The Journalist Beautified

by Lee Edward Reynolds III


The dying journalist restlessly rocked in his chair and picked up his rusty, archaic rotary phone and artlessly crashed it into his lap.  He jammed his finger into the hole above the number nine and frenetically flicked it to the right. 

The dying journalist’s timid, thin voice reached into and felt about infinite darkness, searching for an answer:

“Hello?  I am sorry to be impatient—”

The deadpan voice from the other end of the line sent a shiver through his fearful ear:

“Just be patient, sir.  You’ll get to your destination soon.” 

 

The dying journalist smashed the phone handle into the hook and lunged out of his chair; he then paced back and forth, working himself into a sweat.  His eyes darted around the room, and suddenly he noticed that the frame above his fireplace was crooked.  He walked to the frame, adjusted it, sat back down and then stared at his award admiringly. Afterward, he closed his eyes, and a memory from the dark recesses of his mind was projected from his visual cortex to the back of his eyelids.

The day after graduation, his father, Eddy, who had represented Flores Revalles, called him about a job opportunity:

“Hello, son,” he started, “Are ready to mold the minds of the bewildered herd?” 

Without reflecting he replied, “Yes!” 

Within minutes he got a call from the editor of a celebrity magazine:

“Mr. Bernays? You’re Eddy’s son, right?”

“Yes, I am,” he responded confidently.

“Imagine that—the father of all of this is your father.  That must be something.  He has really changed journalism.”

“He understands that the public is, and must be, pacified by every single purchase.”

“We need to distract the eyes of those who are born in the gutter on the stars, otherwise they’ll start caring about democracy again.” 

“Only the owners of the country should govern it, and that is how our society has been and will be organized. The herd will be but absurd spectators who are enchanted by the trivial and the mundane.”

“Well, it’s true—it’s not what you know but whom you know.  You start next Monday.”

The gossip articles he wrote were ugly and likely libelous, but swill sold very well, so it afforded him an opulent lifestyle.  His head dizzied with all the details of all the delights that he was able to taste during his boon years.  He met famous people, he dined with powerful players, and he had his brief moments with many beautiful women. 

He felt neither shame nor guilt.  The weight of his body dissipated, and the phantom journalist felt free from form.

HONK. HONK. HONK. 

The phantom’s frail, bony, pale hands, which were splotched with liver spots, slowly drew back the black, drab curtains, and he looked outside and studied the strange stillness; his eyes then languidly fixed on the somber, stoic face of the driver.  The phantom floated through the front door of his home and then through the car door.  By the time that he realized that he was in the backseat, he was struck by the fact that he forgot to lock the door to his house.  He was about to alert his driver, but this worry quickly turned invisible.

The driver’s baritone voice broke the silence: “What do you do for a living?”

“I was—I am a journalist,” he proudly proclaimed.

“For whom do you write?” the driver asked.

“I write news stories for Fabula,” the phantom said with embarrassment.

“Fabula?” The driver asked.

“Yes, it’s a celebrity magazine,” the phantom said sheepishly.

“Are they news pieces or stories?” The driver probed the phantom.

“I—I don’t know,” the phantom said as he puzzled over the question.

“Why are you going to the Canterville Art Museum?” He asked.

“Museum? I—I don’t know.”

“I have a feeling that many men in your profession don’t actually know what they are doing.”

The driver took his eyes off of the rearview mirror and focused on the highway onto which he merged.  Minutes later, the driver pulled into a vacant parking lot and then focused on the pale phantom, who was dead asleep in the backseat.  The driver’s booming, baritone voice penetrated the phantom’s sleeping psyche:

“Wake up.  We are here at the Canterville Art Museum.”

The phantom slid through the car, floated across the parking lot and through the museum’s doors. Suddenly, a fantastical specter shimmered in front of the phantom’s perplexed eyes.

“You must be confused,” the specter began, “but this will make sense soon enough.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about art,” the phantom admitted.

The shimmering tour guide beamed a big, bright, wide smile and said, “I have to start by telling you the truth: you are dead.  I am not simply a tour guide.  I am here to show you your ugly deeds and try to make your soul beautiful.”

“I am a failed writer,” he revealed.

“Did you have a sense of beauty?” The specter probed.

“No, that’s probably why I failed,” he mumbled with melancholy.

“At least you are now aware of your ignorance,” the guide emphatically noted.

“Does that mean I don’t have to suffer in hell?” The phantom queried.

“Suffer? Hell?” The specter laughed uncontrollably, because he found his barbaric and ugly notions of the Divine Artist humorous.  “I must now show you your ugly deeds.” 

The room suddenly shifted, and the phantom and the specter were now sitting in a dark theater.  From the seat at which the phantom sat sprang leather straps that locked his ankles and wrists, as well a strap wrapped around his forehead, and from this strap crawled wires that forced his eyelids open. 

“What am I about to watch?” The phantom asked anxiously.

“You said that you were a failed writer, correct?”

“Yes—yes, I am!” He shouted in horror, while trying to escape his fate.

“That is not completely true.  You never sold a novel, but you were given a journalism award, and I believe the award reads, For Truth and Excellence in Reporting.”

“Yes, I won that award for writing a story about how Courtney Love pulled the trigger and killed Kurt Cobain,” he finished.

“We both know that is a vicious and ugly lie.  Did you ever consider how you hurt her heart right after she had lost the love of her life?” The specter asked.

“No—no, I did not,” the phantom responded as he tried to tear his eyes from the wires.

“You cannot escape,” the specter began, “and seeing the ugly truth about what you did will beautify your soul.” 

The phantom was forced to watch his ugly deeds.  Eventually, he gave up squirming. He had already accepted that he was dead; however, he finally accepted that his soul was hideous, and he regretted his libelous words.  After he was done watching the film, the room rearranged, and they were then both standing in a room that was blank white, save a painting on the wall.

“What is this?” The phantom queried.

 

“This painting is by Matisse,” the specter began, “who started painting after he was diagnosed with cancer.  It is called The Joy of Life.”

“What’s beautiful about this?  It looks pornographic to me!”

The specter frowned and said, “Your mind makes it dirty, just as your journalism dirties the private lives of others.  Do not think of this painting as moral or immoral, rather ask yourself whether or not it is beautiful.”

“It is beautiful,” the phantom admitted.

“I thought you would like it,” he began, “because you are a man who suffered as Matisse.  Only a man in such pain would need saturated colors.”

“Do you like it?” The phantom asked.

“I appreciate its beauty, which reveals a truth that transforms me,” the specter said.

“Art reveals truth?” The phantom confoundedly asked.

“Yes, but this cannot be intellectualized, only felt, for the truth of beauty is not the beauty of which one can speak. However, if you focus on beauty with your mind’s eye, then you can be transformed.”

While concentrating on the beauty of the Matisse painting, he saw the bold, wild colors run like bulls, and he started to hear enchanting music that was complemented with the sultry lyrics of sirens, whose voices, sweet as mead, make men mad. He was moved by beauty, and his soul steered uncontrollably until he crashed into a craggy rock and was submerged in bold, blue water.

The phantom stared up toward the surface and did not fret or fight as the sun’s gilded rays no longer reached his eyes. He floated down until his feet felt the floor and was face to face with two warriors, one of whom was missing his left eye. 

 

 

 

 

The specter sifted up through the sandy floor of the Ionian Sea and said, “These are the Riace warriors, and they symbolize the most beautiful sentiment of all—mankind’s hopes.  Do you see the muscles on these abs?  It is impossible for a human being to attain this definition.”

 

The phantom, stuck as stone, stared at the warrior’s abs; minutes later he floated around the statue and observed the deep channel on the statue’s spine:

“I don’t get it.  If this is impossible, then how does it represent our hopes?”

 

“With the Spirit of Sisyphus mankind chases its dreams, just as the majestic moon chases after the swift-footed sun.  Utopia does not exist; however, beautiful souls are guided by maps with utopia, for that is where dreamers destine.”

 

Suddenly the sea was sipped away, and they were back at the Canterville Art Museum standing in front of the Funerary Monument of Flavius Agricola.

 

 

 

 

“Who is this?” the phantom asked.

 

“The experts inform us that he was a bearded man reclining on a couch,” the specter answered.  

 

“The Romans,” he began, “unlike the Egyptians, knew how to live, so they did not look forward to death and the afterlife, but they certainly accepted it as part of the process.”

 

The phantom focused on Flavius’s marble face, until he noticed an inscription, which he read with wormwood eyes:

 

“Friends who read this, do my bidding.  Mix the wine, drink deep, wreathed in flowers, and do not refuse to pleasure pretty girls.  When death comes, earth and fire devour all.” 

 

The phantom cried, “I refused real pleasure, I did not cloak myself in beauty, I never loved the women whom I dated, and now it is too late.  That is why you are showing me this!” 

 

He hysterically turned away from the monument and the specter, and he gazed at the dreamy infinite light that was starting to envelop him.  The phantom wiped his bitter blue eyes dry and was then consumed with peace, as his conscience was instantly illuminated by beauty of the Divine Artist’s light. 

 

The phantom turned around, stared into the specter’s eyes and said, “I am now ready for my soul’s next destination.”