Cassette

When you roll back the tape, the best moment is often right after the start, just when you think you’re going to fail.

Life is a cycle, the ending is just another beginning. What a cliche! The beginning has lasted two years and it is fruitless, one with an interminable ending. He flicks on the light in the room and absorbs the unfamiliarly nostalgic arrangement of the furniture. A mahogany bookshelf; several chairs imported from France aligned along the oblong table; an ancient cassette player and a stack of cassettes; a miniature statue of Einstein with his disheveled hair he made using the latest 3-D printing technology, an anachronism in this vaguely antiquated room. He surveys the room with the eyes of a connoisseur. It is magnificent, he has to admit despite his usual modesty. Guests would’ve complimented him on the perfect layout, the unique display of various items he’d put upon the wall recording the very progress of humanity and art. Except that it feels more empty than the old office he had constructed in his former home, which he sold to a young couple several months ago. He remembers the lack of any artwork back then, yet paradoxically he also recalls the lack of space. The office was crammed with exotic objects, scratch paper, and memories. In the old office, there was the bookshelf purchased at a garage sale for ten dollars, the same cassette player and recorder, and a baseball cap and a desk. He’d worked there in oblivion, but in total immersion nevertheless. He’d a goal. He’d a promise for himself.

He’d been an obscure, if not mediocre, assistant at a research lab until he stumbled upon the discovery of a cure for a rare disease. Maybe not stumble. He had been working on the project for almost a decade when a stroke of luck hit him. With the publication of his research, everything became pretty smooth and easy for him. Grants poured in and he no longer had any financial difficulty. As his fame spread across the globe, he justified his lack of any new scientific initiatives in the following year. He had needed a break desperately. He’d worked hard.

But what now?

Two years after he won the Arlington Prize, the culmination of all the accolades for his discovery, he still has no idea what to do next. His bearing is lost. The fame and the promotion from the lab only rendered him more lost and stressed. How could someone like him, with only a mere flair for creativity and a blind dedication that deserves the utmost respect nevertheless, become who he is? His success was a fluke. All the projects he has participated in have been spearheaded by other more brilliant scientists. He’d come across a fortuitous discovery. He’d enjoyed the glory bestowed only upon the truly talented minds. The privilege of luck. Surely, it is time for him to face the truth. A fluke, a stumble.

His phone rings abruptly, an ambulance siren demanding immediate attention. He has switched from classical music to it ever since he started to suspect the weird effect the music had on him. Distracting. He now works in complete focus. He can hardly be distracted. He needs constant reminders. Focus. Attention.

“Hey, Jane,” he says tiredly. Two years seem like an eternity for their separation. His work had forced him to move away from Ohio, and everything went downhill from there. He is fed up with her complaints, even though she’s always been the one, really, that tries to salvage their marriage. During their last conversation, he even hinted at the possibility of a divorce, maybe because he is starting to hate her for always nagging him. But inwardly he knows that he’s just ashamed to go home and see her. The humiliation of failure, of stagnation that he simply can’t bear. The failure that her support has made impossible for him. 

“I want the cassettes back,” she says without a tinge of bitterness or any betrayal of emotion.

So this is the end. It is hers, although he’s also recorded on the player many times. It was her gift for him when he departed for San Francisco.

The cassettes and the player never get played as promised.

“I will mail them to you along with the recorder,” he says.

After a few moments of awkward silence he says a curt goodbye and hangs up.

The realization of what has happened stuns him. So it will end sooner or later. Without any thought, he decides to play the cassette, perhaps listening to his past, and hers, for the last time. He inserts the cassette into the player. Takes him a while, almost too long ago since he tried to put in one. The dust on the player he also has to wipe off. Finally set, he pushes the button and lets it play. 

The cassette player hums and the voice is hers.

∞∞∞∞∞

A story is both a beginning and ending. Somehow, I can’t help recording the tiny parts of life just to keep it immortal.

I watch Ralph walk up to the podium with his tie perfectly hanging down the collar of his tuxedo. He is nervous, I can tell, but the confidence he exudes dispels all the doubts anyone can possibly have. He is elated and grateful, that’s all. I try to imagine what the future will look like, fantasizing about another mind-blowing discovery. Why not? He has the talent and the dedication entailed.

Yet what keeps coming back to me is the moment he called home from the lab, almost past midnight. It took me only a second to realize what discovery he’d made and to appreciate its significance. His voice was full of hope, of pure euphoria. I have no doubt that that was the culmination of his efforts and perhaps the best moment of his life. He’d worked from dawn to dusk every day to achieve one of the greatest medical triumphs over disease, and who would’ve denied him such credit? Philosophers have epiphanies, and I’m sure Ralph’s epiphany occurred right before his discovery. Not at the moment or after. It’s always the past that carries us through the present. 

Watching him so committed to his work, I know the solution must have come up to him as the cumulative result of all the efforts he’d invested, the thoughts he had debated over with himself. The jumbling and untangling of conflicting theories and experiments. Would I have it any other way? Would I have chosen to spend more time with him and make up the lost time as he buried him in his research? Not for anything. The past can be bittersweet when reflecting on all the things left unaccomplished, perhaps, but it's the future that marks the journey, and of course another beginning.

∞∞∞∞∞

Talent is often praised, while dedication lies in oblivion. It is his voice.

Yesterday on the subway I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me. When I told him that I am a researcher, he became very curious and inquired about my finding, to which I replied that I have been working on the same project for several years now without substantial results. He was astonished, and asked me why I should commit myself to a project as futile as mine. A project that promised no future at any rate. But before I could come up with an apt reply the subway rolled into the station, and the man got off wishing me luck. Was he feeling bad for me? Feeling surprised and awed by what I have been doing? No clue.

Now I finally have the time to contemplate. Is my research futile as the man had claimed? No, I believe all of my previous efforts are leading toward a moment, toward something bigger, for I know that I have a goal. And why have I persisted after so many years of countless trials and experiments? I think it’s the process, living under the moment - the present, and the joy of embarking on another train of thought, that truly capture my aspiration. I realize that it’s not because I am satisfied with my current endeavor, but because it’s the future beckoning me. The promise of another beginning instead of an ending. Life is a cycle, and I want to be part of it.

∞∞∞∞∞

The ending of the beginning is just another beginning, or ending, or whatever cycle you find yourself in. After all, life is both a beginning and an ending, and the intersections between the past, the present, and the future are where we discover a new adventure.