rocketed up in the air, where she performed an acrobatic triple loop a few inches from Gracie ’s nose. By no means, however, was she done talking. “Let me be clear,” she said as she hovered, “beer is not a part of the actual Mystery or even connected to it in any direct way. No, no. Beer is merely a vehicle.
“On rare occasions, and for very brief moments, that vehicle may carry a person beyond the state of being glad and dizzy (and I’m all for glad and dizzy, you know, glad and dizzy is my neighborhood); may shoot them through an opening between the glad and the dizzy…”
“Is it like Alice ’s rabbit hole to Wonderland?”
“It ’s much smaller than that.”
“Like a mouse hole?”
“Smaller. More like a crack in the egg of a barley beetle.”
“Oh.”
“Beer, if it ’s just the right amount—not too little and definitely not too much—may on occasion transport one through that 96
b is for beer
crack and carry one close enough to the gates of the Mystery so that one ’s granted a quick but entirely rapturous peek inside.”
“What ’s it look like?”
The fairy smiled and rotated her wings. “Everything. And nothing. Both at the same time. What does the electricity inside your atoms look like? What do forever and laughter and liberty look like? It ’s the face everybody shared before they were born and the joke they’ll finally get after they’re dead. It ’s the meaning of meaning, the other that has no further, and the which of which there is no whicher.”
While Gracie was trying vainly to picture such a thing, her wee guide said, “Be warned. When considering beer as a vehicle, one had better bear in mind that it ’s hardly reliable transportation. It ’s a very old cart, in fact; a wagon pushed and pulled by forgotten forces, by agricultural spirits, the ancient spirits of grain and the land. It ’s a wagon, my dear, that can easily swerve and run off the road.”
Now, kids, if that grandpa of yours hasn’t given up and wandered off to watch a ball game on TV, he may well be skipping over this part of the story, believing that you couldn’t possibly relate to all this stuff about a Fifth Element, about 97
t om r obbins
the Mystery, about magic, ancient grain spirits, and so forth.
He ’s wrong, isn’t he? Because almost every child between the ages of, say, three and twelve (and a few lucky ones much older) seems at least vaguely aware of the presence of a separate reality: some half-familiar, magical Other World that, even when spooky or threatening, both thrills and nurtures them more than the reality that modern
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