The Wildness Quotient

Terrence was in one of his happy trances again - wide awake yet staring off into space, trudging along with that unique stride, with that unpredictable, whimsical bounce in his step, secretly proud, giddy, impatient to speak with Simon and Fiona at the gelato shop, wanting to tell them about how he too was THERE at that lecture the other night on campus - that he had snuck in to see the renowned and controversial Katherine Bourgeois-Pain, that he had remained incognito in a dark blue hoodie - that he had not blurted anything out - despite the heckling that went on - that he had actually listened to what this amazing woman had to say, about the present state of the impersonal, mechanized technology-laden, late-capitalist behemoth-leviathan, about the role of women in society, about the crimes of manbeast, about the amnesia that the younger generation is so afflicted with; he listened and he went away thinking that something was missing - he wanted to find a way to speak with Professor Bourgois-Pain up close and personal - to tell her how thought-provoking her speech had been, to tell her how brilliant he thought she was, and - possibly - to remind her - ever so subtly - that she had (perhaps) forgotten to mention a crucial detail - had forgotten this strange intangible factor that Terrence had dubbed the "wildness quotient" - which, he felt was also the key to Simon's dilemma - when he had heard Simon complaining about the "absolute nighttime of the world" and the terror and brutality that lurks just below the surface of mundane normalcy. He thought about all of the members of the prophecy club - those goofy, grail-quest pilgrims, hungry for some purposeful activity, in need of a spiritual goal or goals, not to mention a path that was actually viable, that could actually be believed in without being laughed out of the room. This "wildness" notion that he'd been kicking around and poking at for years and years - that was somewhat different from Simon's notion of the "invisible terror" - because, in contrast to Simon's moralistic sense of outrage at the sad, unbearable silence of non-oracular, non-deified matter, the disenchanted eery presence of mere atoms and void unwilling and unable to respond sufficiently to human needs, wildness was not in itself either good or bad per se, because this idea of "wildness" could not be reduced to an abstract theory or a logical argument - because it was so expansive and divergent - it touched upon so many aspects of experience and would appear here or there never to be pinned down - that it just was such an "uncanniness principle" that had to be taken into account - not that it totally negated all forms of logic, language, science, philosophy or tangible discourse - but just that it represented that weird "ineffable energy" (or call it what you will) the unique self-assertion, the inexplicable aggression, the volatility, ambition, wanderlust, disorder - housed within all living creatures - within entities as such for that matter - that had to be reckoned with - that one could not confine to this one group or this one individual...And because it was not a theory, not even a fact or a set of facts of an event, but more like a story, a mythos that called for interpretation by persons dealing with "situations" at various times and places, he felt that he had succeeded in some kind of breakthrough; he wanted to explain how this "wildness" factor that came to visit now and then and brought with it by turns, chaos, destruction, terror or else (perhaps by corollary) adventure, rapture, heightened awareness - like a contagion spreading by means of various unlucky "carriers" and "infected ones" - sometimes a villain, sometimes a tragic hero...or involving, for lack of a better term "innocent onlookers" and "affected populations." Was this enough to rebut Simon and that old soul mentor of his - with their world-weary explanations - with their instinctual religious melancholy lashing out against the raw data of human vulnerability before the randomness of time and chance that "happeneth" to all? He thought again of that remarkable woman, that quintessential aging rebel and her radical indictment of relations between male and female throughout the animal kingdom, ending most conspicuously with men and women of today....it occurred to him that she had perhaps not felt the need to invoke any over-arching metaphysical principles or general concepts as part of her discussion, and yet...there was no doubt a philosophical underpinning to her remarks and a definite sense of cosmic injustice meting itself out. Did she believe that "justice" was then but a human construction along the lines of socially-constructed gender relations? Did she believe that nature itself somewhat of a hoax, a misnomer, a false construct, an illusory panorama of make-shift order and stability projected outward like some false glittering advertisement or continuous hologram that people simply absorbed as part of the scenery without noticing the role of language in the very acting of seeing and perceiving the natural universe?