Perseverance is a journal entry by Jack Rusher, published here Tuesday, January 27, 2004. It is part of Journal.
Tuesday night at my local.
I played music for money tonight, as I do every Tuesday. It's an odd arrangement whereby my relatively good taste and willingness to stand in a public place and press various buttons on my laptop is translated into happy party-goers and cash in my pockets.
After the show, which was shockingly well attended given the blizzard, I sat at the bar and slowly numbed my mind with a selection of fine Tequilas — Don Julio, El Tesoro, &c. — while discussing various types of emotional and artistic doom with my friend Yves, a painter who spent two years in Florence apprenticed in the manner of the old masters.
While I was staring off into space during a lull in the conversation, the bartender came over to get us another round of drinks. I didn't notice her right away and Yves asked me, “What do you want, man?”
“I want to make something beautiful.”
He hugged me and explained that the question was not the existential one I had answered, but merely an inquiry into my present tipple preferences. Mas tequila, por favor.
We looked out the windows, stared into the snow and contemplated our individual existential crises. One of the other patrons pointed at something outside and started to laugh. My gaze followed the finger to a sad vision: there was an old man missing one arm and one leg struggling to get his wheelchair through the deep snow in the middle of the street. He rolled forward and backward as one might roll a car trapped in sand at the beach.
I watched the crowd watching him and my liquor addled brain started to wonder: why are these people watching rather than helping? Up from my stool and out into the cold I went.
“Hey, you need a hand?”
“No, man, I’m okay.”
“You sure? It’s a shitty night out here.”
“Yeah. I’ve been through worse than this. I’ll get where I’m going.”
“Well... okay...”
“There is one thing: do you have a cigarette? I could really use one.”
I had never been sorrier to be a non-smoker. I went into the bar and rounded up some smokers to donate a few cigarettes. He seemed delighted by this tiny kindness and continued on through the snow with what appeared to be good cheer.