Kresge's Library
I've known Kresge since high-school. He was always a quiet kid and that's probably why we got along so well: I'd do all the talking and he'd do all the listening. He never seemed especially bright and the future full of settling that I saw for myself I also saw for him. After graduation we continued to be friends as we went through our vocational schools-I decided to be a mechanic and he chose to pursue electronics repair. In that year before we parted I recall times sitting in the branch-strewn backyard of my parents' home, sipping on beers I knew my parents would never miss and philosophizing in our amateur way.
"What's it all about, Kresge?"
"What's what about?"
"What we're doing. I'm choosing the path my life is going to follow and I have no idea if I'm choosing the right one. Where is the purpose? Doesn't it make more sense if we got to try all sorts of things before we had to decide what we wanted to do? Is it just living to keep myself alive? Is there a point to not being lonely? I can fill my time and my life up with any number of things, and I can say to myself that they are fulfilling, but sometimes I wonder if that's so."
"I have an idea," replied Kresge.
"And what is that?"
"I imagine..."
"Go on, Kres. What's your idea?"
"That's it. I imagine, and that's what I do and why I'm here."
Kresge always had the air of existing on another plane. It was like his eyes could float up and examine the way his own perceptions were formed. When he said things like that, he sounded like a third party to himself and his thoughts.
Our paths separated when we started working and I thought of Kresge only on the intermittent evenings we'd talk on the phone. These became rarer and rarer. Life got full. The hopes of love that always ended up thin and dirtied filled my time. Purpose got lost in production; worry and weariness replaced meandering queries and philosophies. The "real world" took over my life.
It was years later on a vacation to Minneapolis that I next saw Kresge. I was watching the sidewalk and pedaling my mind down the street, trying to escape the fallout of my last failed affair when I glanced up at an intersection and saw him reading a book outside of a cafe. It seemed like a perfect distraction for my tired mind.
"Kres! What a coincidence to see you! I can't believe this, you know? I'd never expect to recognize someone in this city."
"It could make sense, though, couldn't it?" The greeting was strange, but not out of Kresge's character.
"How's that?"
"I could imagine it. And I could imagine a reason for it."
We caught up, had lunch, and promised that we'd see each other more that week before I returned home. When I would visit his apartment, I noticed letters all over the place whose return addressees had the names of several prominent authors. When I asked Kresge about them he would repeat, "Those are just some people who like to hear what I imagine."
Two days later, while walking from one used bookstore to another, I asked him, "You know, Kres, you've never told me about the things you imagine. You mostly keep them to yourself. Do you ever let them out?"
"I tell them in those letters."
"Well, can you tell me something, anything, about them? Right here, right now?"
We walked, and Kresge did most of the talking for once. His musings sounded very familiar, like I already knew them. And then it dawned on me and I spoke before I could put it all together: "Wait, Kres, I just read that in a short-story collection two months ago. If you don't want to talk to me about what's in your mind, just say so. Don't put on a guise of someone else's thoughts so that I learn about you that isn't you at all."
Kresge stared at me and his eyebrows lifted a nearly-imperceptible amount. There was nothing false in what he had been telling me.
"Damn, Kres! You don't mean that you... that you're--"
"My imaginings. Yes."
"You mean to tell me all those authors you write to, they're actually USING the worlds in your head?"
"An imagination is becoming harder and harder to come by these days. These people are enthusiastic about my worlds. They can take my creations and add variations, like a composer writing a symphony based on the melody of the birds in his yard."
"But, don't they pay you? How...? How does it work?" I asked.
"I told you a long time ago. You asked me about reason and purpose and choice. I told you then. I imagine. I don't need the money. I carry all the worlds I could hope for in here," he said, lifting his baseball cap.
I was stunned. We continued in silence for several minutes, and I recall feeling both cheated and hopeful in the same moment. I had been missing out on this depth the whole time I had known Kresge. At the same time, he showed me that the real world doesn't have to be the only world, and it doesn't have to be my life.
After I returned home, I never spoke to Kresge again. I would have felt terribly ungracious for doing so. But he's spoken to me many times, though never with his voice. Even though his name is never printed on them, many books give off a scent of Kresge, and I try to read them all. Though I'll never see him in an interview or dust-jacket, I now have a favorite author and a life outside of the real world. Thanks, Kresge.
to the fork in the road