at first, he would think long and hard about the lines that stretched across his face, the fingers of some great hand spread out from the palm of his eye. but he didn’t give them lines much mind these days. sooner or later he'd realize that he'd never come to the end of them. so why bother? such was the life of old rip van, boots kicked skyward, yesterday’s night shirt still on, coffee kept hot till late in the day (why thank you, my darling suzanna). and yet he considered all this good fortune only rightly his. for no one left in caynefair, new york, would wish to trade places with him. not for a minute. the horror, they all imagined, the loss.

rip was legendary in these parts. caynefair was just a bunion at the foot of the catskills, but everyone in four neighboring counties knew rip’s story. now many said it wasn't true, sure. certain folk could not imagine such an upset to the natural order. methodist preachers mollified their sunday mobs: don't matter what rip says, they'd intone, church gonna open tomorrow. but to most, the sight of it was true enough: the nested beard speckled with bird shit, the green mold spores buried in his nose, the noxious rot in his pits and groin, the decades of rust along the musket (what man would think to carry such a thing?). and of course—as many at the scene would later testify—his full-throated sob at the site of his little boy, overnight a man.

sure, some say he planned it. but no one who’d ever met old rip van believed him capable of such a long con. rip stretched his days like ribbons of taffy, pulled slowly into aerated bubbles of nothing, days void of busyness, musiness, fussiness. some men are doers, he’d say, but if a man’s being is putrid, then everything he does will be for naught. me, i focus on right being. and once i do, there’s little left i find to do. at which point old rip van would bound at a rustling in the puckerbrush, or point skyward to the warbler’s song.

the truth of the matter was, it had not been as bad a thing as all that. sure, rip had missed some good times: his wife had died, and he was sorry he could not have waved her off to hell, but from what he heard tell, there were also some bloody bad times he was glad not to see.

instead he woke to find the world new again, despite the spider legs now crawling from out the corners of his eye. for despite the years, old rip van had somehow stayed the same, a man free of busyness, musiness, fusiness. a man of considerable nothingness, emptiness, stillness. a man who had migrated fathomless legions of distance, all without moving an inch. and when folks would come from miles round to ask him how he was holding up, how he was dealing with the loss of life, of friends, of loved ones, old rip van would just kick back his boots, take a sip of his late morning coffee and point his finger skyward.