Free The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato by Kathy Giuffre Page A

whole month until an unaccountable early frost put an end to it all. She seemed to feel that I had brought the frost on myself through moral laxity and all but told me so. It made her more cheerful.

    Charlie Blue washed dishes at Tia’s and played pool on his nights off in the back room of the Cave. It was a hot night. The back door was propped open with a box fan sitting in it to try to get the air circulating, but my bare legs still felt sticky against the plastic chair I was sitting on to watch him. He was playing pool for money—a dollar a game—which a sign tacked up on the wall said was against the rules. He was beating the wait staff from the Fiddlehead Fern one game after another. We barelyknew each other then, but he brushed his hand on my shoulder when he walked past me. I brought him back a new beer when I went up front to get one for myself. He held the cold bottle for a minute against his face. Then he lit two cigarettes at once and gave me one without my asking.
    â€œThanks, man,” I heard Danny say.
    He had materialized silently behind me, coming in from the front room. He took a drag off the cigarette and then handed it back to me. Charlie Blue just grinned and shrugged and turned back to his game. Danny pulled up another chair next to mine and put his hand on the back of my neck.
    â€œIt sure is hot back here,” he said slowly, looking at me with one eyebrow up.
    â€œWell, I guess it’s starting to cool off now.”
    â€œThat’s good.”
    â€œYes,” I said after a pause. “You know, up to a point, though. I mean, no one wants it exactly to be winter now. No one wants it to be too cold. A person likes to know what season it is, after all.”
    I looked at him out of the corner of my eye.
    â€œI’ll tell you what, sugar,” he said, slowly running his hand down my back. “If you start to get too cold, you just let me know and I’ll figure out a way to change the weather.”

    What is it like for the chosen prisoner to leave the cave?
    Plato says that at first the prisoner, having been freed from his chains and compelled to stand and turn around, would be dazzled and confused by the sights before him. The apparatus of his world—the fire, the carriers on the path, the figures of stone and wood—would be revealed to him. And he would be told by the gods that all the things he loved before were only shadows.He would be told by those who know the truth that everything he knew before was lies. He is dragged forward, away.
    But the prisoner, in his confusion and his fear, Socrates tells Glaucon, would obstinately resist. He wants to go back to his place with the other prisoners in the sultry atmosphere of the cave, in the world he and his fellows made together out of shadows and echoes and stories told to each other over the years. Imagine his relief when he finds his old spot. Imagine the tenderness with which he regards his forsaken shackles.
    But eventually, the chosen prisoner is compelled by his captors to leave his place beside the others, to begin his journey toward the mouth of the cave.
    How hard it must be to leave the warmth of the great fire and the conviviality of the other prisoners. How hard it must be to go off on one’s own without them, without the others who have always been with you.
    Does the prisoner have a guide—one of the cave gods—to take him by the hand, to lead him with words of comfort and assurance along the way? Or does he go alone, groping in the darkness toward the distant glimmering that is the entrance to the cave? Does it matter? Could a companion ever do anything more than watch over the prisoner, hoping for the best but knowing that the journey to the light is always—by necessity—a journey taken in solitude?
    And what of the companion—the one whose role it might be to watch over the traveler? He is there to care for the traveler; that is his only purpose. What does he feel