The Apostle at Lane Five

It was the fifth frame of Syaday, and I had thrown nine gutter balls in a row, which is a kind of consistency the universe does not usually grant. I was alone at lane five. The shoe rental kid had wandered off. The arcade machine in the corner played its attract loop to no one. Somewhere a ball return coughed.

Then the man was sitting on the molded plastic bench beside me, and he had not been there before, and I did not find this strange until later.

He wore bowling shoes the color of a question you have not finished asking. He was holding a Golden Apple where his ball should have been, and on it was written a word I will not repeat here, except to say it was complimentary and it was not addressed to me. He smelled faintly of incense and lane oil.

"Sri Syadasti," he said, by way of introduction, three times, the way you do. "Apple Holy Tree. Vrikshaheap."

I asked him if he wanted to play through.

The Frame

He rolled. I want to be precise about what I saw, because I have been a Discordian for eleven minutes and I take my witness seriously.

The ball went straight down the center. The ball also went into the left gutter. It struck all ten pins and scattered them like the day Greyface invented seriousness, and it also rolled the entire length of the lane without touching a single thing, and the pins fell down anyway out of what I can only call politeness. The pinsetter descended. The scoreboard above lane five displayed an X, and a 0, and a small spinning hourglass, and then gave up and showed all three at once.

"Strike," I said.

"In some sense," he said.

"Gutter," I said.

"In some sense," he agreed, warmly, as though I had finally understood.

The Teaching

He handed me the Apple. It was heavier than fruit and lighter than the truth and it was, I noticed, also a sixteen-pound house ball with my own fingers' holes already drilled in it.

"All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense," he said — seven clauses, and I counted them, because he watched me count them and nodded once at the end like a man closing a frame.

"So did I bowl a strike," I asked, "or not?"

"Yes," he said. "Keep score however you like. The pins do not remember falling. The gutter does not remember the ball. Only you insist on the difference, and the insisting is the whole of your trouble, and also, in some sense, your finest feature."

Then the shoe kid came back and asked if I wanted another game, and the bench was empty, and lane five had reset to all ten pins standing, and my score read 0 and 300 and a small hourglass, simultaneously, forever.

I bowled the tenth frame. I will not tell you how it went. You already know. It went both ways.

Hail Eris. Aim for the center. Forgive the gutter.