​

 Essays 

The essays represent times in my - and often times other's - lives that have revealed to me the edges, or the vague outlines, of a reality beyond our ordinary perception.  A collection of 35 of my favorites was published in 2017, titled: Beneath the Turning Stars: Glimpses of the Sacred in a Very Profane Life, and is available at Amazon Books in paperback for $12.99 and on Kindle for $3.99. Two other books by this author, Dream Weaver and Hurricane River, are also available on Amazon.  

​The Night My Father Shot Santa
 
            Ah, Christmas!  We all have our family stories about Christmas, and they are often hard to choose from.   There are those about daddies who have made it safely back from war, those when children are born, and those where enmities are buried and love reunited.  There are those too of fights, of enemies made, of teenagers’ rebellion and hard economic times, and those of death.  I have one each of a new life and a death near Christmas, of my son and my father, but those are not what I want to recall.  Rather, it is the one we had when I was nine and all was right with the world. 
            Nine; that age strikes me again and again, and it may be because of that Christmas.  Almost like the nine year old in the classic “A Christmas Story,” I got my first good BB gun then – not the first, but the first good one – and almost like him, I nearly had my eye put out by a BB gun, not my own but someone else’s.  It was  because of this accident that I had my first out-of-body experience, and because of this that I had to stay at home in bed, a patch over my eye, so that all I could do was listen to radio; and because of this that I heard and was amazed by the Beatle’s first songs, a group that became so influential that when I got back to school only one week later, all the world seemed transformed, so much so that even the guy who had almost put my eye out had gotten a Beatle’s haircut.  So maybe my memory was because of these changes which would prove to have lasting effects. 
            Or maybe not.  It was, as I have said, a time when everything seemed right with the world.  I had gotten used to school and life beyond the cradle, and my father’s business was booming.  There was no teenage rebellion in any of us yet, and Mom and Dad were happy, industrious winners in America after having lived through tough, even desperate times during the Depression and WWII.  They had friends and there was no limit to what they could do, or what we could do, or so it seemed.  Perhaps it was because of this, of this happiness with the world, that this Christmas is the one I remember most. 
            In any case, it all started with the Christmas party.  My father’s business, a small Personnel Consultant firm, was one that depended on contacts, and at Christmas this need had blossomed into the Christmas Party, where all the old friends and new acquaintances were pulled together for increasingly grand parties.  These had fascinated me – rooms full of grown-ups acting merrier and merrier as the hours went by until many became downright childish.  I had no understanding of alcohol then, and its use was taken for granted, for one thing the Greatest Generation knew how to do was to drink.  In fact, I think I viewed the upcoming parties with almost as much excitement as my parents for its bizarre spectacle.  But since I had no responsibility towards them, I could never understand my father’s nervousness as the Big Day approached. 
            This year’s that was to be the biggest – in fact, it would never be outdone – and it was because of my father’s anxiety that my younger brother and I were practically dragged to the nearest department store that very day to help my father buy the finishing touches for the party (he didn’t even have to ask, but how could this Nervous Nelly know?).  While he pushed through the throngs of Christmas shoppers in increasing agitation to get the last things on my mother’s list, it was to be our job to go to the record section and choose appropriate music for the party, which is exactly what he told me when I asked, “what type of music should we get?” “Why, the most appropriate for Christmas!” he snapped before running off into the crowd.  I would shortly learn that what my father meant by “appropriate” was fun, popular music that would get the crowds dancing.  As he hadn’t listened to music since the War, he assumed that we youngsters would know such trivia. 
            It is true, we did; we listened to radio and heard all that stuff about racing cars and jilted lovers, but that was hardly, in our eyes, “appropriate” Christmas music.  We had been carefully taught that Christmas was about the baby Jesus, so instead of “Rock and Roll, we searched for devout odes to Christmas that would do our parish proud.  I do not remember them all, but I do remember “Dave Seville and the Chipmunks’ Christmas” – which my father should have guessed - and the one that made my father’s eyes nearly pop out in the check-out line - the very one that we most cherished: “The Singing Nun.”  “What,” he cried, “I meant fun music!”  “But you said “Christmas music!” - and what could be more Christmas-y than chattering chipmunks and a singing nun?
            We got the records, my father further burdened with exasperation, and I cannot recall whether either was played that night.  I think not, although it did not seem necessary.  I do recall that our piano got quite a work-out by one of my father’s friends, at least until he could no longer sit without wobbling at the stool, but that came later.   That afternoon, setting up house was to come next.
            Besides cleaning up after ourselves, we were not invited to help in most of the process, and in fact we were told to NOT TOUCH A THING for most of the afternoon, but I was not made entirely useless.  As darkness came and the time approached, I was sent with my older brother to help park the cars of the guests, whose tires would cut ruts in the lower hay field that would remain for months to come.  Not that my  brother and I would actually park cars, though – that was left to Richie, our neighbor’s son, who was more than familiar with cars, having had unofficial races with several policemen already even though he was only fifteen.  In hindsight, I see that my parents were only getting rid of us, but I felt important then, standing beside Richie as he took the keys from wary guests and slid their precious vehicles into place with the elegance of a demolition derby champion.  And as we stood and froze, he would evaluate each car, and often the person driving it with a practicality that I found both admirable and incomprehensible. 
            Richie knew so many things.  His father and mother were Italian immigrants who had supported a family of four children from a twenty acre subsistence farm that did not have more than two flat acres in sum.  They sold milk for money and grew or made everything else they needed.  By this time the old man was deaf and pretty much kept to himself when not working, remaining steadfastly before an “on” TV set he could not hear, so we didn’t get to know much about him.  But the mother was always in the kitchen – always – cooking something or bottling something else like, say, twenty gallons of applesauce - or something else, for as my mother told me years later, there was hardly a moment when she wasn’t somewhat drunk on her homemade wines and cider, but we didn’t know that then.  All we knew was that she was oddly complacent when her sons came in hauling strings of illegally-hunted ducks and geese or bragging about how they’d just outrun the cops – again.  She was even more oddly complacent the one time my brother and I were there when the son-in-law, a cop himself, got into a knock-out brawl with Richie.  Chairs flew, tables were upturned, and neither she nor Jim (the old man), took any notice.  As Richie said afterwards, “Hey!  Wasn’t that fun?” 
            I suspect that they both had had a little too much of Momma’s wine, and that was probably why he knew about my uncle when he drove into the field to have his car parked.
            Uncle Tom was by far our favorite uncle because he was so much fun.  Unlike other adults who were always more concerned with boring adult issues, he knew what our interests were and was always ready to share a trick or a story that would delight us.  That he was the black sheep of the family always puzzled us – why, he was the best!  And always so jolly!  We didn’t care about how many wives he had, and we were not allowed to hear many other things that were said in a whisper, but it was clear that he was great guy, whatever the adult opinion.  So it was with delight that I welcomed my uncle to the party, he giving a cheery hello before he walked unsteadily up the hill, and with anger that I reacted to Richie’s nearly instant judgment of him. 
            “Heck, you’re uncle’s half in the bag already!”
            “What,” I said, “do you mean?”
            “Plowed! Drunk!”
            This seemed like a bad thing, so I denied it vigorously, standing up for good ‘ol Uncle Tom, but Richie remained unmoved.  “Look at the way he walks.  And heck, he can hardly talk!”  I tried to deny it again, but my brother was inclined to believe him and we left it at that.  It was none of our business anyway.  The next morning, though, I would hear of Tom’s “disgrace” as she and my father gave the post-mortem on the party.  “Boom!” said my mother in disgust.  “He dropped on his back like a stone!  The whole house shook!” 
            I don’t know what happened to him after that, for he was not sleeping on the sofa or anywhere else when we got up.  I think they had put him in a bedroom until he woke up, then had given him some coffee and sent him on his way.  It was a different time then.
            We missed that episode.  But I do remember the piano player pounding away as the grown- ups danced, his face shining with sweat while the air filled, and I cannot be mistaken, with a subtle lust.  They were still young, after all, some un-attached and most of them at least a little bit drunk.  I do recall that one of the women, a blond who had worked for my dad, was particularly sought after, even though she had just had a baby.   I thought she was beautiful, too - just as everything about the party seemed to be, even though I never once heard the Nun sing “Dominique-nique-nique,” which I still think is a pretty good song.
            The next morning, Christmas Eve, did not have the same feel of anxious excitement to it, although that was due only to the adult’s influence.  For us kids, as it is still is with kids today, Christmas Eve was the most anxious and wonderful day of the year.  For Mom and Dad it was clean-up time, but for us, it was time to hang around the Christmas tree and put up ornaments and tinsel and even, as was once done, to sing.  My sister then had aspirations of becoming a musical star and was in the process of developing a professional voice (which she still has today).  The oldest and a busy-body, she also arranged us in chorus, giving high and low parts and directions, and although it was annoying, we knew we sounded good. 
            And so the hours passed into dark.
            There were more songs and touch-ups on the tree, but the important time was coming.  At nine years old, I still believed in Santa, but didn’t want to be a baby about it because of my older brother.  Without admitting anything, my younger brother and I stay glued to the TV that was beside the tree, noticing keenly the radar tracings that the Air Force – the actual US American Air Force! – was making of some flying object “coming from the North Pole through Canada towards America.”  This could only mean one thing – the US Air Force would not lie – and I was quick to notice that my older brother and sister were staying pretty close to the TV themselves.  The Air Force and my older siblings –what more proof did I need of Santa? 
            Meanwhile, my father had kept to himself in the other room, doing what he often did at night at the table, drink beer, and that was just as well.  The irritation of the day before was gone, and the night remained peaceful and benign – until Santa approached the border of the US.  At that, we must have become annoyingly loud, for it was then that my long-forgotten father made an unexpected appearance in the living room, his face filled with a curious anger.
            “Santa’s almost here, huh?  Well, I’ve just about had it with him.  Every year, the same thing – bells ringing, hooves on the rooftop, the dogs barking, and my sleep ruined.  This year I’m going to let him have it!”
            “No!” we cried, not believing him anyway, but his apostasy called for protest.
            “John,” my mother said, “I don’t know about this…”, talking caution while her lips tried as hard as possible to keep from smiling. 
            “No, I mean it!  No more of that bothersome freeloader.  Cookies and milk every year, and all those carrots to the reindeer!  No, I’ve had enough!,” and with that, and over our protests, he actually went to the mudroom where we kept the real guns and took down the 20 gauge.
            “Now John,” my mother said with mock concern, almost in stiches while still pretending to protect us.  But we knew all too well the shallowness of her protestations – my parents fought like cats and dogs about all sorts of things, but she absolutely adored him.  She adored Hemmingway as well for his brash macho bravado, and this was right up her alley.  The joke seemed to be slipping away from us.  He laid the shotgun aside for a minute and came to look one more time at the TV.  “Yup, he’s just about here.  Now’s the time,” and with that he went back to the shotgun and stormed out the door.
            We didn’t follow because we didn’t believe him.  With all his bluster and his penchant for argument, he couldn’t bring himself to hurt anything, much less hunt for game as we boys did.  We called him the city boy every time he complained of us wanting guns, and we thought him as soft as puppy’s fur on such things. 
            How little we knew him.  Within seconds we heard the “boom” of the shotgun, and went running to the door, just in time to see Dad with the smoldering (or so I imagine) gun. 
“Got ‘em!  He was just about to land on the chimney when I let ‘er go.  Think I winged him.  He won’t be coming back, that’s for sure!”
            By now my mother was laughing out loud, her protestations of “I think that’s enough” less convincing than ever.   In truth, we, not even my little brother, were worried.  Dad’s anger was fake, Mom wouldn’t laugh if Santa had really been shot, and the radar – the official radar of the United States Air Force – still was tracking Santa Clause somewhere over the frozen wastes of Maine.   If anything, I was impressed that Dad really knew how to use a shotgun. 
            The night passed with more singing orchestrated by my sister, and I bet we gave “The Singing Nun” a few spins on the phonograph as well; but if we didn’t play it that night, we must have many others, because I still know half of several versus to “Dominique-nique-nique.”
            The next morning we woke with first light, as children always do on Christmas, and I was able to stay warm in my bunk bed for several minutes before my brother below began to kick me out of the mattress.  Our window faced back to the woods, a hill covered with mature red cedars, and there we could see that the tall green spires had been covered by a thick layer of heavy snow, the trees bowed over like monks going to Vespers.  Beautiful, wonderful, just as the Christmas tree itself was when we came before it in the dim morning, the colored lights shining off the wrappers on our presents.  We got our parents  - Mom, anyway – up so we could open them, and were delighted with what we found, but it was not the presents that day, but the first magic of the morning that remained – the deep snow and glowing lights and the promise, the promise of living forever in this magical wonderland.  The magic began to fade with the first ripping sound of presents opened, and soon the day became almost like any other, but still better with no school to attend and snow to sled on, and a lot better for the recent memory, so recent it had to be real, of that magical wonderful morning.
           
            So I sit, touched by my own story as it brings back that magic, such an old memory now that it strains belief that it ever was.   But Dad was, as was Mom, and taking us all together I am certain that the magic was all very real.  Again in its presence, that time almost within touch, I miss us as we were, and am grateful for the love that was there so freely that we took it for granted.  It can never again be as it was, but the magic, that very same magic, returns at least once every Christmas season – shotgun or no - just as Santa had that time when I was nine and the cedars had been covered with snow as deep as dreams.                       
             
   
                                    
           
                            
 
 

    August 18 – Patterns of Paradise
 
          It is late summer and once again I am flooded with the sad/sweet nostalgia that always comes this time of year. It is there at Christmas for almost everyone, when we recall all our youthful hopes and those who are now lost, but in late summer it has a different flavor.  It recalls friends and fun in the sun, sure, but also summons up the stored beauty of that time of year: the tasseled corn, the golden wheat stubble, the fading lawns, and the trees: especially the trees. The trees appear as giants in their glory, not perky with the fresh green of June, but full and slightly stooped, touched in places with the yellow that tell us what is soon to come. But the trees don’t mind, reaching in full glory to the sun without a moment’s thought even as death and sleep and cold are announcing their arrival.
 
            The longing! For years – for a lifetime – I have wondered at this aching of things past written in the mellowed present of nature. Yes, this time speaks of a joy that is soon passing, just as all of our joys are passing or have already past, but why so powerful in this season? Why so nagging?
 
            Questions hang for a reason, some to change our path and others to keep us humbly in wonder, but sometimes they can do both while granting us a glimmer of understanding. Thus has chance exposed the meaning of this nostalgia to me in the midst of idleness, which is so often the case. It is so simple as to seem impossible that I never understood before: that late summer nostalgia is a memory of the heaven we are born to and will someday have again. This culmination of growth and fullness represents the glory of what heaven is, while the insipient fading warns us that the loss of this paradisiacal world on Earth is inevitable. The longing is for the eternal beauty and bliss that was once ours. It will remain within us until we are brought to rest in its embrace.
 
            We are not all affected by late summer in this way, but the pattern it elicits in some is built into us all. We are made of such patterns, from the formation of the family to the moods of the seasons, and none of these are made by coincidence or accident. The emotional impact of such foundational realities is written into us to remind of us something: of what we have done wrong, and of what we must do that is right; of where we have been and to where we should go. It is through these patterns that God speaks to us.
 
            There is a movie I saw many years ago titled “Silence,” about priests in the early 17th century who snuck into Japan to spread the Gospel. The Japanese rulers of the time saw Christianity as a western contagion that had to be stopped. When the priests were caught, they were threatened not only with the loss of their own lives – that would make them martyrs – but with lives of their followers. The Jesuit brothers could not bear to see these simple peasant converts suffer for them, and so they submitted to the authorities. Not only did they stop their proselytizing but they worked with the Japanese authorities to detect any Christian articles of influence that were being smuggled in through trade goods. They were, in effect, made to work against the spread of Christianity, and they did so very effectively.
 
            It was a disturbing movie, for in the title, “Silence,” we were brought to witness an indictment against God. Why had he not helped the priests? Why had he not changed the hearts of the Shogun masters to allow the spreading of His Word?
 
            The movie is rightly titled ‘Silence,’ for throughout we are treated to breathtaking views of nature that passively witness the torture and death of followers right up to the capture of the priests. The beauty of nature makes human suffering more painful. It seems to say, “See how the supposed works of God lend nothing to faith? Doesn’t that, then, represent God? Isn’t God, then, either aloof from Mankind or non-existant, buried under the reality of a beautiful but pitiless natural world?
 
            There is a saving grace in the movie, however, which is made neither from false hope nor for audience approval. Rather, in seeing it, we, the audience, know that this is what it must have been like for these missionaries.  It is this: when, years later, one of the priests dies from old age, we see, tucked away in some small space on his inert body, a simple cross. The priest had never left his belief nor did he hide from Christ in shame. He had made a decision to protect his followers, even as his faith may have told him to allow them and himself to become martyrs, as this would have ensured their entrance into heaven. We are left to think that perhaps he regretted his choice, but even in his pain he had allowed himself to believe in the forgiveness of Christ with the hope of reaping the divine reward of eternal paradise.
 
            So we see that nature, silent and heartless as it seems, speaks of the beauty and love of God. The beauty is the reflection of eternal paradise, cloaked within the cycles of suffering and death which is the endpoint of all life on Earth. It reminds us of what we are capable of obtaining, but also of what we cannot have in this reality frame. It is logically obvious that the beauty in nature that we feel is not something self-evident such as color or form, but rather is something that has been given to us from a source beyond material reality. Within this sense of beauty lies promise and hope. Paradise, as reflected in our sense of beauty, is real; and for the Christian, paradise is possible to obtain through the forgiving salvation of Christ. We see, then, that we must hold ourselves to the sense of beauty - that which reveals God’s promise to us in creation - despite death and pain. For everyone, this requires a willed faith that is strong enough to pierce the surface of this world.
 
            Words, words, I know; it is the depth of the emotions that count more, but these emotions must still be understood beyond the immediate level. Beneath them lie the beauty and pain that can be found in the fading glory of late summer. For me, so many years have passed now that my life seems endless. Even so, the end is whispered for all of us in the hanging, yellowing leaves and in our gradual loss of energy and breathe through time. Oh, fading and beautiful life! Oh, the longing for eternal perfection and beauty! Its promise is stamped into our hearts, and its hope is found in our faith.
 
            The rain falls now, cooling the sticky air and enjoining the plants, the garden and the trees to grow more. They will, edged along by the heat and sun, but they sense already that something is happening; that the growth is slowing even as the fruits, the nuts and the seeds are ripening. They are preparing both for death and renewed life and cannot weep for one or rejoice in the other. They simply are, and they are complete in their seasonal cycles. We, though, can weep; we are not complete. We feel the sadness and loss and the longing for that completion where nothing really dies or is really lost, where beauty never pauses nor withdraws nor cuts us with thorns. We know it is there, though, pressed into our hearts and very souls, and we raise our hands to touch the tears and pray.
 
            It is not enough, but it is a help to know that we are heard, that what is lost can be found. There is a promise lingering in the fading warmth of summer that tells us we are not to be left forever in helplessness. Our longing is there as our guide, to teach, to bring us from the ignorance of a fallen leaf to the wisdom of our true self, which is the reflection of God, our perfect template. Summer will come again; and someday it will never leave. Still, here the rain falls, and with each life-giving drop the weight hangs heavy on another yellowed leaf.
 
 
 
             
 
 
             
 
 

 
July 2, 2024 – The Immensity
 
          “By the streams of Babylon
            we sat and wept
            when we remembered Zion.
            On the aspens of that land
            We hung up our harps.” (Psalms 137:1-2)
 
          Outside, the sky swirls in clouds darker and darker, piling end over end to cast more rain onto our sodden land. It is not like last year, not at all. Last year we watered our plants in the dry heat and were brought to worry about global warming and the ‘existential threat.’ This year we use foot powder in our shoes to keep away mold and can almost hear the hybrid corn grow with a frightening, Frankenstein-like vigor. Each year so different, each signifying something we know not what, each leading to an end we can only trust is our perfect destiny. But how to see where we are going NOW? How to see what today’s clouds will bring next year?
 
            The opening lines from the psalms refer to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews @ the 6th century BC. In 2 Kings, we are given two examples of God’s might and purpose: one, from Isaiah, has God turning back the Assyrians from Zion (Jerusalem) before a just and devout king; the other, from Jeremiah, has God allow the destruction of Zion before a fallen, corrupt king. It is the purpose of the Bible to show through both prophecy and hindsight both the reasons for good luck and bad, and the general direction, or destiny, of a people. All of this is in God’s time, of course; for they wept and hung up their harps on the aspens to play no more because of grief. Like us, they could only see their misfortune; like us, they could see no greater design in their misery. They did not know that in time they would return to Zion in glory.
 
            God’s time: we have all wrestled with it. I have tried to understand it in both my autobiographical essays (Beneath the Turning Stars) and my novel Hurricane River. In both, I came to see patterns much like the Israelis saw from their “luck.” I also failed, as did the Israelis, to fully appreciate the long-term meaning, or direction, that this luck has brought me and us. That is natural; only a prophet, one who is imbued with the word of God, can truly see our destiny. That does not keep us from trying to circumvent the complexities of life and predict, however. In Biblical times, astrologists studied the patterns of the heavens for signs; in our times, we study the patterns of nature as well as the long scroll of history and nuances of psychology to see where we shall go as individuals, as a people, and now as a species.  We prove ourselves wrong again and again. We will continue to try to read the tea leaves better, and in the long run we shall fail just as certainly.
 
            The enormity of the welling clouds: have you seen them from a plane as a vast boiling ocean, changing each second as they dominate the land far below? There is a season written into them, and ultimately a destiny. Today it may or not rain, just as tomorrow or the next month. Somewhere what will be is written in the vastness of that boil; in them we could read the glimmerings of the next ice age, or the next era of the dinosaur if we had the knowledge. Further, we could read the fate of the world, and of the solar system, and of the entire universe if we just had enough knowledge.
 
            Not long ago, I traveled north to the cabin, and in the long hours to and fro listened to a book, Indestructible, by John Burning. It is the true life tale of Peter Gunn, a legend in his time that I had never heard of. Born dirt poor in 1900 in the wild Ozark Mountains, he suffered humility and hardships that are hard to believe by most in America today. Because of his sufferings, his “indestructible” character pushed himself to excel in avionics. After a long naval career as a flyer in the 1920’s and early ‘30’s, he settled with his family in Manila to run an air courier service. On December 7, 1941, he and his family were caught unaware. Gunn was drafted back into the service, and because of this, was separated from his family when the Japanese took over Manila. There, they were interned in a notorious prison camp. Gunn, who had always been the ideal protector and provider of his family, was stunned and shamed and horrified. Because of this, he spent the war in near constant motion, flying every plane he could against the Japanese, improving aircraft sent from the states, and planning raids with these improved fighters that proved devastating to the Japanese.
 
            So it was: because of his hardships, he was propelled as a one-man army to defeat the Japanese to save his family. Because of his beginnings, he was made capable – forced by his personality, really - of doing more than any one man to defeat Japan and bring the Asian Pacific and the world to a very different destiny.
 
            Who could have ever known that a half-starved barefoot boy from the Ozarks would prove crucial in the greatest war ever fought on earth? Who could have read those roiling clouds, seen beyond them into the sun and the stars that this boy was destined for great victories born from terrible trials?
 
            By the rivers of Babylon they hung up their harps. There the corrupted Israelites were confronted with the failings that had deprived them of the freedom they had once enjoyed, leaving them – or so they thought – only with a melancholy nostalgia for a homeland they never thought they would see again. They could not know that greatness would come upon them, laying open the way for Rome in the Levant, which lay the way for the spreading of the word of the Messiah, which lead to an entire world being changed forever; all this by a small tribe that had been crushed so thoroughly so many times that human logic would tell us that it should have been lost long ago in the dustbin of human memory.
 
            If I were an inspirational writer, I might speak only of the possibilities and joy that awaits us. But I could not. If I imagine myself a prophet, I might instead be the doomsayer, Jeremiah, who spoke of the destruction of Israel. I might say that hardships, not redemption, are soon to come - great hardships, because we have lost our way and, somewhere deep inside, long for the kind of correction that can only come through suffering. I might pose us as the Jews of Babylon, or Peter Gunn, who suffered poverty and humiliation because of some action by someone else somewhere in the past that made his young life miserable – and made him strong.
 
            Who can see clearly into the swirling clouds? Still, redemption is assured because of Babylon, because of Rome, because of the Crucifixion and the diaspora and the wars. It is not mine to say what will happen tomorrow, let alone in a lifetime, but it is mine to pass on what I have read and what I have come to believe. To us, life seems like a song that will never end, but it is a certainty that someday we will hang up our harps. We will then think it’s all over, but that will not be so. No matter the depth and ferocity of the storm, the sun shines behind the clouds. We might someday fly high above the tempest or walk back to Zion with hearts forged in the storm so that we might rise above into the light.
 
            But ‘Oh, Babylon!’ We cannot see beyond the clouds now, but it is often easy to see in the moment when a great storm is upon us. With it, as in all great tempests, some will be washed away and others will gather strength, but the clouds will part. We won’t know when, but someday.    
 
                                                                          
 
             
 
 
 ​August 17 – Falling into the Past
 
     We moved from a housing development to the country when I was six. These houses were made small (800 square feet, single floor, no basement) and were sold on the cheap to WWII vets. It was a good deal, but these vets were on the go, and soon, many moved on up to the east side, so to speak.  For my dad who had grown up in the classic cold water flat on the third floor, a place in the country with enough acreage for horses was his dream. And so it was that on December of 1960 we found ourselves in an architecturally bizarre, unfinished house in old Yankee farming country miles from my beloved neighborhood of tough, about- to- be spoiled post-war kids.  I hated it.
 
       I cried. I swore I would stay with my grandparents, who were able to move next store to us a few years before, but they dragged me out pouting and complaining, all the way out to Big Hill country. It was lonely. There was only one kid near my age within a mile of us, and he didn’t even know how to fight. I wandered around near the house, then down to the river and reservoir, then out to the old cow fields that were rapidly returning to woods. I watched as the snow came and whispered around tuffs of grass and blew up into small tornadoes before disappearing in the light of the gray sky. One bunch of grass was purely gold in color and on the top of each stalk was a cluster of golden seeds like wheat, and I marveled at the beauty and warmth of it in the early death of winter. I fell in love then and there with my new home and never looked back.  
 
      That memory came to me not long ago after I had awoken from an afternoon nap tortured by a host of dreams of the past. I saw the places and people of my life and suffered for their loss and for the loss of all that beauty that had once been in my life but was now gone forever. It is the ache of nostalgia and it strikes me every August before the summer begins to murmur its farewell. I usually get up quickly from this sadness and do something else to shake away the pain, but this time I let it sit and bore in. Go ahead, do your worst, I said, and it did and it was almost too much to bear, but I knew it couldn’t kill me. I let it sit for a while longer, waiting for the end of tolerance as if my hands were in ice water. It did come. The pain of nostalgia became an agony and I could no longer persist. But I did learn something from this pain, as we often do.
 
      All times and most people will someday become long gone. This is true. More, we ourselves will never be the way we were years and decades before. Time and circumstances and aging change us and we will never see the world again as we did when we were six. We will also never see our parents young again, or even alive for us older folks, and we will never have the same cohort of friends that we did in 4th grade, or high school or college. Even if we go back to the places we once loved – Cape Cod, the Green Mountains of Vermont – they will not be experienced in the same way, or at least the same way we thought we experienced them. In comparison, all will seem flat and colorless compared to the celestial brightness of our nostalgic longings. That is why these memories sting.
 
      There is a fundamental flaw in my perception from nostalgia, however, one that I had never thought of until I let the pain of it sit and burn. The reality of this flaw played out for me again this morning as I sat at the kitchen table after a BLT with home-grown tomatoes and peppers. The table sits in a nook between two sets of windows, and out the east side is a massive silver maple with a broad canopy of nearly 50 feet. The day before had seen huge amounts of rain, bringing a morning with bright sunshine and sparkling fresh leafy growth. The sun showed itself through the canopy only with certain gusts of wind. Otherwise, its light bounced around among the leaves giving to everything an angelic glow. Even the shade under the canopy was alive with light, the play of shadow making the light so much more profound. It was beautiful, and it came to me that this, this now, was nostalgia; that this “now” had captured the essence of what I always pined for. Yet here it was, not lost, not part of a by-gone era, but NOW.
 
      That is the insight: that the golden moments are all around us, in the past, in the present, and soon to come. We have not lost anything with time, then, but only added more to our store of memories. Yes, we will never see certain times and places again, at least as they were, but the world is ever renewing. We are aging, true, but time is not. While there might be a beginning and an end to time, it is not short enough to even lightly touch on our experiences. Time for us is eternal, and within that time all the beauty of creation exists, each minute and every second.
 
      The pain of nostalgia, then, is a thief that can rob us of a moment of great price in the present. We might look at such a moment as we look at a picture on the wall – as something of static and brief interest – but we should not experience such a moment’s passing with lingering sadness. There will be another moment that is different but just as full and just as deserving to be saved forever, ‘in a bottle’ as the song goes.
 
      So it might occur to us that this is our challenge: to see the fullness of existence in every moment in a fallen world. In fact, it might just be that the term “fallen world” is best described by our inability to live fully within our moments in time. 
 
      If we read enough about the saints or about those chosen to experience the direct presence of God, we find that the first indication of the divine presence is when the world takes on an unusual and delightful beauty. In Immacullee Ilibagiza’s book, The Boy Who Spoke to Jesus (discussed previously in a recent essay), we hear the boy say this before his first encounter: “At first I thought the heat of the day was making me hallucinate…I was seeing unbelievably beautiful beans, then suddenly I’m hearing an unbelievably beautiful voice…The light above me grew more brilliant by the second, and then the sky filled up with a million shining white flowers, which were more beautiful than you can imagine.”  He goes on and on, commenting on both the previously-unseen beauty of his normal life, and then of the even greater beauty as Jesus draws closer.  We are reminded of the Transfiguration, where “His face became as dazzling as the sun, his clothes as radiant as light.” (Mathew, 17:2)  The beauty we see in those special moments, it seems, comes about when we begin to see creation as it more properly is. 
 
      This speaks of the veil – the veil of original sin - that separates us from the divine, one so subtle that we usually do not know it is there, but one so opaque that it blocks out the light. In nostalgia – when the light both within and about us and others seems to shine as it never has in the moment – we transport ourselves to a fuller, not lesser reality. The details might be incorrect with memory, but the enhanced light and beauty and joy of being at a certain place with others is the more accurate. In memory, we are sometimes brought to see beyond the veil; in memory, a truer reality sometimes exists. Nostalgia, then, works something like a great painting: it is not as graphically accurate as a photograph, but it more accurately tells us about the person or place, about their and its content beyond the perceived surface.
 
      A profile of heaven, then, is what we sometimes see from our past. It is this that we long for, even while it exists right here and now. We take drugs to experience this, we pray and fast, we have parties with fire and light, we go to Tahiti and Bali; we do so much to capture this because it is what we are made for and so miss. There is no magical way I know of to permanently obtain this vision beyond the veil but to die. We are told by myriad religions that even to obtain this vision after death, we must live in certain and very specific ways here on earth. Yet we often ignore these guidelines and seek momentary diversions to fill our “paradise vacuum.” It doesn’t matter. Nostalgia reminds us that we are missing something that is so good and so crucial to our wellbeing that it is worth any price, and that it is right here always if we could only see.
 
      Saying this, I sink into nostalgic sadness for this very moment. It is late morning in August and the sun is shining and the sky bright and warm. Leaves hang from trees in such profuse abundance that it seems as if summer will never end. But it will. This sadness is a waste of the present, it is true, but it is also a reminder, a hidden memory, of what is behind the curtain. What more could we pray for than for an endless summer? What more could we want than an eternity in beauty with those we love, brighter still than any memory? What more could we dream of? And so we do, cast into pain for our lack, but reminded still that it could all be ours forever, right here and now and always.  
 
     
 
 
       
 

​

June 17 – Theater in the Round
 
     Were they that much tougher back in the ‘olden days’ than now? Heck yeah. My great- grandfather was raised in an Irish Catholic family in England in the early 19th century. Life was presumably Dickensian for them, for he joined the British Army at an early age. The army was not gentle on the non-commissioned ranks. Food was terrible, discipline outrageously strict, drinking outrageously heavy, and marriage was all but impossible, meaning the rank and file depended on “camp followers” for sexual relief.
 
      So it was that my great-grandfather – we’ll call him Jack as his friends did – probably did not have a family engendered by himself when he was retired from the army at about age 65. From his long-standing post in South Africa – then involved in perpetual conflict with the Boers – he left for America @ 1880, where he found employment in the textile mills of Lowell, Mass. 
 
      In time, he got married, having at least one child (I know of no other for certain), my grandfather on my father’s side, born in 1888. When young John (the second) finished 6th grade, Jack took him from school, saying (as my grandfather told us), “John, you’ve got your three R’s, so now it’s time to make money.” Which he did, only briefly pausing to move to New Haven, CT with my seven –year- old father, to work until retirement at the Winchester Arms factory (now moved, I think, to North Carolina). 
 
      Of course, the Greatest Generation worked its tail off, my father running numbers for the Italian Mafia in the 1920’s and early ‘30’s from age eight until he got caught with the other kids skimming the profits. The Mafia handlers tacitly approved, as they had once done the same, but since they got caught, they kids were fired, but not literally, thanks to God. Presumably he continued with more honorable employment until WWII and the Air Force, college, and more work and kids and mortgages.
 
      So we come to me, inheritor of this great tradition of work. I’m afraid I did not ultimately fulfill that legacy, but I tried, at least in the beginning, getting my first job that demanded a social security number at age 15. This was allowed because the employer was a theater owner, in which we worked as stage set-up hands. Why the theater is able to employ full-time underage people is beyond me, although it might go back to the days of silent films when beautiful young starlets were enjoined to entertain a senator or three, but what do I know?   
 
      Anyway; so there we were, my older brother aged 17 and I, involved not only in live theater, but in theater-in-the-round. This was almost unique to our hometown of Wallingford, CT, where the Oakdale Theater was famous to those in the business of theater nationwide. Its name was probably known worldwide, for the people who played there were A-listers.  You name them, if they were live performers and big in the mid-to –late 1960’s, they played Oakdale, from Julie Andrews to Liberace.
 
      And we worked our butts off. Theater-in-the-round is just that: a huge round circus tent that covers so many hundreds or thousands of seats that circle a center stage that has no curtains or back-stage. For us, the lights were dimmed for scene changes, and we ran down from the edge of the tent with different chairs and tables or whatever, to replace what we took away from the previous scene. It required great energy and a 7-day week of 17 hour days to memorize the set-ups and take-downs perfectly. This was not high-school, after all, but professional theater that cost big bucks for people to see big names. We had to get it right.
 
      It was genuinely exciting, and we got to see the stars sprucing up in the side-buildings offstage.  There were those I couldn’t care less about, such as afore-mentioned Liberace, and those who I didn’t care for but who provided amusement for us back-stagers. Take singer Tom Jones, for instance. He was a big hit for the married, middle-aged women crowd, and yes, they did indeed throw their panties at him, a rain of them towards the end of his performance. I did not get to witness this one story, but one of our guys said he saw a women slide her panties off from below her skirt and throw it onstage while sitting next to her husband. He said that this husband punched or slapped her (he said punched, but really, in public?) and then dragged her out by the hair. OK, probably made-up, but the panty thing was for real.
 
      At age 15, however, the performers I really cared about were the rock stars. There was Iron Butterfly, whose one-hit wonder “In-a-godda-da-vida” thrilled us teeny boppers to no end, so much so that most people (men at least) of my age group can not only recite many of the words to this day, but can pound out much of the long drum solo that made the song so popular. Wow, what a talent that drummer was! How cool he was! And the girlfriends he must have had!
 
      So it was that on the first night of their performance, I hung around the edge of the tent with great expectations. At the end of their otherwise not –so- great set, the marvel began with a hammering out of the bass riff that we baby boomers still know by heart. Then came the cigarette- and- bourbon voice of the lead singer as he bellowed out his ridiculous lyrics. But it was for the drum solo that we lived, and we waited impatiently. It seemed to take forever but finally it arrived, sporadic at first, then with a feverish bam bam bam ‘cymbal cymbal’ bam!, until we could barely contain our excitement. Then the impossible happened: the drummer collapsed on stage! So great was his ecstasy amid that inspired effort that he had forgotten the toll it was taking on his young, drug-addled (we presumed, or at least hoped) body until it could take it no more. The ambulance showed up with its horns and sirens blowing, and we were rushed into a new set-up amid the chaos. What a night!
 
      There were two more days of Iron Butterfly to come, however, and I worked the next day as well. It was then that I was struck with a disillusionment as great as the one I felt five years later when it came out that Elton John was bisexual, at the very least. What happened was, that at the end of the drum solo, this brave young man who had come back to work even after his collapse, collapsed again. Then the ambulance came again. Then we set up again, just as before, except that now we young non-professionals knew that it was a scam, a shell game, a grift, or whatever con-men call it; fake acting for a crowd of teeny-bop rubes. How could they, my rock-star idles, trick us so? I should have pondered that for a bit longer, for it might have been the beginning of a serious maturation that would have saved me so much grief. Unfortunately, that definitive steering –away would not really come for at least another 10 years.
 
      Oh, but there was so much more! The greatest, the still-legendary, the fantastic Led Zeppelin also dropped in on our crumbling factory town theater (I just noticed the similarity of names, Iron Butterfly and Led Zeppelin. Both high fliers that couldn’t fly). Holy moly! Of course I stood by the dressing rooms and saw them up-close and personal, and while their performances were very real and professional, their activities backstage also let me down, especially Robert Plant, the dynamic singer of the band. As I peered tentatively around the doorsill I saw him sitting before his make-up mirror. Make-up mirror for a stud rock star! Anyway, that could be explained, but his demeanor said it all. As he brushed around his eyes with liner, I could clearly see that his hands were shaking. When he put the liner down, he flopped and twitched about with his thin, English-white arms in a paroxysm of panic and –dare I say it – gay parody. Except this was no parody. Robert was nervous? And if not gay, at least effeminate?
 
      Ah well. I still listen to some of their tunes to this day (never Stairway to Heaven!) but have not lost the picture of this frail and nervous man who was so revered as a rock god. There are many other tails to tell from that summer in the theater in the round, but from all of them I learned that the professional entertainment world is filled with eccentrics, flimflam men, the sexually deviant, outright fakes, and an army of people immersed in a fog of self-absorption and amorality. 
 
      And, I will add, outrageous pettiness. The owner of the place was a wheeler and dealer type in his fifties at the time, with all the hardness and imperiousness of Ed Sullivan (To younger readers, Ed Sullivan was a kingmaker among celebs on a major TV network, paving the way to fame and fortune for entertainers like The Beatles and Elvis). As with Ed, if you were anyone but a proven star, you bowed to the owner for favors or, if you were little fish like us, you simply stayed out of his way. Well, it happened that at the opener of Led Zeppelin, I, a thin and short fifteen-year –old, was positioned on the inside of the Cyclone fence that kept the gate-crashers from gate-crashing.  I was to yell or do something, God knows what, if a crowd decided to climb the fence. All was fairly calm until the Zep began to play, after which dozens of stoners in their late teens tried to persuade me to let them climb the fence. Why they asked a kid like me and simply didn’t do it I don’t know, but they did. They offered me drugs of various sorts and money, but I stood fast until one guy gave me a sob story about his dying mother or something of the sort, and I bit. I would not accept any compensation, but this one guy I would let over – for Mom.  But just as he was climbing the fence, I was surprised by a loud and mature male voice.
 
      “Hey, get the fuck outta here! I’ll call the cops!” It was “B,” the owner, and he was mean and loud enough that the stoners scattered like hippies at a job fest. Then he turned to me.
 
      “I told you to let no one in! If you had accepted any bribes, I woulda’ fired you on the spot. Since you didn’t, I’ll give you another chance, but don’t let that happen again! I’ll be watching!” And with that, the kingmaker strode of angrily to his office, or wherever kingmakers go after an important meeting.
 
      It was this that made me think hard about the Oakdale Theater and what hides in the hearts of the even successful people. Think of it: here was this guy who knew all the agents and all the big names – someone who could make or break huge careers with their huge revenues – hiding out in the bushes waiting to catch a fifteen-year-old take bribes from a barrage of older kids he knew were coming. I did not pass the test completely, but was honest about the affair, which seemed to please B. Or maybe not. Maybe he would have delighted in humiliating a kid put under great pressure for the first time. He did have me feeling ashamed of that event for at least a few days, after all.
 
      But I think, really, this big wheeler and dealer had an unresolved issue about the goodness of Man. My guess is that he, as a Jew, had had the same kind of bigoted forces aligned against him as my great-grandfather in England had, and felt an urgent need to become wealthy and powerful, and thus protected. My guess is that in dealing with the entertainment world he had met all sorts of scummy people, and must have realized at some point that he, too, had taken on some of these negative attributes. Given these things to be true, I feel that he was conflicted in what he hoped to find in a young innocent like myself.  On the one hand, he may have hoped that I would give in to temptation and thus convince himself that if innocence could fall so easily, he was not any worse than the rest of humanity. On the other, he might have been searching for a nostalgic ray of light, giving hope that we might someday return to the goodness and innocence with which we were born.
 
      I think I understand this because I have struggled with similar issues. Maybe we all have. I have compared myself to others, sometimes hoping to find that those considered better than I are simply fallen versions of myself in different clothing. Look how the media in general trumpets the sins of the rich and famous! This brings to mind the well-known passage from Mathew 7:1 in the New Testament, “Judge not lest you be judged.” This has been used to justify all sorts of immoral behavior, ignoring the passage from Mathew 5:17 that Jesus did not come “to abolish the law but fulfill it.” Taken together, this does not mean that there should be no moral standards, but that we should, “remove the log from our own eye before noticing the splinter in another’s.”
 
      In the context of this essay, what these words of wisdom say to me is this: we are all imperfect. We are not to condemn our fellow man, but to work on our own problems just as we condemn the sin of Man in general. This is a tilted world, a big-tent circus ride that has jumped its railings, and we must all try to get back on track and help others to do so. I have criticized show people here, but I have to recognize their faults in myself – my need to stand out like a performer, my need to have power, sometimes even over others, and most of all, my need to be recognized and respected by others. Love would be nice, but as B and Ed Sullivan knew, fear works too. I would also like to be genuinely talented, but like Iron Butterfly, I might fake it if need be.  Yes, my old theater friends, forgive me; mea culpa.
 
       I think we all live in a theater-in-the-round, pretending that what is not real is real as we ignore the stage changes even as they appear right before our eyes. Our blindness is artfully encouraged, sometimes for the good or for entertainment, and sometimes for the bad. But we all know in the end that our lives are a communal act, a play that only works if we ignore the machinations behind the scenes. Offstage we all know that there are few excuses, and that there is no excuse for hiding what we truly are. Even if we have a really cool drum solo.   
 
 
       
                                                                                     
 
     
 



Feb 14 – Letters From the Heart
 
            Suzanne takes you down to her place on the river
            You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
            And you know that she’s half-crazy but that’s why you want to be there
            And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
            And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her
            Then she gets you on her wavelength
            And she lets the river answer that you’ve always been her lover
 
            And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind
            And then you know that she will trust you
            For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind   [Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne”]
 
            I want to continue because the rest is also beautiful and deep, but I feel a great need to comment:
           
            Yes, apart from “wavelength,” which is a little too ‘60’s, I still find the poetry of this song as beautiful and filled with longing as I did when I first heard it @1968.  Then, I imagined myself to be a sensitive poet myself, as many adolescence do (and perhaps are), and was also very concretely a budding male in desperate need of a female mate.  I did not understand why, and that was (and is) part of the mystery.  It has to do with sharing of the heart, of filling something incomplete, and in that is the mystery: why does this biological longing reach into the heart? It is not lust, although the body chemistry helps move this longing forward.  Rather, it is spiritual, as Cohen realized himself in the second stanza: “And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water…But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open/Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.” But then: Jesus sank beneath the wisdom of the goddess?
 
            So it was that a documentary on Leonard Cohen on one of the cable channels brought me back to a time when I was a smart-aleck kid, but also open to the mystery and unscarred by disappointing love.  This presentation was done in honor of the recently deceased Cohen, and it brought us all the great folk-singers of the 60’s, with their beads and bell-bottoms and incense, but also their almost- naïve sincerity.  As with adolescence, they were filled with an outsized sense of their own historical importance, but also were touched by the mystery, by that something going on within us that calls: that something that mirrors our loneliness and our need for true and open, non-cynical, non-sullied companionship.  In us; for us; a night on a ship in the harbor with the sweet smell of tea and oranges and a woman as flowing and open as the waters themselves. 
 
            One of the greatest quotes I know came from the great theologian Thomas Aquinas as he approached death.  Considered the apical “doctor of the Church,” a man of great inspiration and letters, he whispered of his work that, compared to the opening of heaven, “All that I have written seems like straw.”  All the dogma and the words and philosophy and the theology, then, cannot crack the mystery.  We might call it the “mystery of being,” but that is philosophy as well.  Rather, it would be better to hear Leonard Cohen sing again with his hypnotic melody, with his singing-talking as if to someone, somewhere heart to heart.  We all share, he has us understand, this mystery, this longing.  This longing attracts a mate, yes, but Suzanne is much more than mortal.  Suzanne is the goddess of wisdom, of true wisdom that extends far beyond words, flowing from the heart into the mystery of the soul.  She knows you and loves you just the same. 
 
            Perhaps as a Jew, Cohen did not understand that Jesus, too, is wisdom, the blood of the heart and the water of the harbor that suspends Suzanne’s boat.  He became broken so that he could meet the longing of Man.  He had to suffer our loss, our lack of fulfillment that is the heart and soul of humanity.  Perhaps Leonard only knew the words of Jesus on the cross when he said, “My Father, why have you forsaken me?”  Perhaps he knew more, however, for these words had to be spoken.  Without these words, the goddess on the water is not yet perfect for us.  She knows what we need, but not how to fully reach us.  She has not yet touched our pain and our longing.  She is there to fill it, but her perfect body cannot fully touch our imperfect minds. Jesus had to experience the pain of longing before he could do this, until he could finally proclaim “it is finished.”
 
            Oh, of longing: we find ourselves hidden within the maze of words and notes of the poet/songwriter.  They cannot fix our snowmobiles or feed us, but our need to know ourselves is so great that some are willing to give up every comfort to decipher them.  The song of the poet calls to the heart and soul of the mystery.  It is meant to propel us beyond anything either the sane or the insane can grasp by themselves.
 
            Leonard was from a wealthy family, but I always see him as a bum barely scraping by, living in cellar rooms in grimy cities, or sticking a thumb out on the highways, in search.  Always in search, of the Holy Grail, of Guinevere, of that golden, perfect key to our hearts and our souls.    
 
            And we understand.  The words and music do not stick to the rational, but we understand. It is the language of the heart and soul that is brought forth from spirit, the same word that fills the other word, “inspiration.” It overwhelms like a flood all that the poet might think.  In their longing for completion, the man and his rib, the woman that is closest to his heart, in their consummation speak to us in allegory.  In its best form, the completion between the sexes gives us something beyond the words of the poet.  This completion bears fruit.  Even then, however, the fulfillment in man and woman does not extend us far enough from the page, from our ordinary selves.  The longing within is satiated, but only in time and only in part.  The poet knows this and pulls it out of us.  Our longing is made beautiful, but we come to understand that it is even deeper than we imagined; something more, much more, than Suzanne as woman only.
 
            And so the poet is a theologian.  It is thought that the books of religion and the do’s and don’ts’s are archaic or incomprehensible or worse, just annoyances.  That may be true in part.  The words of Thomas Aquinas were as straw before the immortal.  But still they call us in their ways to that which is beyond the mortal Suzanne.  We catch this when we think of the mystery of the East, of the tea and oranges from China, made a greater mystery to us because we are of the West.  But if the religion is worth anything, it will remain a mystery until our heart and the harbor are one, as a man and woman can be, but greater, awash, limitless.  It will tell us a truth far greater than our sciences and our deeds.  It is mystery and just beyond our grasp, but it is our greatest reality and our greatest need, not anachronisms of primitive Man.  The mystery is the real thing; the “thing” we need answered in our depths more than anything else.  It must be repeated: it is real, the only real.  It is the presence of  God.
 
            “….There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
            They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
            While Suzanne holds the mirror…”
 
            We face ourselves in the mirror, and with Suzanne we see something beyond sin and imperfection and desire.  In the last stanza, Cohen tells us, at last, that “…she’s touched our perfect body with her mind.”  We are complete, perfected, and made whole for her mind, for her soul, for our completion.  But Cohen has missed something here.  In the seaweed there is beauty and a need for love, but it is still seaweed.  He has waved a magic wand and made us perfect for Suzanne, but he cannot do this, nor can Suzanne.  Someone has to make our bodies perfect for her mind.  It is hard work, this.  The old wine skin cannot hold new wine; it is stiff with age and will burst as the new wine expands with the growing yeast. 
 
            Jesus did not sink beneath Suzanne’s wisdom like a stone.  Instead, he is the water on which she floats.  He is the one who has truly touched our imperfect body with not only his mind, but with his blood and his soul and his very life.  By the touching of his sacrifice, he has given us our perfect bodies, and Suzanne her boat upon the water, for whom we have been made worthy.  Wisdom.  Totality.  Our young hearts dance again with the promise of the voyage.  Floating, sailing, now out of the harbor, now onto the sea, now with Suzanne, all the way to China.   
             
  
 
August 29, '22 – Hoarfrost
 
          We have been here before.  I have just returned from my childhood home in Connecticut, and while there walked a road not far, but far away in so many ways in time.  The place is there in the essay, “Snow Dogs” in my book Beneath the Turning Stars, but we often visit the past more than once, especially when the past exists in the present, as it does on Washington Trail road. 
         
          Washington Trail: it was a dirt road in my youth, rough and very steep in its last mile, but it had been the main road in 1775 and 1787, when George Washington and his carriage made its way through, first for recruits for the coming conflict, and then, I suppose, for support of the newly formed US Constitution.  Now it is paved but only enough to add blacktop to the stones, and it is just as steep and almost as devoid of people as before.  Things have changed of course; the tarpaper shack that housed the criminal family is gone now, replaced by a solidly middle class one with a great view.  Have they any idea the crimes that took place right where they have breakfast?  The field on one side of the street is now a growing forest, made a public “open space” instead of a golf course, thanks to my brother’s stint on the planning and zoning commission.  But still the other neighbors’ two old houses, along with grandpa’s little one almost right on the road, are there, cedar trees almost bursting through the front walls.  With that one little walk I found so many memories because the road has changed so much less than I.  Because of this, because it tugs me back to a ‘me’ that is no longer, the deep feelings come.
 
          How to describe those feelings?  Nostalgia, yes, but nostalgia for a place in certain times that are very particular.  I could try to paint these feelings in words, or even in colors if I had that kind of talent, or maybe in music, but no one else would understand them in totality, as others were never there.  Even I only get the sense of that place when physically present, perhaps because I am so removed from that area normally that the contrast is sharper when I am there.  However it may be, if I try to use my best medium, words, to describe those feelings, I will ultimately fail.  If I try too hard and come to believe my words, I might even destroy the real feelings.  Such feelings are like hoarfrost, the brilliant icy etchings on limbs and wires left by condensed frozen air, so delicate that it disappears within minutes of sunshine.  Beautiful to see, it cannot be touched and survive, and lasts but a few moments, gone in a flash like time itself.
 
          This all occurred to me after reading the first section of a book picked up at random, Notes from the Underground, by Father Donald Cozzens.  He is one of those priests, affected and some might say afflicted with the spirit of Vatican II, the great liberalizing event of the Catholic Church in the early 1960’s.  I almost put the book down once I understood his sympathies.  Modernization, which includes runaway liberalization, has left the family in tatters and is leading quickly to the demise of Western Civilization.  As Fr Cozzens says himself, much of this liberalization has to do with the revision of views on sexuality, expressed recently by the old liberation theologian Pope Francis when he extended a conciliatory hand to gay couples.  While disparagement and, worse, hatred, are to be condemned, overt sympathy for such things has led, at least in part, to moral and cultural degradation.  It is not I alone who says this, but the bulk of the Church hierarchy.  Looked at historically and cross-culturally, the Church is probably correct.
 
          Yet I was compelled to keep reading, which yielded something for my benefit.  Fr Cozzens, a priest for 50 years, has not been a gun-wielding iconoclast like some Latin American priests of the liberation era.  Rather, he seeks to find the reason for Christ – that is, the reason we should want His spirit in our lives.  This spirit, he argues, is not to be found in the hidebound laws of the Church, in its rankings of sins and their purgations, but rather in the spirit of unending, boundless, and non-contingent love.  This love, we find, is self-evident in the Crucifixion.  In 1 Corinthians (1, 22-23), Paul tells his audience: “Yes, Jews demand ‘signs’ and Greeks look for ‘wisdom,’ but we preach Christ crucified…,” meaning God’s unending love for humankind.  He does not demand anything from us when all is said and done but belief and trust in Him.  He does not even demand perfect behavior, as the Buddhists preach to obtain Nirvana, but only faith.  Through the ultimate act of crucifixion, He has done the rest.
 
          Where, though, does that leave behavior?  Some Protestants belief that salvation comes from faith alone, as the above tells us, but we are also told that faith without acts is empty (James (2:26): “Be assured, then, that faith without works is as dead as the body without breath). This is not to make a treatise on this old debate, however, but rather to place an asterisk above Fr Cozzens’ negative views on religious – in his case Catholic –law.  Without law, we tumble into relativism; once there, we tumble into ‘anything goes,’ and once there, into ‘all Truth goes.’ Cozzens was responding in his book, published in 2013, to Pope Benedict’s conservatism, but we have seen far greater collapse in the numbers of faithful in the churches of relativism – and far greater loss of meaning for those who have abandoned a faith.  We have also seen huge increases in hard drug use and identity confusion and suicide as well.  And I believe, because of this relativism and its lopsided condemnation of Western tradition, that we will soon see national and cultural collapse, or at least disturbing elements of it, and very soon.
 
          But the core…it lies beyond law, beyond words, and beyond human control, the wind of the Holy Spirit going freely where it wills.  For ‘we of little faith,’ it comes to us in brief whispers, like intense feelings of lived memories, melting as we try to touch it, like the hoarfrost.  Unlike hoarfrost, however, we find a curious reversal: in that brief moment of revelation, we understand that we are the hoarfrost, our ‘self’ gone almost before we can touch it, gone even as we try to understand it or fully appreciate it.  The limitless, the pure, lies on the other side of all our words and all our actions, durable in that it cannot be quantified, measured, or controlled by time or space or human cunning.  When we try, it disappears, not because it is a dream, but because we are, and in a dream we cannot hold the real. 
 
          So it is with law: we need it here because our understanding is limited, like children told not to drink windshield fluid even as they cannot understand why.  But it is not Truth itself.  Our sins are sins because we do not know how they distort our emphasis on life, and perhaps distort our folding into Truth at death, but that does not diminish Truth.  This is divine love.  We must let it into ourselves like deep nostalgia and not try to hold it or contain it, but just let it be.  Like hoarfrost, it is the one law that cannot be preserved or stamped on paper but is what we want most, a startling beauty that leads beyond our time to endless joy itself. 
 
         
 
 
  
 
​July 18 –Faulty Towers (Medjugorje, part II)
 
          Sleep has come hard of late, as the soggy heat of summer clings to the night to smother all comfort.  But it does come fitfully, and in the frequent mid-night awakenings the dreams tumble out, the stories pouring forth instantly like a life review at the edge of death.  Once such came to me in the last hour, so dark and disturbing that only the habits of early morning could wash its smoldering terror from me. 
 
          The images of terror are only for me, for dreams speak to the individual, one man’s poison another’s passion, just as life does.  In this one, I climb to the top of a miniature tower, perhaps 12 feet high, only to clamber over the side and fall within to a crumbled, dirt-laden floor.  I am unharmed, but there I see a fat, bearded man doing something strange.  I cannot decide if what he is doing is evil or not, but somehow I am released from this dank floor to perch on the edge of the tower again.  There I see this same man, but outside the tower and with several others.  They are alarmed as lights flicker overhead like lightening, strobe-like in its pattern, until I realize the lights are coming from me.  I realize that I am going mad and that those below must come to my rescue before I go over the edge permanently, engulfed in a dark chaos beyond control. 
 
          In writing this, I know where the images came from, but the most important aspect of dreams are in the feeling they give, and in this I understood the message immediately upon awakening: that I am helpless against interior forces that have the potential to ruin the life and person I believe I me.  These forces are from the psychological depths, and only others with superior knowledge can keep the walls of sanity from caving in.
 
         As it is pertinent, I have no grave mental illness nor a history of one.  Life is, for the most part, comfortable and appreciated.   But I share with everyone the mystery of the unconscious and a knowledge that I often avoid: that ultimately, I am not in control, and like a small ship at sea, could be swept into the great and horrible depths at a moment’s notice. 
 
          We are now watching a fairly decent series on Hulu called “The Son,” about a Texan who as a youth in 1849 was captured by Comanche Indians, who have been described by experts as exceptionally brutal, even among the other brutal, warring tribes of the Great Plains.  After much suffering, he comes to identity with these people, taking on many of their ways.  We continue to get vignettes of his times in the past as we are forwarded to the “present” of his life as an old and successful rancher in 1915 south Texas.  He has become one tough hombre, and we are given to understand why on these flashbacks to his youth. 
 
          Tough as he is, though, my dream reveals that he is not nearly tough enough.  No man is.  Rather, many of us fool ourselves into thinking we are tough.  We do this by building a world and worldview around ourselves, much like a tower, and tell ourselves that this tower will never fall.  Of course it will, but more than that, the tower stands alone in a large and brutal wilderness that can strike us down in an instant anytime we stray from the interior of our tower.  Thus, we try to keep within the tower, but we cannot always do so.  Sometimes we need a breath of fresh air, or sometimes the tower begins to deteriorate and becomes the enemy itself.  Or sometimes, the reality of time and natural forces simply makes the tower a failing shield. 
 
          So it is with our Texan.  Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, all the invented and invested power of a king, or a kingpin, cannot compete with the storms of fate and time.  It crumbles in the raging heath or open plains amid real power, and there we are left without our shield, our tower, our invented selves.  This is what makes this TV series a story; this is where we will see the powerful man humbled by the winds of chaos amid faltering plans. 
 
          Everyone grasps even at straws when drowning, and so all of us look for help as our ‘selves’ are washing away.  As our internal kingdom fails, we look to join another.  This could be the spiritual science of Yoga, the pseudo-science of Scientology, or the pseudo religions of Nazism or Marxism - anything that is so much bigger than us that it promises to control even the darkest depths of our psyches.   True religions are built to do just that; false religions and temporal ideologies promise but fail and ultimately crush. 
 
          Those true religions, the ones that really work as our pilots through the infinite, are designed to replace our internal towers with something ineffable and spiritual, but we struggle with this.  We confuse our towers with our eternal ‘selves’ and often struggle against these teachings as much as we struggle against drowning.  So it is that we cling to concepts of reality, those made primarily by habit, out of self-preservation.  And so it is that we cannot accept certain declarations of prophecies, no matter the source or evidence.
 
          The Old Testament makes this clear, as the kings of Israel refused to listen to the likes of Isaiah and Jeremiah at their peril.  Such we do to this day.  After writing the last essay on the promises of the Virgin of Medjugorje, I received both frank rejection of such things or mute disagreement.  I understand this perfectly.  In my relatively short lifetime, I have heard that we will all die in a nuclear war (hide under your desk!), will become extinct through pollution and overpopulation, will perish at the turn of the Mayan calendar, and now, will boil or drown from global warming.  Throw in end-of-times lost souls like Jim Jones and his starry-eyed Kool-Aid drinkers in Guyana and I understand skepticism all too well.  But we must try to separate the nuts from the nourishment and not barricade ourselves against reality in the towers of our own making. 
 
          Big and often bad things happen, from the fall of Rome to the Nazi Holocaust to deadly floods to our own startling test results at the doctor’s office towards the end of our lives.  They are not usual, but they are frequent enough to be normal in a logical sense.  To reject such things out of hand because they did not happen last year or the year before is not logical.  Heat waves and droughts ebb and flow in cycles of a few years, of ten years, and/or of centuries or millennia; and so do ages of Man.  On the latter, big changes are not as infrequent as we often think.  For such big changes in the social world order, only look to changes occurring in the recent past.  Are these changes increasing, both in speed and number?  Might these increasing numbers be visually graphed as an accelerating phenomena of modern times? If so, shouldn’t we expect increasingly vast and important changes to occur – even in the near-future?
 
          Unlike many prophecies, the ones coming from the visionaries of Medjugorje are nearly air-tight; that is, they do not have convenient escape clauses.  A permanent, indestructible sign will arise in Medjugorje which will leave no doubt as to its supernatural origin; many will die or suffer greatly; catastrophe will build on catastrophe, and all will occur within the lifespan of at least one visionary; and this one visionary, probably Mirjana (born 1965) will put, in written form, what is to occur three days before each event, placed in the care of a chosen priest, Father Petar Ljubicic (born 1946) to prove again that the prophecies are of a supernatural origin.  Then the world will experience an end to the era that brought the errors leading to the great change.  Given that Mirjana is 57, even with a long life we should not expect to wait more than 40 years; and given that the appointed priest is now 76, we might want to shorten that expectation to within 20 years.  If those things do not happen at least within the life of one visionary, then the entire enterprise will collapse – and millions will understandably suffer a great loss of faith.
 
          That might be a good thing.  Like many comfortable in this world, I want my life to continue within the scope of my perceived ‘normal.’ As of late, however, it has not; and I suspect that it will not at other times in the near future.   Soon, we might not want the ‘new normal’ to continue at all.  We shall see.
 
         But we have always known the goodness of a tree by its fruits, and the fruits of Medjugorje have been great.  Yes, it could all be an elaborate, immense hoax, true, but one so vast as to be nearly impossible.  And things are changing rapidly and charging towards scarier and scarier possibilities.  Could we soon be forced collectively from our towers of normalcy to confront the raging heath?  Haven’t we already, at least since Covid?  Doesn’t it seem that the spinning top is about to fall, that something just isn’t right? 
 
          Combine our world situation with the messages and miracles that are happening ‘over there’ and try to assess clearly.  Yes, remain skeptical but do not be a fool.  Your tower is only imaginary and it will most certainly collapse.  Maybe it is that we will all soon share the same tower, and we will all collectively realize the same fate.
         
 
                
 
         
         
 



June 29 – Countdown
 
          We had drunk our last beers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and were walking back with Father Christopher (the priest the reader sees on the home page) to the hotel.  The cross on the mountain above us glowed with either supernatural or manmade light, we could not tell which at this point, for small miracles had happened to us daily, and the moon shown with unusual beauty.  It had been a remarkable nine days, but now we had to get to sleep quickly, for we would be on our way to Croatia and our flight back  home the next morning at 4:30 sharp.  Our steps quickened.  We had passed the hotels that had been built here and there to accommodate the tourists since the apparitions of Mary began in 1981, but now we walked through ancient vineyards and past humble stone houses, as if it had been 30 years or even 100 years earlier. 
 
          It was already a night to remember, but once back in our hotel, we jumped into bed almost immediately.  As usual, my wife was asleep in about the time it takes to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, but I, as if often the case, struggled.  I hardly minded.  The moon shown silver through the curtains, and the hill where Mary had first appeared to the children, which was right next to the hotel, was full of chanting and singing pilgrims, even this late at night – or so I thought.  In an apparent moment later, I was not quite as sure.  The alarm clock was suddenly sounding and the chants were no longer there.  Where had it all gone?  But lodged in my memory now was something else: a voice.  It seemed to me to be the voice of Jesus Himself, although that couldn’t be (could it?), as I am no prophet, but regardless, what that voice had said to me remains still; “It is so hard for you to believe here; how much harder when you get home!”   
 
          True enough.  Believing in God is not only easy, but for anyone who lets himself think freely, is obvious.  But Christ, God in human form? It has been difficult at times, yes, even as I firmly, and paradoxically, believe in the divine power of his mother, Mary.  It is because of this that we are going back to Medjugorje in October.  Once again, the trip materialized with such alarming speed and certainty that it seemed a miracle in itself.  So it came to us to re-read the books about Medjugorje and how it all came to be.  And so it happened during my readings that this question arose: why now?  Why is the longest period of Marian apparitions ever in history happening now?
 
          We look back to 1981, when two teen-aged girls were walking in the fields near the hamlet of Medjugorje in what was then communist Yugoslavia.  They saw an apparition of Mary not far from their path, which caused them to run to the houses to tell their young friends.  Some doubted or were afraid, but some also followed them back to the original site, where the Virgin appeared once again.  From then on, the story accelerated.  Six children in all, five teens and one younger boy, were to see the Virgin, not once or twice, but again and again.  The priests did not believe them at first, the bishop did not believe, and when the atheistic communist government was informed, the officials went apoplectic.  The children were interrogated, tricked, threatened, separated, analyzed, whatever it took to either authenticate their experiences or stop them altogether.  The children persisted flawlessly with their story, and persist to this day, now all of them in their fifties.  Three still see, and talk to, the Virgin daily, while the other three see her only on a few designated times a year.  This is because the latter 3 have already received the tenth of ten secrets that will be given to them all. 
 
          The secrets: these we all wish to know, but none of the six have or will tell us much about them or their times to happen until a few days before.  The secrets are prophesies, just as had been given by Mary to the three children at Fatima in 1917.  In those, Mary’s words had foretold the fall of Russia as a religious country, and the rise of another war greater than the one at the time (WWI), both of which later came true.   Now we wait, year after year, for these new prophesies to actualize.  We know little about them, but we do know enough to cause fear.  The children, now grown, were and remain severely troubled by them, just as we should all be.  They speak of mass death and, even greater, the end of our current age. 
 
          To all this, the original question is reiterated: why now?  History is filled with horror and death and hate and torture.  Why should our time of all times be chosen as the end times – not of the world, as in the Second Coming, but as the culmination and end of one era and the beginning of another? 
 
          I think I know, at least a bit.  We of the age of scientific materialism are the new builders of the Tower of Babble, and through our busy minds have pulled together much of humankind once again in a new and greater project to reach the heavens and become like God.  We are reunited as one great race through the technologies of travel and communication so that the work and mindset of the laboratories and universities might spread throughout the entire world, disseminating a mindset that claims human agency alone as the path to total understanding.  Language and distance no longer separates us, allowing us to complete the project started allegorically with the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden– to know all things of the earth, while losing all things of heaven. 
 
          In the words of Mirjana, one of the children of Medjugorje, “We have gone too far!”  It is not because of communications and travel – that is, through useful technology – but through what has been communicated and spread.  Gene therapy now is reaching into the very fabric of the human body, making new, “better” humans.  Some will be better at being soldiers, some more clever in thought, while some, we might guess, will be better at being slaves.  Welcome to the real Brave New World.  This, by whispered accounts, is already happening in China, and once in place and successful, will most certainly spread.  There are also means now to follow everyone into every formerly private corner, ways of deciphering the private thoughts of individuals, and ways of influencing these thoughts.  This is not science fiction, but actual, and as all science fiction readers know, this actuality will lead to the darkest form of dystopia. 
 
          There is also The Bomb, of course, from which have come increased sightings of UFO’s, which may or may not signify celestial interference with nuclear Armageddon, but which most certainly adds to the list of “gone too far.” In sum, never before has the human world been on the brink of both destroying the natural fiber of the planet earth as well as the freedom of the human soul.  As far as history can tell us, never before have we had such powerful and awful things at our disposal; each and every day, these abilities and the likelihood of these abilities being used are increasing.  Day by day, year by year, closer and closer…. 
 
          The visionaries claim that all the secrets will be revealed within their lifetimes.  Since they are in there fifties now, we might expect the “end as we know it” to happen within the next 30 years.  Since older priests have been selected to read the messages beforehand (only days before, so that we might know for sure that they are part of the prophesies), we might better guess that the “end” will happen within the next 20 years.  So that all know without question exactly what is happening, the visionaries state that a permanent, indestructible “sign” will be set at Medjugorje.  By then, they say, many people will already have died, and for most, it will be too late to repent.  As in the days of old, they cry “Repent” and they mean it.  You will not be guaranteed survival in this world if you do, but you will be guaranteed survival in the next.  Here in this world, the secrets will come to pass one by one, the last three telling of destruction, each worse than the one before.  Then peace will come.  To those who survive in the flesh, peace will come and a new, better era will succeed the old. 
 
          Pisces, they once called the old era, and Aquarius the new.  We have heard of this change from afar and from old, and now it might be about to unfold in a tiny village in the Balkans, just as the Lord of All was born in a tiny manger at the beginning of the last age.  “…how much harder it will be to believe when you get home,” and how much harder to believe that this, our ‘now,’ is the turning point of a new age.  But haven’t we known for a while?  Didn’t we talk and sing about it in the radical ‘60’s?  And hasn’t our technology and our blind materialism accelerated and spread at an alarming rate, such that we have imagined the “end” since the dawn of the A-bomb?  Haven’t we been given the clue as to this end for the last several decades?  Is this only another, eternal call to “Repent, the End is near” moment, or do we really know that this time, soon, it is for real?
 
          I believe in the power of Mary because I have experienced it, along with millions of others.  She claims repeatedly that all her power comes through her son, so I must then believe in Christ.  If I believe in God, then, and in His chosen woman and His son, so too should I believe in the prophesies.  More and more, I do; and more and more, this is making a difference.  My world view is changing and expanding, even if I do not see the “end” in my lifetime – and even if this end is only something allegorical, although I do not think so now.  Even then, this view will encompass a larger reality.  If anything at all, our personal worlds will soon end, and somewhere we will meet whatever has made this clearly-created universe.  Repentance, certainly of our limited self-centeredness, is certainly in order regardless. 
 
         In any case, off millions go to Medjugorje every year, situated only a few hundred miles from Ukraine.  In this universe, there is no coincidence, even if we cannot see it. 
 
     
 


​Nov 20 – Old Friends
 
          It’s better now, the sun straining through a morning haze and the temperatures rising, but it has not been so.  It’s mid-November and the first wet snows have been squeezed from gray skies over several days, weighing the last brown leaves off the trees.  Bleak is thy name, November, and I caught a touch of the melancholy that comes from this time, a persistent murmur of death descending like those final, leaden leaves.  It’s not only me, I know.  Millions listen with mourning to that Mama and Papa’s tune, “California Dreamin’,” and the lights and hustle of the Holiday season can often make it worse.  
 
         That was my father, and I can still recall how, as kids, we could not understand his sadness during this season, as we looked forward to Christmas Break and all the presents and parties and singing and sledding to come.  We could not know what it was to remember loss.  That line from Yeats’s poem I read just a few weeks ago comes to mind: “Our souls are love and a continual farewell,” which I understand all too well now.  My father is gone, as is my mother, my wife’s parents, our grandparents, and now, alarmingly, so many of our friends.  It is not the fright of it, not yet anyway, but the loss, and all the love that we seldom acknowledged that we had.  Gone, gone, forever.
 
          My old friend from high school, Jim Gaffey, recently published a novel, None Goes His Way Alone, which brought the sadness in the loss of years to greater heights.  The book is a good coming-of-age story chronicling the development of adult character in his protagonist, Tom, as he and his brother build a log cabin in Vermont, but it rung an unintended bell for me in its descriptions.  The location was set in the land owned by another high school friend, Dave, and his family where we, among many others, built our own log cabin from scratch out of the woods.  My part was small as, for once, I had a regular job during much of its making, but it is the woods and hills and our times there over nearly a life-time that came pouring out of Jim’s descriptions.  There is the half-mile pond that sits cradled egg-shaped between the tall, forested hills, where the stars open up at night as if in a planetarium; there is the weedy, ice-cold spring at the foot of the hill where the cabin sits, as well as the cabin itself, an impossible dream come true out of huge effort; there are the long, empty dirt roads leading to distant family farms, and the old horse barn from another age, the outhouse, the beaver dams, and on and on, all of it held in memories going back over fifty years.  
 
          The land there is laden with rocks and boulders, but the ground is soft and spongy with deep forest moss, and it is as if this moss has collected our friendships and our life paths.  At sixteen, we drove the snowmobile recklessly and drank stupefying amounts of cheap booze bought for us by older brothers and in-laws; in our twenties, we built the cabin and fell apart as male cohorts to come together again in our own family units.  Not long after came the children and separation into different states, then maturation that made many of us astounded at both our youthful stupidities and our former vitality.  Values and goals changed, and, along with so many other things, all were absorbed by the forest moss, waiting with the kick of a foot or the clink of a canoe on the silent night pond to re-emerge. 
 
          These memories are of Vermont and its wilds, both real and imagined, but mostly they are of ourselves.  We all have to find our way alone, to controvert the title of Jim’s book, but we all did it in the company of others, as the book implies.  Without the relationships, the woods would have been any woods, the pond, any dark-watered beaver pond.  We might mourn the loss of the land or the cabin, but the real loss would be of the physical reality that held our times together.  It is this, the relationships, which now make those woods and the cabin come alive.  In every log is the sweat and strain of one or many of us, and on every path and road is an event that brings us back to other times that we enjoyed together.  Even when we visited in solitude, when the deep forest swallowed all human sounds and exuded the spirits of its depths, we would think of telling the stories to others.  Always the others.
 
          This is what Yeats meant, and what we almost always pass by until it is nearly too late: “Our souls are love and a continual farewell.”  We cannot abide by that in the moment. We are practical people with things to do and cannot mope about with vapors of sentimentality hallowing our heads.  This leads us to think, as T.S. Eliot complained, that our “lives are measured out in coffee spoons,” that we live in a hum-drum world of simple action and response, but that is not true, neither with the world at large nor in our personal lives.  There is a great river running through us, connecting everything and everyone.  All is a union of relationships, and only time brings us the nostalgia that makes us see, even as it is often too late.  What we realize is by then gone, and we have missed the moment and all its fullness.
 
          In reading about the place in Vermont that held so much for us as we grew into adults and beyond, the sadness in the nostalgia that it brings is not only for the moments gone, but for the blindness in letting them go so casually.  There is no way that I, or most of us, will change this, for it is part of our personalities and what others expect from us, and what we expect from them.  But I will try to see in the gray sky and the reed-thin branches of November a part of that river, and its marvel even in its barest nature.  This is our ‘now,’ every minute, and there is a fullness to it waiting for us if we can only pause now and then to see.  Here, our friends and family share the larger part.  Here, even in our solace, we think of them and how we would share with them the fullness of life, if only we could.  In our moments of clearest reflection, we know that they know what we are, too, in the river of their souls, where through everything runs a deep love embraced by a continual farewell.   
 
          



Oct 12, 2021 – No Home No More
 
          We trundled into the tightly packed hills of central Connecticut with the silly-colored canary -yellow trailer bouncing obediently behind us, walls of trees turning all to shadow.  Ah, home.  It had been three years since, my parents both dead and the year that wasn’t behind us, and there was some nervousness at the thought of reunion.  Everything had turned political and it would be hard for a talking family to be careful not to say the wrong things, which now included almost everything.  But when my younger brother’s family came from the door to watch as we pulled the trailer up on our usual spot beneath the maple tree, all anxiety disappeared.  It was good to be home.
 
          The maple had been given to my father fifty years before by his sister, now also dead.  I knew this instantly, as I knew of almost everything else in the area.  There was the barn with the sloping roof that I had “helped” my uncle build when I was very young, the same barn that I had re-roofed in my early twenties when I was home for a short time between travels; there was the spot on the high corner of the field where my father’s ashes had been planted, taking the best view from the property; there was the reservoir below where we had swum at night and skated in winter, the bridge from which we had thrown frogs to the large-mouth bass with Si, our neighbor, and the stone walls covered in poison ivy that possibly hid the stray copperhead, all of this and more and on and on. 
 
          That night, we did our customary talk at the dining room table, jokes and gossip flying as fast as synapsis could spark, and then to morning, when we stepped from the trailer into heavy dew that made everything wet and annoying but fresh.  An hour later found us hiking the Tyler Mill ridge, where I had camped and adventured and escaped from drunken bikers, before we dropped down to the water-company property that now held miles of bike trails for people who had not a clue as to its history.  There was the old mill built two hundred years before, the long walls from its chute strikingly visible, and the fire road, now a trail, where people from somewhere else used to stash stolen cars and where I had found a dime dated ‘1854’ sticking out from a root-entwined bank.  All of it known, all of it comforting.  This was not Wisconsin with its airy fields and low rises and bitter winters, but southern New England, where it dripped with wetness and wild fertility under thick canopies of forest that made the clefts in the hills vaginal in keeps of mystery and promises of growth.
 
          It filled me with a sense of power that came with belonging, but also with a history that was no longer welcome.  It took away my present form and forced something else back that no longer was.  Small shocks of the insecurities of youth sprang from a remembered boulder or hill where we had played army or, later, snuck to drink beer.  That over there, and there, and there, had seen gatherings where I had pushed to transform myself into someone to be reckoned with among my juvenile peers.  That, over there, had been where I had parked with a girlfriend now long married or dead, but still alive in the dark shade of the hemlocks.  All brought back an inner human now invisible but still luring like a wandering ghost, still unfulfilled, still looking for the right way to be defined, the right path to take for a glorious future that all would admire. 
 
          It was no longer me, but it tugged.  The morning we walked the ridge, the prayers my wife and I said fell flat as they would have in my youth, while wisps of my new spiritual life trailed off as if on a breeze.  In a few days, I was nowhere.  The new life of old age did not match with the old self, just as the old self could not match with the new.  It was not like the discomfort of adolescence, as the drive was no longer there, but similar in the way it unsettled.  This had not happened on other visits, not like this, and this in only three days.
 
          In between coffee breaks and snacks, that contrast absorbed me as we fell back across the once-forbidding Appalachians to regain the grain lands of the Great Lakes region.  The mountains were deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, hidden in rain and fog, and it seemed apt.  The visit had not had the force of a true metanoia, a life-changing event, and why would it?  Nothing more had happened than hikes and lunches and a few hours at the old family table.  But maybe it did, after all.  Maybe it did, as it showed the shallowness of everything that I have touched and believed.  Of the past, all that I thought I had known had been exposed as little more than cured history, than selected memory, than a desperate grasp of the ego that made of everything except the dark hills and hidden pains of my family an ephemeral mist.  Youth had been little more than an attempt to impress my peers.  Old age, too, proved to be just as laden with emotional needs.  As a man in his last years, it became obvious that I now sought certainty, that I now sought to convince myself that I knew what lay beyond the hills and trees and mist, past everything, so that I might think I knew what was humanly unknowable. 
 
          That, to know the unknowable, is what links past with present.  To seek this is to seek a higher goal than emotional fulfillment, but it is just as difficult to attain. 
 
          This realization came after we had returned home and were back to our Hulu TV series, “The Bridge.” This takes place in and around El Paso, and at the beginning of each episode we are shown the great burnt spaces of the Southwest, stretching out to the curved horizon.  The theme song, “Until I’m One with You,” plays plaintively behind the scenes, and on that first night home the images and song evoked such a feeling of longing that I could have shut myself in a room to quietly mourn.  It would have been a mourning for the youth that I had so disregarded just that morning, for it was that youth that had hit the road to hitchhike without a dime in search of…something.  That something was writ in the great empty spaces of the Southwest as I saw it for the first time forty five years before, and in its memory as I slouched tiredly in the easy chair.  It was there, in this mossy old chair, where the needs of youth reached full circle, touching the needs of the old, which at bottom are one in the same.
 
          I think I understand it better now, this low-key metanoia.  Whatever I had sought in the social before, or whatever security I grab for now, were and are only veneers, thin sheets covering what has been going on all along: this pull back to; this return to; this draw towards the one certainty that we have - that we come from and are bound for some other place, and that nothing here can ever take that place.  Whatever our religions or our desires tell us, that is what is ultimately happening to us where it counts and counts forever.  We need to go to that other place, and we need a path to get there.  We will find it eventually if we try hard enough, as Christ himself said: seek and you shall find; knock and the door will open.  And we are all trying; we are all knocking and seeking and asking all the time, but do not realize for what until we understand that what we think we are seeking is just a smoke screen, a revised history, a mountain in the mist.  This hidden quest is what touches both our beginning and our end and pulls all that lies in between together.  “Until I’m One with You/ My heart will not be through.”  How strange that the reprised memories of long vistas and this song would blow back the mist and connect the past with the present, if only slightly and for the briefest of moments.
 
 
         
 

​

​Dec 4, 2020 – You Must Go Home Again
 
There are private days of recollection – anniversaries, birthdays, days that one’s parents died – and then there are the collective.  Christmas, I believe, would rank # one, which is why people such as my father usually fell into depression sooner or later, usually later, on Christmas Eve.  The memories of mom and dad and little children and your childhood dog are often too much, because they are gone forever, including the friendship of friends who are still living.  Everything, we understand, has changed and there is nothing we can do about it.  For some reason or reasons, childhood memories are often tinged with heavenly light, and that light, too, is forever lost to us.  The wonder, the anticipation, the innocence, all gone, replaced by adulthood where one is “too dignified to climb a tree,” as Peter Pan once sung.  Or, in us older people, too fat and old to climb a tree.  Not the same, but both are sad reminders that the good things of the past might never repeat themselves. 
 
Then there are other days of recollection, often unsolicited.  Just yesterday, my sister sent three magazines and a piece of notepaper to me with no explanation.  The note paper had my deceased mother’s and my handwriting on it, but I could not figure out what the writing was all about.  There were little cryptic phrases, mine mostly, beginning with, “On the other hand…” ending with something so out of context that it had no meaning.  Then I remembered: my mother loved the New Yorker magazine, and towards the last years of her life, the magazine had started printing ink-drawn one- square joke pictures without captions.  The idea was that the reader would finish the caption, and if the editors chose yours, you would get a small payment AND, most important, your caption and name in the magazine.  My mother craved recognition as an author and had been a good writer, but in her last years was declining mentally.  My cryptic paragraphs were attempts at finding a winning caption.  My name would be in place, not hers, but that would have been good enough for her.  As far as I know, neither she nor I reached the pinnacle of immortality by being published in the New Yorker.  I wept no tears.
 
The three magazines sent were a different story.  The editor of the magazine, “Wallingford,” was a guy my sister’s age, which would have made him 69 or 70 in the three issues sent.  He had been our neighbor in the “Old Neighborhood,” a medium-sized projects for WWII vets hewn out of corn fields and cow pastures from around 1950.  Shortly after I had turned six, we moved to the country, but Tarn, the editor, had remained in casual touch with my sister, as had his mother with mine.  So the editor’s brief introduction alone brought back memories of ancient childhood, when dinosaurs dominated my life.  Those memories are touched with sadness at the loss of that lived reality, but I love them.  They are my personal gold.
 
I flipped through the pages of the mags and found them overly heavy with adds, which were themselves revelatory and, in many cases, memory-prodding.  Of special note, I saw a calling to a Vineyard and dining area that had been put on top of a huge hill that used to be part of my childhood haunts, from swimming in the cow pond to hunting rabbits.  In the last years of my mother’s life, she had loved going there and sitting outside in the summer to get the spectacular view that one had of much of the Quinnipiac River Valley, and of Sleeping Giant State Park just behind it.  More memories came, of when I was very young (in the old neighborhood) and would walk up the local hill to the bus stop with my older siblings to watch them being driven off to school.   I would wait behind and wonder at the Sleeping Giant off on the horizon, behind which I was sure lay heaven.  In my memory, behind there is still heaven to this day.
 
Then I noticed an article that had everything to do with more grown-up memories in the “new” neighborhood.  Back then, this consisted largely of small subsistence farms and family farms gone to seed or forest but still inhabited by the descendants of the farmers, who were mostly old Yankees who had gotten their land from grants by the King of England in the 1600’s.  I have great memories of that area, too, of the newer woods and the older places where the locals knew had once held houses and a school and a mill long gone, where one could find ancient (to us) artifacts from the pre-industrial era, like musket balls and horse-drawn hay rakes.   Great times, mostly.  But this article brought up memories of a different era.
 
It spoke of the local mountain range (really, tall hills of about 1,000 feet), a portion of which had three ostentatious humps that were called the “Three notches” or “Three Sisters.”  The Blue Trail goes by there, but not up to the three high cliffs on the top of each peak for reasons I do not know.  I do know that one person was shot at while standing there by someone shooting from the Blue Trail Rifle Range about a mile or so far below.  I am also painfully aware that near the first, an acquaintance of mine, John, not a close friend but a good guy, had taken his life there by placing a noose around his neck and swinging from a tree limb over the cliff’s edge.  I had walked there often and had camped there just a few years before it happened.  I know to this day from which tree he hung.  
 
The pictures in the story brought other, more adult memories.  We had often camped just off from one or another of the cliffs with as much beer as we could illegally buy, which were fairly innocent affairs.  But we had also tripped there on LSD and mescaline a few times, and those memories, once considered great, now terrify me.  Along with the view and precipitous drops, those experiences seemed to rip open the universe and expose our tiny meekness and ancient immortality, one not compatible with the other, our smallness not capable of considering our vastness, as if it were new wine in an old wineskin, ready to tear or explode.  At one time we had moved on to the old trap rock quarry where, over a century, half a mountain had been blown up and shipped down to New Haven Harbor by rail, and then carted away to the world on slow, inhumanly large barges.  There, a 500 foot sheer cliff had been carved from the old rock, exposing ancient gray walls from near-creation to our addled minds.  I still remember the awe and the fear, the sense in which I believe the biblical writers had meant when they said, “Fear the Lord!”  
 
How far, yet how close those memories were to the article, where old Yankee neighbors I had grown up with talked of an ancient history of their own.  Through one of the notches, they said, George Washington had passed through twice on the now grown-over road once called Washington Trail, recruiting soldiers for the Revolutionary War.  There was a commemorative marker for those events down in the woods that had been put there in the 1930’s, and a picture in the magazine showed it.  I knew it and had visited it many times, feeling the history even though my ancestors had not farmed the area.   They also displayed a picture of one of the cliffs, I think the second of the three, where other direct relatives of the neighbors had chiseled their names into the hard rock 120 years and more ago.  These were great-uncles and great grand-fathers, people who they had known through stories from their parents.  These were their ties to the area that to them made their lineages as solid as the rock cliffs that jutted out from the forest, even as they reminded the rest of us of our small and delicate time on earth.   Such are the waves of memories, old and new and ancient, one washing over another, waves that can take us back farther and farther from shore either as gentle reminisces or as dangerous rip currents.  Back, back, out and further out.  I still shudder at the revelation by the foot of that quarry cliff.   
 
I will read the entire article eventually, but I don’t want to now.  I am now in another life, one that is more secure and more certain and I am afraid of reliving the excitement and uncertainty of that earlier life – even as I strive for an action, for something to re-stir that sense of awe and wonder.  What holds me back is that same fear, the same fear that draws me to conventional religion for further knowledge of the ultimate, of what we call God or the Lord.  They, the standing at the cliff and the kneeling at the church pew, are the same things packaged differently.  Both lead the mind back, further and further, as memory becomes revelation, becomes fear, becomes reality.  No matter that we kneel or stand, the truth is that we are almost nothing but history, but memory, tiny morsels in a boil of unimaginable power and size.  The memories touch innocence, touch sweetness, touch hard stone, touch death; the harsher they are, the more they cannot be avoided, standing there like the razor-backed cliffs that hung over the domain of my youth.  I fear, I long for the object of that fear.  It will be mine someday and, knowing that, everything else lives under its shadow.  Still, I walk softly, avoiding the edge, but I will go back.  I, we all, simply have to go back someday. 
 
 
 
 
 
 


​Nov 25, 2020 – Silent Spring
 
We turned south with almost no fanfare and too little preparation, as if the 800 mile trip were a jaunt to the quicky mart.  I scarcely remembered to check the tires on the camper, which were dangerously low, as were the balding treads on the Jeep, but no matter.  It once took a month or more to move by bark skin canoe down the Rock River to the Mississippi to the Tallahatchie to the small town in Eastern Mississippi State, but now we would do it in less than two days, and that only because we had the camper, cold weather be damned. 
 
And it was cold that first night in southern Illinois, near where we once broke down in the older Jeep, marooned in the local coal town for over a week as the methodical work of the mechanics lingered on.  My in-laws had come up to meet us from Mississippi then, but they would not meet us now, no matter what.  The father was dead by several years and the mother was in a nursing home, bones turned as brittle as a sparrow’s.  Because of Covid, we had not seen her for nearly a year.  Now, we could visit for two one half hour sessions.  Fourteen hours times two for one half hour times two.  With the highway substituting for the rivers of the old trappers, it was disease and regulations which made the trip long.  Two steps forward and one step back: it may be the way of all humanity.
 
Masks were everywhere in the filling stations, but the air was open and crisp at the nearly empty camping site on the far side of huge Rend Lake.  We scrounged in the woods for sticks and came up with enough to last well into the night, lit so brightly with stars that it was hard to believe that just three miles away a major highway roared.   We had all that was necessary: a book on CD, a cooler with beer and cold cuts and a bright, warming fire.   It was almost like it used to be, but of course never could be.  It was one week until Thanksgiving, but that didn’t matter.  There would be no such thing with the in-laws ever again, never mind that Covid-minded governors were frantically trying to control our lives with bothersome and unenforceable decrees against any gatherings whatsoever.  We must save lives at all costs!  Would we ever become too tired, or too inured, to listen?
 
It was sweet with warmth and the smell of newly fallen leaves at the Mississippi campground, where we arrived at dusk the following day.  There was little wood in the forest for some reason, and so we asked for and received directions for a seller of logs about eight back-country miles away.   I believe I cursed a good deal during the drive, tired and coffee-fueled and needing to stretch, but our wood dealer made the trip worthwhile all by himself.  He was an old, bearded coot in overalls with a thick accent who seemed reasonably nimble for his age, but we had not known the half of it:
 
“I wasn’t even walking just a few years ago.  I hit a deer on my motorcycle and they had to leave me lying in the road looking up at the sky until the helicopter could take me away.  I spent three months in the hospital just to be able to stand.  They had to teach me how to talk again after they remade what was left of my jaw.  I sound funny to myself because everything is different from my mouth to my nose.  I have to thank the Lord that I’m doing so well.” 
 
It was a miracle I would say, but what struck me most profoundly was how painful and terrifying the whole thing must have been.  To live through that, and now to be relatively normal!  But could you be normal after that?  Wouldn’t you be changed for all time? 
 
The next day, we met with my wife’s brother and his wife at a restaurant, where we sat outside because of the fear of our ever-present friend, Covid 19.  They wore masks until the food was brought, then happily discarded them for the hour or so it took to eat, only to put them back on when the plates were cleared.  What was the sense of it, except in the none-sense that fear creates in what a professor of mine once called the “space of death?”  But where then was the sense of any of it, of wearing seat belts, of fighting off the lions, even of eating?  We will all die eventually, right? 
 
So there is a timing to things and a reason, where life is worth everything and then is worth almost nothing or even less than nothing.  There is no great truth in life itself, then, except as it is embedded in time, and no one is in charge of time.   Where does that leave us?  The point to life hangs outside our jurisdiction, dependent like happiness on some external or internal mechanism far beyond our control or even from our own understanding.   That is where.  So for no reason that I knew, I kept my mask in my pocket as we waited for the check.
 
It did not remain there that afternoon, though.  We arrived ten minutes early at the old folks’ home, early because we had to follow a maze of sidewalks that took us to the back of the building where we could see mom at the enclosed outside patio secured behind a wall of steel wire.  We filled out forms and adjusted our masks as our temperatures were taken, and then waited in the slightly grimy environment as if we were kids waiting to see our incarcerated dad.  This was not a joyful moment, but rather one filled with the anxiety of anticipation.  How would she be after being separated from everyone but staff for so long?
 
We expect happy endings.  My own life is a testament to hope and failure, as was my father’s and as are so many, but still we are called to hope.  This was crushed again as she was wheeled in, stooped, depressed, talking of death: “If I had not sold the house, this wouldn’t have happened, but I guess that’s all behind me.  Now, I expect I’ll just die here.” The steep angle of the seat of the wheelchair forced her to rest her head on her arms as she spoke, as if speaking to no one.  Is was almost the truth except for something invisible that seemed to enter the room then.
 
I had met this intangible a few times before.  Once was at the side of my father a few months before he died.  At that point he was totally blind and slept 23 hours a day, at last getting a fill of a favorite pastime.  When he was told by the nurse that I was there, he woke as suddenly as a puppet on a string, saying in a clear, cheery voice, “Fred!  So good to see you!”  Thinking him fully back to himself, I began to speak, talking of politics and social issues as we always had done until I noticed an embarrassing silence.  He was no longer listening, or at best no longer cared to listen to such things.  I felt stupid and superficial, as I suppose such talk really is, until I noticed the depth of the silence.  It was not just him who was there.  An otherworldly presence had filled the room.  It was gentle and as open as the sky, but even more remote, apart from the things of the earth.  It was comforting him, ready to take him wherever we go after whatever strings that attach us to earth are pulled or clipped or fade away.
 
The second time was at the death of a 17-year-old girl who we tried to pull from a wrecked car.  Death hung around the whole area, and everyone acknowledged it in their whispered voices and hollowed eyes.  It was not evil or sad or anything like that, no more personal to us than a 707 waiting to take a family member back after a long visit, except that its entire presence was feeling alone, touching something common within each of us. 
 
So it was, but this time we, the nurse and my wife and I, remained silent as she spoke almost without breath of how she would die there.  Maybe she herself was not quite aware of it, but there it was, waiting gently, in no hurry, but ready.  This is the heart of quiet, a nothing beyond senses that promises an end and something new.  Truth.  Not scary, not joyous, this was the 707 or taxi or bus without noise or fumes, its driver knowing the destination but letting each passenger experience it for himself. 
 
The next day was a little bit better, the repetitions of thought of old age filling in the blanks of silence, but we had all experienced it: the emissary of death, which comes to us on cat feet like fog but leaves us with something far more profound.  There is no meaning to life without time, and when time runs out, a meaning without time waits, patient in its certainty that we will realize it, will look it in the face at last and fly away.  In the land without time, everything is patience.  
 
It is all about understanding, isn’t it?  We pull at our masks and remove ourselves from others to distance ourselves from this emissary, to give ourselves more time, more meaning here, but what of it, really?  When time gives us will, life has heart; when will holds back time, life is nothing but a holding on to something that has lost its meaning.  Yes, we do not want to fall into that silent presence, but the presence is in no hurry.  It will come soon enough, and we will find that everything in time that we ever possessed and dreamed for is only good for that time.  When time is no more, or when it is held as our only and last possession, all else is worthless. 
 
On the last day back, we woke at the same campsite in southern Illinois that we had camped in before.  There had been no stars that night, and rain and cold had filled in the unseasonal warmth that had been upon us the last few days.  Our times to see mom had been short, and in short time we would be home again, home to garbage day and church day and all those other days that go on as if forever.  The silence, however, has not fully gone away.  It lingers out the window view like a cloudy day in November, one day from Thanksgiving, a Thanksgiving like no other.  Lesser… shorter…quieter.  The birds will return in spring, I know, but we have all been left with a greater presence of silence, a place outside of time where only the birds of paradise might sing.  
 
 
 
 
 
 

​Sept 13 – Woods Stories
 
As I drove out from the cabin on the rutted road, gear and cooler leaping and clanking with each divot and rock, I thought it odd: what went wrong?  I had kept the beer in moderation, had done the chores the weather would allow, and had gotten in my share of hikes and bikes, but still, the feeling was off, even a little dark.  It is a feeling that is usually there when I first arrive alone, when there is nothing but the quiet and simple form of the cabin to greet me, but it has always gone within a few days, replaced by a sense of renewal.  Now I was glad to leave, as if I had woken up with a hangover in bed with someone from last night’s party that I could not recall.  It must have been the weather.  It had been so windy that the cabin trembled and the roar of Lake Superior could be clearly heard from four miles away. 
 
Sure, that was it, the wind, something exciting at first but a nuisance within a few hours.  But as I pulled into my must-stop coffee/gas station in Munising, it no longer mattered.  I was getting back to normal and was glad for it.  Now all I needed to do was to call home to find if my son Jeff was coming up that weekend after all.  Not a chance, really, as he and some friends had made other plans for Labor Day weekend (I usually go up north during the week to avoid the crowds.  A bonus of old age), but I had promised.  I called my wife’s number but was surprised to get Jeff.  He must have been waiting.
 
“Well, ya coming up or no?” I said rhetorically. “Yeah, I told you that I would after they put the trailer hitch on my car, remember?”  That was a surprise.  No, his coming up had been a remote possibility, but what the heck.  Now I had to go back to the simplicity of the cabin and all its primitive nuisances and unpack and get the gas and well-pump going.  Pain in the ass.  For some reason, this trial was going to continue.
 
Next afternoon started out just as dark.  Jeff arrived sullen-faced, still stung by a rebuke from his supervisor at work for ruining something.  His pals, he had said, had all flaked out at the last moment and so here he was.  It wasn’t a total loss for me, as I needed his help to lift in a new “100 pounder” of propane at the hardware store in Grand Marais, something I was going to attempt again in October, if my shoulder should get better.  It was kind of necessary, as the thought of losing flame while up in the coming winter was chilling.  Now with his help it should be little more than a nuisance, as long as he was up to it after driving 300 miles that day already.  “Sure” he said without joy. 
 
So we did, our faces flying free at the up-north hardware store where they didn’t believe in Governor Whitmer’s “stupid facemask order,” and then Jeff got the idea to hike a portion of the North Country Trail that we had not walked before.  “Sure,” I said without joy.  This stretch was all sand dunes and sand dunes are hard to walk in, and Jeff had no mercy, or understanding, of those beyond their more vigorous years. 
 
It was as tough as I had feared.  The trail went straight up a dune for the first fifty yards, and I was left pawing at the sand long after Jeff was catching views of the dunes and Lake Superior to the north, and much smaller Sable Lake across from the parking pull-off.  But the sun had finally come out and the views were glorious, the spread of sandy hills running off through glens of pine and poplar like some glorious shot from a Western movie.  We did our walk, returned to the cabin, set up the propane, got a look at Lake Superior at sunset, and then spent an evening with Scrabble and Octoberfest beer.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Things were changing.


But some things change the more they remain the same.  The horrible winds began their return, and my weather radio told me that they would increase to 45 mph that afternoon, with gusts up to 60.  After doing some other things, Jeff was determined that we should walk much further into the dunes that afternoon, and I couldn’t say ‘no’ to a guy who only got two weeks’ vacation a year.  We started late morning, scrambling up the same dune that had winded me the day before, and continued on and on, up and down similar dunes.  It was exhausting but beautiful, walking atop razor-back dunes towards a great shimmering expanse of fresh-water ocean.  Even after an hour-plus, my legs about to drop, it was worth it.  But as we began our return, we noticed that the wind had really picked up, and we were heading right into it.  It whipped our faces with needle-like stings of sand until we stopped in the shadow of a dune for Jeff to swim in the troubled lake.  I would not join him, knowing how cold it was, but Jeff happily, if briefly, jumped into the water whose waves had been churned to spiked ripples by the off-shore winds, clashing without compassion with the great mass of frigid water. 
 
The walk back was an adventure, which is to say, 90% misery and 10% excitement.  The sand hurt and drove into our cloths and hair, and the gusts nearly blew me off the ridges time and again.  I was stooped over like a cowboy in a Wyoming blizzard by the end, where we met some (East) Indians with thick accents who wanted to know if the hike was worth it.  “Was it pretty?” Yes, I answered, but (looking at the woman in nice city clothing) “hard walking, especially into the wind.”  It was obvious they were going on regardless, so I added, “But you’re young.  You’ll make it.”  They smiled with the confidence of youth and went off to become miserable and have a tale of their own to tell. 
 
I was hurrying the ride home, as it was well into afternoon and I was really hungry, driving as fast as was safe on the curving road along Lake Superior, when a maple fell across the road with one big “flop” only twenty or thirty yards in front of us.  It hadn’t been dangerously close, but made one think.  Another car had nearly been dumped on, and there the passengers sat, car idling before the leafy mass, wondering what to do.  I found a narrow space along the right shoulder and passed around it, but Jeff pointed us off to the side.  “Why don’t we move it?”  “Way too big” says I, but he insisted and so we parked and got out.  Positioning ourselves, we started to pull on the tree when we were joined by another young guy smiling for the challenge.  And somehow we moved it, with much less force than I thought – no, knew – would be necessary.  “There, we’ve done a good thing for the day,” said Jeff, and I agreed.  The heavy Labor Day traffic would have built up for miles until a park service guy had showed up or someone traveling with a chain saw had come along.  But no need.  The tree had been meant to be moved as surely as Mohamed was meant to move his mountains.
 
We returned to eat a disgusting box-formula lunch made with hamburger, which tasted surprisingly good after the hike, and I was ready for my afternoon nap.  Jeff wasn’t, and told me with startling vigor that he would take the logging trail around the lake near the cabin with the fat tire bike.  Hey, you’re funeral, I said.  An hour later I was up and making tea when Jeff came in, a return of that dark look on his face.  “Good ride?” I said, hoping not to have any drama.  “Ah…” And then the drama began.  Only Jeff, I thought, could find drama in the woods.
 
Turns out it was the real thing.  He had come across a guy lying on the side of the dirt trail with a day-pack on, who had not responded to Jeff’s call.  Jeff was afraid to disturb him, but was disturbed himself, and said so at the cabin.  “Should we go back and see if he’s OK?”  After getting several answers – he was in the road, not off; it was a day-pack, not a long-hiker load; he had not responded at all to Jeff’s voice; and he would not move – it was obvious we would have to go back.  I was in no mood to walk several more miles, so we put the bike in the Jeep and drove to within a mile of where the man had been, which was as far as I could go in a car.  Jeff then disappeared into the pines, to return about 20 minutes later with a look of relief.  The man, he said, had not been there, leaving only an impression in the sand and an empty can of Two Hearted Ale to show where he had once been.  He also had met a man with his young son on an ATV, who was also coming back to see if the man needed help.  He and his family were at the nearby campground, and he had found out that the guy who had been in the road had been with a group and had gotten violently drunk the night before, starting fights and flipping camping tables and so on.  The group had chased him off into the night, and there he was now, wandering the woods with a backpack of beer, afraid to return.  More, the DNR cops were now interested in his arrest. 
 
We got a good laugh about the miserable drunk until we were approached the following afternoon as we were cutting wood near the cabin by a National Park police SUV with two young officers inside.  They had been told that the owner of the campground might be up this way. I told them no, we were alone, but brought up the drunk in the road.  Sure enough, that’s who they were really after although I do not really know why.  How many people had he hurt?  How much damage had he done?  Or was it that they were worried for his safety, as getting lost in the big woods had killed more than a few hunters over the years? 
 
I felt sorry for the poor man, no matter how bad his behavior.  With a two-day hangover he probably thought his world was over and that he might as well get lost and die.  Truth is, as he apparently hadn’t seriously wounded anyone, he was probably going to be hated by the group and get a stiff fine, or maybe get a few months in the county jail.  He could apologize to everyone, whether they accepted it or not, pay his fine or do his time in jail, and start over again, sadder and hopefully more sober.  So it is for most of us who think we’re through.  Life has no limits on second and third and seventy times seven chances.  There is no natural waterline that says, “Sorry, this is now full.”  All depressives should understand this, and I hope this drunk-on-the-run does so before he is exsanguinated by the voracious mosquitoes of the North Woods. 
 
But that’s it; that’s how my poor time ended up north, not with a whimper but a bang.  It had only been waiting for the arrival of my son. 
 
I have been reading about St Anthony of the desert, who had been born to privilege, but, like St Francis centuries later, had shed his wealth to follow God, he as a hermit in the desert outside Alexandria in the late 3rd century.  There, he sequestered himself in a crude hut for 20 years, living only on the bread brought to him once a month.  After 20 years, he broke through the door to appear to his followers more fit than when he had entered.  He lived to age 105, even though he had tried to get himself martyred, and it was his many years among men that had made his life worthwhile.  The enclosure had given him wisdom, but it was the catalyst of so many others that had made his life worthwhile.
 
And so it had been with the arrival of my son.  My stay this time was not meant for me alone, but instead needed another element to bring results, and the results are simply this: that wisdom is not always gained by study or meditation; that sometimes, for life to be worthwhile, we need something or somebody else to interact with.  Sometimes it is they who set the spark or provide the fuel to bring the past into fulfillment in the present.  And the thing is, Jeff never had a clue as to his importance, nor had I until I began to write this essay. 
 
We don’t often know how we affect others or are affected by them, but sometimes we are positioned to be either the spark or the fuel by that which moves everything.  St Anthony was probably surprised by his own willingness to break his hermitage as well as by his astounding inability to get himself martyred in an age of wanton slaughter of Christians.  He had been made the fuel and the world his spark.  Just so, the drunk had unknowingly changed something for himself and his fellow campers and for me and Jeff, as had the fallen tree and the ferocious winds and the East Indians.  There is more to this than I can understand, but we can at least know that none of our plans or ideologies or strategies are worth a hair without the presence of the same will that chopped the waters and scattered the sands that day with my son on a beautiful stretch of dunes.   
 
 
 
 

Feb 22 – Snow Cowboys
 
As we drove past the endless lines of snow-draped pines, I have a few ideas what we looked like.  There was my skinny twenty-something son who I cannot imagine looks anything but innocent, his immigrant Moslem friend from a former “Stan” of the USSR, as bookish a city boy as they come, and me, grey-haired and shaved from a tin bucket just that morning.  Not a threatening or impressive group at all, sane and sober each one of us.  We were on a long-hall ride from the cabin in the UP on snowmobiles to Castle Rock just outside of Munising, engines roaring, but no one could imagine us pulling teeth from a tourist with a pliers in a sleazy biker’s bar, let alone wearing colors with skulls and wings on our nylon snow suits.  Tame, safe, boring.  But those other guys…
 
It’s quite a crowd along Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the winter.  Before the invention of snowmobiles, nobody but the unlucky few who live there year round would be caught in the lake-effect areas downwind from the big lake.  Until the lake freezes over – and this year it did not – every north, west, and north-west wind carries snow on it from condensation off the lake, and it piles up big in a short time.  Once good only for logging sleds, snow this deep has made the area the Mecca of the East for snowmobilers.  Weekends at the many rural bars can look like a trip into the future-world of AI robots, helmets and suits glowing, except for the vast quantities of beer downed, which might be counted as oil and fuel for the more biological alien visitors to this white, white land.
 
This last trip we made was in the middle of February and there was a good four feet lying around by the time we bulldozed our way a half mile off -trail to the cabin.  In winter, the first order after arriving, or second after unlocking the door, is always shoveling the path to the outhouse, which soon looks like the bob sled run at Lake Placid.  Sometimes that run is needed in a hurry.  The next and the next is shoveling out the propane gas tanks in the back and the passage to the subterranean well-house in the front.  Then there is more shoveling of the porch and who knows what else.  Snow, snow, snow.  After a few days of it, one feels like a 19th century fur trapper in the Yellowstone, wizened and toughened by nature’s rugged hand. 
 
One feels like it, yes, but one often does not look the part. 
 
Castle Rock is set aside from everything else on the edge of the big lake and the Hiawatha National Forest.  There is a walkway out to a platform that hangs on the edge of a 200 foot cliff that drops into Lake Superior, which on that day was churning up endless hunks of freezing water in its ten-foot waves.  The cliff walls were covered with ice spray to thirty feet or more, and off to the side in the midst of this frozen chaos climbs Castle Rock, a spire of rock rising 100 feet from the water.  It looks slightly like a castle, yes, but the best part for me is the story it carries of the 18th century shipwreck.  It had happened off the rocks of the cliff in this same weather.  The survivors were only able to make it to Castle Rock, to which they clung for the better part of a day until help arrived.  By that time, few had survived.  To both the perished and the survivors alike, it must have been an unimaginable nightmare.  
 
As said, rugged all, from roaring machines today, back in time to shipwrecks, back in time beyond where we can count to the initial grand horrors that the forces of nature can be.  It was near that cliff where we parked our snowmobiles along with the few others who had made it out to the hardened drifts of the unplowed site, and from where we walked, slipping and dropping into soft spots along the way, to the look-out.   And it was on that look-out as I starred below to the dramatic sloshing of frozen death, where my younger companions brought out their cell phones.  They wanted pictures, and it so happened that four other guys had come up just behind us to get the same ghastly view.  My son asked one of them to do the honors of a shot with his friend and then with me, and it was then that I got a look at our death-view companions.   Unlike us, they looked like they should be there, so much so that I wondered that my son would entrust his precious phone to one of them. 
 
Bandits is what I first thought.  All four were probably friends from youth, now each about forty, reliving, I suspect, some of their wilder days.  One of them had pulled out a can of cheap beer apiece from his snowsuit, handing them around as if it were a hot day at a picnic. They popped the beers whether they wanted to or not, bringing them to gritty, stubbled faces that seldom saw the inside of an office.  These seemed to be those of the hard-working class who wore their calluses on their hands rather than on their ulcers.  All were laconic and unsmiling, even as one of them learned the buttons of my son’s camera and took the shot.  As a team, they seemed accustomed to the trail and ready to tussle on short notice.  I was not wary of a fight in a situation like this, but rather accessing character as I usually do.  My assessment: rugged tough-guys, cowboys on snowmobiles with little patience for – oh, I don’t know – wordy ramblings like this. 
 
So remained my assessment until the same guy who took the picture walked back to my son and asked him to take a picture of them, the tough snow cowboys.   Sure, my son said, and all lined up, backs set before the low wall that separated them from the cliff’s edge and instant death.  Then my son raised the cell phone and said, “smile;” and so they did, and I would have laughed if I had not been so astonished. 
 
Innocence beamed, as if each were smiling for their precious fairy-princess daughter back home, which might have been true.   They were also probably smiling for their wives, who, even if they wore bold tattoos, probably were never roughly told to ride the “bitch seat.” Regular guys, that is, who might have loved barroom fights and hound-led bear hunts, but still reflected family values that might have been more myth than reality in their lives, but were embraced none-the-less.  They were to me as if Clint Eastwood, after saying, “Go ahead, make my day – punk!,” teared up in a picture with a bald-headed child for a St Jude Hospital commercial; as if Al Capone minced a weak smile after a toddler pushed an ice cream cone in his face; as if a face of rock could become a pastry of mushy sentimentality with the flick of a switch, or the click of a camera. 
 
Which might be true, but maybe not.  Hitler liked his dogs, but did he roll on the rug with them as they licked his face?  Did Stalin become dewy-eyed at the sight of a beautiful sunset, or Mao fall to his knees from the grace of a white crane landing in water?  Probably not, as they made their living and infamy from being inflexible before human pathos and suffering.  One has to break a few eggs to make an omelet, Vladimir Lenin is reported to have said, and it is this feeling, that humans are cogs in the machine of one’s designs, which makes greatness happen.  But then there are the rest of us.  In Lord of the Flies, it is the viciousness of power that wins out among “natural” untrained children, but is that really so?  I remember reading a Playboy interview back in the 1970’s with author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote the Gulag Archipelago series and suffered greatly during the Soviet reign.  He was then living in Vermont and he warned the interviewer in no uncertain terms that we were doomed if we did not toughen up.  The Soviets, he said, were willing to sacrifice anything for their goal, and the wishy-washy sentimentality of the West was doomed before this patina of granite.  And yet, where is the Soviet Union now?  We still might fall, and some day almost certainly will, but in that test of metal between East and West, it was we, not the hardened dictatorship of the masses, who triumphed.  How could that be? 
 
Who, that is, breaks first, those who deny their weaknesses, or those whose humility allows them to express them, at least at certain times?  It seems we owe our existence to the words “humility” and “at certain times,” for it is there where the secret might lie for greater strength.  We might picture an incredibly hard substance like obsidian and how it can shatter like glass, but I think endurance and survival at large requires both the hardness of obsidian and the flexibility of Gumby.  A seeming paradox, we find these qualities mixed in the Great Religions.  It is to this paradox that much criticism is formed against Christianity – how, indeed, can a merciful god be so cruel? – and yet it is this very paradox that has made such systems so resilient.   “Be as strong as the oak and as flexible as the willow,” Chinese wisdom tells us, and we know what that means even if it does not sound at all logical.  Be absolutely tough when demanded, and humble and forgiving when not.  This has always been the way to conquer those who break eggs to make omelets but can never stop breaking eggs long enough to care for the chickens.    
 
Cowboys sing lonesome songs and carry pictures of girlfriends both real and imagined.  The very hardness of their lives calls them to a certain tenderness, and this is why America fell in love with them in its imagination so long ago.  Grip the saddle horn or the icy rock as hard as necessary, but make place for the night campfire and the crooning of heart-breaking tales.   Pay attention to your work, but leave space for the upward yearning that swells in all but the most hardened of hearts.  Somehow it is this, not implacable hardness, which endures, even on the edge of the most unforgiving of cliffs. 
 
 
 
​

Feb 5 '20 – How the River Flows
 
It is odd how this all moves, how each life is an effort that often ends where not directed, but sometimes does, demolishing any calculations of Murphy’s Rules.   And more, this movement is not one but rather several, currents of professional or personal or spiritual or on- and -on import that move together, then part.  We cannot control one current completely, never mind a dozen, yet we have to think we do to keep on trying.  Still, try as we will, sometimes we cannot fool ourselves.  Sometimes we hit a wall that stops any further movement with one current that effects all others, or at least seems to.
 
Books.  Over fifteen years ago, a few years after I reluctantly moved to Wisconsin, I had to decide on a new direction for the next twenty or so years of my life.  Predictably, because it was so quixotic (as in impractical) I chose writing.  I had, after all, spent most of my life doing it and had been disciplined by the completion of a PhD dissertation to be able to tackle just about any paper work.  In those fifteen years I was able to write eight books.  Two of them are now self-published and available for purchase.  I plan to pull together two or three more for self-publication as long as we have the money, but the whole effort has become nothing but a project in vanity.  It is not because God hates me, or that I am a terrible writer.  It is not because the system is against me or that my genius makes those publishers so jealous that they have to bury my efforts.  No, it is because, with the ubiquity of personal computers, writing has become easy for everyone.  Writing well is still just as hard, but with hundreds of thousands of new works out every year, no one can or wants to wade through the mire looking for pearls or even a few unbroken shells.  Because I do not have the gift – or perhaps it’s just grit – of the salesman, that means that most of my efforts have been and will continue to be met with indifference.   It is not God’s punishment, but only the real world come home to roost.
 
There is one way to get ahead of the herd, however, even without connections or a sparkling salesman personality, and that is to have a really gripping personal experience that everyone wants to read about.  War stories are good, as are tales of survival or beating insurmountable odds.  So, too, are good adventure tales, and that is where the saleable thing in my life has happened.  I have a good adventure tale.  I lived for two years with Indian communities in the Venezuelan Amazon, one of those years among a group that was stone-aged as late as the 1970’s, and so remote that we were the first to do in-depth fieldwork among them.  And yet I have not produced a complete book – not a thesis but a book – about the adventure.  I have not because, for reasons hidden to me, I cannot. 
 
Since I can write about anything else ad-nauseum, I have often attributed my writer’s block on this one spectacular adventure to a shaman’s curse.   When grasping for a reason, sometimes I find that this is the only thing that serves as an adequate explanation.  The cause of his curse happened on one single night at the beginning of the rainy season along a river’s edge in a land far, far away, somewhere in the foothills of the largely unmapped Maigualida Mountains.  Apparently, the curse is for all time and can never be undone.
 
The facts given above surrounding that one fateful night are relevant.  Rivers in the Amazon are extremely important for the support of a large village, as they give both adequate water for a hot land and an abundant source of protein in fish.  The village was large because to its side was a Catholic mission peopled by Colombian nuns, who dispensed life-saving medicine.  We had first lived in a small community in the mountains, but after a month became concerned for our food supply.  The Indians gave us little and the rainy season was coming in.  With the rains, we could not cross the numerous mountain streams that frothed forth with the storms, and so could not return to the mission to replenish our supplies.  The rainy season was what made us move, then, but was also important because it marked the beginning of the planting season, the birthing time of several animal species, and the whole notion of fertility central to the tribe.  Because it was so important, the natives had their greatest festival at the beginning of the torrential rains at the tribe’s largest village.  And it was at this great festival where I believe the curse was made.  
 
It was not the shaman’s fault.  He had warned us, and I was good with his warning, but my research companion was not.  In this story it seems a fault of hers, but overall this fault was a blessing, as we were there to collect information in a limited amount of time.  Between us, she was the go-getter, the one who hustled to ask questions, to learn the language, to take pictures and do all that ethnographic stuff that was to lead to our doctoral anointments.  I was a slacker, but also the breadwinner.  I chopped and collected wood, cooked our miserable meals over the fire, and went hunting several times a week with the natives.  My philosophy was to lay back and go with the flow – essentially, to go native.  My approach was best, I think, for someone with several years to learn.  Hers was best for our limited time and budget.  Unfortunately, it was also what brought about our curse. 
 
            This story started when we learned that the big festival was going to happen the next day.  It was kept a semi-secret, because it was to be pagan in every way, and contrary to the wishes of the nuns, who had no official power but did have control of the all-important medicine chest.  This was our big chance at big anthropology, however, and so we begged and bribed with food and machetes the shaman until he finally relented, telling us that we could come to the festival, as long as, 1) we kept out of the way, and 2) we did not bring any recording devices.  We agreed, and as said, I was fine with the deal.  My companion the go-getter was not, and so stuffed a small tape recorder down her pants before going that next night to the festival.  That was our grave sin.
 
            As it was, the shaman had been right: the nuns would not have approved.  Most of the men used an hallucinogenic snuff which got them bizarrely wasted, animals were imitated very explicitly in their mating ways, and most of the young went not-too-quietly outside to sow their wild oats, not once, but many times.  It was, really, an orgy that would have done San Francisco proud during the Summer of Love. 
 
            It apparently had real magic in it, too.   I have written of this before, but I’ll summarize it here:
            The night after the big festival I had the oddest dream.  I had made a plan to go on a big hunt with a large group of men the next day, and in this dream, a voice came to me and said, “Tomorrow you will kill seven animals.”  The hunt went through mountain and field and forest for the better part of the day, until evening when we were within a mile of the village.  I had shot six animals, a few of medium size, and didn’t expect to kill anything else on this stretch of open savanna.  I told the native in front of me the story of the dream and the seven animals and how I had only hunted six to see what he had to say, and he stopped me short.  In broken Spanish he said, “No, seven.  The dream had truth.  That squirrel you shot that ran away we found dead a few minutes later.”  So it is that ways of the spirit often joke with us. 
 
            But the curse: I use the example of the real magic above to show that such a thing might be possible.  With other somewhat more enculturated (to the Venezuela mainstream) Indians, their complaint was often that we would steal their information from them and then write a book and become rich without sharing the fortune.  Wouldn’t writer’s block be the perfect revenge for breaking a solemn promise?
 
            Yes it would, but now I see that such speculation and regret is silly.  Had I hit the bigtime with a book about the Indians, I would not be the ‘me’ that I now am.  I would not have the freedom to endlessly explore the spiritual realm without fear of ridicule from my professional rivals.  I now often do menial labor, but that leaves plenty of mind space to ponder everything else.  The life I live is not a gala ball of the rich and famous or even a world of the artsy and hip, but rather one of fulfilling basic needs and then thinking, praying and sometimes cursing, each done against a mental backdrop of a swirling and unlimited cosmos that overlays or interplays with everything else. 
 
            This is the ultimate revenge of a greater spirit.  This is not the type of spirit that is manifested through an angry witch doctor, but rather one that is holy and caring, and is concerned that we break through the dense fog of ordinary life to grasp at least a hair of what we are and what all of life really is.  Just as the seventh animal from the hunt was revealed through a trick, so a better future is often revealed through what is thought to be a curse.  The future I had wanted, and sometimes still do, was denied for the possibility of something far greater.  The curse was in reality a gift delivered amidst shifting layers of deception, because that is the only way such futures can come to be.  We only want what truth gives us if we already know something of the truth.  For most, we want fame and fortune over humble quietude, and so must be tricked into living a more meaningful life.  No matter, spirit knows us better than we know ourselves and will find a way to make us turn back towards it regardless of our circumstances.  It might often use our gifts and desires against us for a time, but always for us in the end. 
 
            Come to think of it, even if everything since that time has flowed from the shaman’s curse, the shaman, too, has been fooled into thinking his curse was his alone to control.  So, I suspect, we are all being fooled.  Even as we believe we are masters of our destinies, our lives are being steered quietly through the clashing currents towards the gathering waters where one day we will look up and gasp at a limitless sea with anything but disappointment.  
 
 
 
 
 
Nov 20 – Perspective
 
The ugly time of year has arrived early, and it caught everyone by surprise.  On my property, the stalks and tomato cages were still up, and a few peppers still alive and green when we got the first snow.  The dead limbs cut from pine and invasive saplings were left in piles, cold and wet and frozen before I could take them up, as were some stacks of firewood still lying beside the stumps.  Dying leaves were caught in transition, stuck frozen to the oaks and hickory like buildings left behind in an old nuclear test zone.  We might say that time has been stopped in mid-poise at its worst moment. 
 
Or one could say that a new beauty has been revealed.  What was white and frozen has begun to melt slightly under overcast skies.  The dwindling snow has surprised the eye with green patches on the thawing ground, and wisps of white on pine boughs have become bejeweled droplets hanging precariously above the softening earth.   It will not end in life, one knows, for the increasing length of darkness alone tells us we are heading another way, but it does not have to be sad.   Rather, one might say that sadness would be stasis, as it would be to be trapped on a tropical island that never changed, where not even the waves and the weather and the palm trees shifted for time.   How many bottles of tequila would it take to quell that boredom? 
 
Perspective, the glass half empty or half full.  It might be that one person is not better than the other, but rather that one entertains a more fruitful perspective than the other.  So I had been struck as I made my way through Elie Wiesel’s once-famous book,  A Beggar in Jerusalem.  As each chapter is separated from another in my edition by a blank page, to add to the poignancy I suspect, I made notes on my impressions along the way.  Wiesel was a professional writer who survived the Nazi holocaust (which means ‘sacrifice’) and became famous from the shadows of his dark experience that he casts upon his novels.  Looking at my notes I see that at first I was deeply impressed, saying, “I could write like this if I suffered enough.  I must be glad that I have not.”  A few chapters later we find Wiesel writing about the great mistake the most famous Jew of all, Jesus, made in proclaiming the triumph of love.  “You think you are suffering for my sake and for my brothers’, yet we are the ones who will be made to suffer for you, because of you…I painted a picture [to Jesus] of the future which made him see the innumerable victims persecuted and crushed under the sign of his law.”   That is the view of a Jew who has suffered under extreme pain, and it is understandable.  But volumes and volumes have been and can still be written about how untrue this is.  Jews can write of their “exceptional” persecution because they have existed as a literate people for thousands of years.   Others have been so tortured and raped and killed and crushed that they cannot speak because no one has been left to do so.  In the midst of the endless saga of human brutality, Wiesel cannot see that Jesus has produced an alternative that allows us to feel for Wiesel rather than to hate him and his people for their weakness, as conquerors usually do.
 
Perspective.  We see Wiesel’s mistake spreading like spilled ink across the world, accelerating at an alarming rate in our own Western culture.  We see that the richest and fairest of all large societies is being torn from within because it is not perfect.  What is great within is being tossed out with what is not, the baby tossed with the bathwater, in an unfathomable violation of all that is considered holy.  Man’s inner angels are condemned or denied, while the divine artifact of nature is held as divinity itself.  In this, Man is an alien, a diseased interloper rather than the measure of all things – rather than the very point of it all.  The hollow men among us, as T.S. Eliot has written, are pulling us all into the vacuum that has replaced their souls.  They see only from without, while the saints and holy men see from within as well. 
 
Perspective can mean everything.  If one looks only upon the world, there seems no point but to indulge, to gain, and then to lose.  What man would suffer for this, what woman would bear the burden of generations for this?  It is written as surely as scripture that such perspective means death, witnessed in the closed churches and empty homes of the wealthiest people in world history who have less and less people to fill them.  All is dross, they are coming to say.  Humanity is a bad dream which should awaken – become woke – to self-annihilation.  The logic is sound, if one has this perspective.   
 
But it is insanity for those who don’t.  We are now in a war of perspective that would be Armageddon were it of the whole world, which it is not.  The poor and miserable of this world are filled with their lack, and it is perhaps to them that the future belongs.  It is perhaps their fate now to spend two thousand years climbing out of their lack and misery, compelled by the soul of hope that gives rhythm to their hearts and desire to their spirits.  It might be a desire that leads nowhere, as we pretend to have found, but at least it is one that envisions a brighter future rather than an unthinking world of matter and the frigid emptiness of space. 
 
However, this might be all wrong.  It depends on one’s perspective.  In all great tales, the hero must eventually arrive at the darkest place where all seems lost, where hope is futility, before he finds his strength again, this time greater than before.  It might end in a hero’s parade, or in his death, but even in this there is rejoicing.  In either case we have been delivered from hopelessness by the hero who has shown us the path of meaning, whether to justice or to eternity.   We are shown that setbacks are necessary to replace the false heart, the desire of natural want, with the true heart, the fulfillment of eternal desire.  It might just be what Elie Wiesel has gotten wrong about Jesus.  Maybe he was not just some Jewish dreamer in an Iron Age commune, but a hero of souls plotting out a path for the world, one that bound misery and corruption and wealth and death to something that makes the earth sing with the choir of angels.  Maybe he was plotting out a path not for the fulfillment of nature around man, but for the fulfillment of man for whom nature was given. 
 
Dank and dreary or subtle beauty, all is a matter of perspective.   We can bewail our victimhood or celebrate our strength in adversity.   We can condemn ourselves to death or live beyond our greatest fears to create a brave new world.  We can hate our separation from nature, or understand that we stand apart for a reason – that we stand apart for a greater perspective, one that can see the beauty in the dank and the wisdom in the dreary.   It may be that it is we alone as a species who have been given the great curse and greater blessing of perspective.  Above it all, it may be that the force of will it gives us over self and nature intimates our first link to God, our first inkling that faith can move mountains. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sept 25 - Panic Button 
 

I often credit my lack of major health problems over the years with my lack of doctors’ office visits.  My rationale is this: no body is perfect, especially once into middle age.  They will find something.  Repeated visits for that something will find something else.  It will snowball, and the next thing you know, you have to have a pill box at your side to remind you which pills to take on any day of the month.  The calendar on the wall will tell you your next appointment at the doc’s, or for the MRI, or for surgery.  Each will give you another set of pills to take, and the spiral will continue until you are so convinced that you are an old wreck that you actually become an old wreck.
 
I claim to have proof of this, as all the old-looking people do indeed have multiple problems and surgery and stuff, but I have to admit that the rationale is not rational.  No, people really do get real problems, and hiding one’s – my – head in the sand will not solve them.  This might put off the day of reckoning for a few years, but by then, it might be too late and the only recourse is transplant surgery or death.  Or so they tell us …
 
It is obvious that I have recently been pulled (somewhat) towards the other way – the doctor’s way – and there are two reasons for this.  One, I have had to sign up for Medicare and all that nonsense to save our hard-earned cash for the last two desperate years of our lives, rather than using it all on the more current and slightly less desperate years of our lives.   This government program has made the initial check-ups a lot cheaper, but also has highlighted the reasons for Medicare, which is, that the older we get the more we fall apart.  Which has led me to reason # two: the average healthy person who has not been compromised (killed) by an accident or in childbirth or by an infection would live to about seventy years of age, just as the Bible says, without modern medicine.  Regardless of what they tell you, this has always been the case.  Our genetic make-up has changed very little in the past ten thousand years, and seventy years is about par for our Homo sapiens course.  Seeing as I am sixty five as I write this means that I probably would have only five or so years left without medical intervention.  The clock is running down, the motor is reaching its maximum, and the fertilizer is about to hit the ventilator.  Those are the odds, and because there is absolutely no reason I can find that would place me above the odds - and, what the hell, the initial visit is now cheap - I made a doctor’s appointment for a physical.  
 
As I drove in for the big day last week, I tried to recall when the last time was that I had an extensive physical.  It was at least twelve years before, and another twenty years before that, for a total of two exams since my eighteenth birthday.  At this, I almost turned around.  I mean, there was nothing big-time wrong with me except normal age depreciation, and NOT going to the doctor’s had served me well for all of my adult life.  Meanwhile, people my age and younger were dropping like flies, if not from death, then from complications from multiple drug interactions and operations gone wrong.  What the hell was I doing?  As I approached the parking lot, I began to panic.  This is it, I thought – the beginning of the end.  They will find something wrong, they will prescribe, more will go wrong, they will operate and prescribed again, and in no time I will look like everyone else hobbling in to the doctor’s, which that day seemed comprised exclusively of very old people with gray complexions and the lung power of fluttering butterfly wings. 
 
With heart pounding and an impending sense of doom, I queued up behind one man with diabetic sores on his legs and waited while the nurses and/or receptionists chatted with clients about mindless things that had nothing to do with health or dying.  I reminded myself of the virtue of patience until one of these nurses/receptionist said to no one in particular, “it’s a fire drill,” and then spoke the same words to everyone over the intercom.  From there, it was like the attack of the zombies, as all the old and frightened – that would include me – patients stumbled out of their secreted lairs into the strong sunlight.  This little outing lasted for fifteen whole minutes, and when I was back in the building and finally up to the desk, I was told by the nurse/receptionist that this was the only time they had had a drill in her ten years with the practice.  To a self – centered person who might not have been to a physical in twelve years, this might have seemed as if he himself had been isolated and preyed upon by fate.  Coincidentally, so it seemed to me as well. 
 
As doom settled around me like fog, I was forced to step on the scale, revealing a shocking weight gain, or at least a several – pound difference from the rusted scale in our bathroom, and then I was led into the cell of my own jailer, a nurse with an impossibly cheery smile.   As a Medicare welfare bum, I was subjected to the whims of the Man, which included questions about falling, my ability to get around the house, whether or not I felt safe in my house, and several other things that seemed to want to make me admit that I was now too old to wipe my own butt.  Then came the clock test, where I was to draw a picture of an analogue clock at 2:30, both AM and PM, leaving me to wonder how the digital generation would fair with such a question.   This took some concentration, as I did not want to get it wrong and have someone appointed to me to make all my personal decisions, but this turned out to be a trick.  Before that test, I had been given three words, “ocean, dusk,” and “tractor,” and then asked to remember them a few seconds later, which had been predictably easy.  But then I was asked to repeat them after the clock test, which I could only do because I had figured they would pull this kind of crap on me.  And so it was that my first real transformation in the age of Medicare came about, where I was forced to plot my way around the bureaucracy, and remember for all time those three words that otherwise make no sense together whatsoever.   
 
Ah, but then came transformation number two, the real deal that I knew would transpire: the blood pressure test showed itself to be high.  At this the doctor came in, who redid it and then showed his concern by whipping out his stethoscope.  “Of course my pressure’s high” I argued, “as I’m filled with a sense of doom.”  But this did not muffle the sound of my flubbing heart, which was making some back-flubs he called “murmurs.”  This made both our expressions even graver, and with that, out came the equipment for the EKG.  I was put on the table where electrodes were attached to chest and legs as if I were a dead frog being used for a high school bio lab.  When it was done, the nurse began to carefully remove the tape from my chest and leg hair, where I told her, “Don’t worry.  That’s a nothing pain,” meaning, if she caught my drift, “that’s like taking care that the ash of the last cigarette of a man before a firing squad doesn’t drop on his shirt.”  Yes, if she could only understand.
 
I was then left alone with my dark thoughts, or really dark thoughtless emotions, until the doctor came back with a print-out of the EKG.  As he sat down at the computer, the verdict now trivial in my mortal situation, I noticed the sound of a beeping car alarm.  The building was made of brick and the window blinds shut, but I had a premonition that, out of all the cars in the lot, this was my car.  Ignoring the doctor as he was about to speak, I spread the blind with my fingers and, sure enough, there, more than fifty yards away, was my aging silver Jeep lighting up with every annoying beep.  Apparently the car fob in my pocket had been pressed when I lay down for the EKG and the signal had gotten through the building.  I had forgotten how to stop the beeping, so I pressed both the “on” and “off” or open button, and then the panic button.  Nothing worked, but I recalled that it was the panic button that both turned on and shut off the obnoxious blare, so I hit it again.  And again and again, until it finally worked. 
 
My transformed mind then made another conclusion: when at the doctor’s office, hit the panic button.  Hit the panic button again and again until panic ends.
 
The test showed nothing wrong, but it was now way too late.  I was ushered into the blood-letting unit to fill a few vials, and then into an office where a further and bigger test at the hospital was scheduled, along with a later meeting with the real Man who would give the really heavy news, the cardiologist.  I had opened Pandora’s Box.  It was all downhill from here.  At both of the nurse and/or receptionist stations, I was told, “You look like you’re about to bolt!”  And at both stations, my reply was, “Got that right!”
 
Which reminds me: when my mother was beginning to die of heart failure and she was recommended for surgery, my father, who had been critically ill for some time said, “No need – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”  Of course, it was ‘broke,’ but what about something that is only slightly cracked?  If it isn’t quite broke, don’t fix it before it is broke? 
 
That is me, and it is downright silly.  This might seem prima facie like mere cowardice, but my panic is not from the impending reality of death.  Seeing as I, through real-life experience, definitely believe in a God who takes personal interest in us, and seeing that this logically leads to a God who will judge us somehow after death, if I believed in death I would not give a damn about the things of this world and would live like a saint.  But seeing as I do give a whole lot of damns about the things of this world and do not even come close to living like a saint, I know for certain that I don’t really believe in my own death.  Yours, yes, but not mine.  Nor, I bet, do you, or you would live differently too.  But if death in my inner mind does not exist, what causes my panic at the doctors?
 
I have a clue.  When I was eleven, a hurricane came up the coast and I was determined to put it to good use.  With the wind blowing like mad, I put up a ladder in the middle of a field, tied a bed sheet to my ankles, and holding the other ends with my hand, began to climb the ladder.  I was going to fly high and far, and all the kids in the neighborhood were there to witness my glorious accent.  Unfortunately I had not yet come to understand the ways of nature, let alone study physics, and before I could reach the top, was whisked off the falling ladder, where my right wrist was caught in one of the steps.  With this, my wrist was thoroughly broken and I had to fight my tears, although more of them came after the emergency room visit than before.  That was because I was humiliated to be put in a situation of dependency by my medical condition.  In those days they handed out good wallops of morphine for pain, but I preferred to suffer than be dependent on any medication (years later I would use the morphine for fun, but that’s another story).  I braved my way through and tried to do everything I normally could even though the cast was definitely a hindrance.  I would not have my independence questioned or qualified, no matter what.
 
Just like now.  The panic at the doctor’s for me is the panic of claustrophobia, of having my imagined independence taken away from me, of being shoe-horned into the system of stultifying medical rules that enforce absolute compliance.   All of the above is true, but again my attitude is a special kind of stupidity.  Yes, medicine is run by a politburo, but regardless, I am not free now and was certainly not free at age eleven.  I am dependent on farmers and on truck drivers and on manufacturers, all of which are dependent on oil producers, who are dependent on farmers and manufacturers, who all need a doctor now and then.  We are all on the grid to some degree, and now at my age and experience I could not come close to living off the grid anyway. 
 
And more.  I do not make things grow, or the sun to come up, or my aging heart to beat.  I do not make the physical laws of the universe or create anything out of nothing.  I am entirely dependent on what this God I believe in has made and could never, ever get off that grid even if I were a hardened Apache tracker.  Humility in this world is essential to understand one’s place in the universe, and I have been ill-equipped for it, as have more and more of us.   More and more of us believe that we can make our own rules, too, even decide our “gender,” and more and more of us reject spiritual rules for the same illusion of independence.   At the very least, I can say that my stupid notions of independence are well-shared and are becoming more popular every day. 
 
But no: one’s gender is one’s gender, water leaks out of poorly-made pipes, and lives of people who live without rules mess up sooner rather than later.  We live by dependence, and life lived by willful dependence on the final Word, that which makes everything as it is, is simply better.  Just as with the properties of water, it is better to conform to reality than to defiantly fight it.  If we do, we find that we are ever more grateful for the work of our civil engineers and plumbers and prophets and saints who deal with what is rather than what we might wish things and non-things should be.
 
I don’t believe that I will ever like going to the doctor’s.   They do indeed work with biological reality as it is, but they do indeed have rules and regulations that often border – no, that often cross the border – of the inane.  But to panic for this is no less stupid than to panic for the reality of life.  We cannot break life’s physical rules and, if we are honest, cannot really break its spiritual rules either.  We are often like totally dependent children who break an arm or leg and believe that they can preserve an independence that never really existed.  We can hold our tear-stained eyes high as if we were gods, or not go to the doctor’s, but in the end, that wave will come crashing down and that heart attack will come.  And just as we find our greatest physical pleasure in submission to passionate love, so we might find an even greater pleasure in submission to a universal love.  Such it is that the doctors of faith tell us, and who am I to doubt a doctor? 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 

August 21 – Discernment
 
It is not a complimentary picture: I was 25 years old, had recently graduated from college way past ordinary time, and was living in my parent’s basement.  I have to quickly jump in here to say that I soon got a job and moved out, but all any woman I met then would know of me was my age, monetary status and living situation.  One can imagine that it was not one of the high points of my life story.  It could have been worse, however, as my friend from that same college showed me one late hung-over Saturday morning.
 
A few years before, I had returned to college after three years of knocking around – it had been then that I had had my hitching adventures portrayed in Dream Weaver - and had naturally slid into the party set at State U.  During that time, a younger brother of a friend of mine had started college, and, lucky for him – Don – I quickly introduced him into the club of late-night bongs.  He was ready made for it, having become an ardent Dead Head in high school, so I suppose I shouldn’t feel guilty about it, but I certainly did after he roused me from my bleary sleep that October morning.  He had spent the last part of the summer following the Grateful Dead concerts and had ingested all the attendant head-spinners one concert after another, until he ended up with the Big Bummer.  At the time of his visit he still had a few years to go in college.  He had already started the new academic year physically, but never mentally, and now it was all coming apart.  After the last concert, the Bummer had never left him.
 
It wasn’t that he was still tripping.  When he crept down the stairs that morning into the damp basement chill, he was not seeing colors or having intimations of immortality, but he was still tripping in his way.  Something had been fundamentally altered in his brain, and now he was in mortal fear.   As far as he knew, they were after him, and he was afraid.
 
The “they” he was speaking of were the big boys, the FBI, and according to his hushed story that morning, they were after him because of his numerous high-tech thefts.  He explained these in guilty detail as I felt the effects of last-night’s party in my pasty mouth.  It had to do with the phone company.  In the early 80’s we still only had dial-up plug- in phones that charged enormous amounts for long-distance phone calls which might include those to the next town and certainly to the next county.  Since he had Dead Head friends everywhere and money nowhere, he had learned from the bong- set how to get around those charges by hooking the phone jacks up differently (exactly how I forget).  Thus he had gotten away with several hundred dollars’ worth of charges.   Hundreds, not thousands.  And for this, the FBI had a massive man-hunt out for him. 
 
I supposed at first that, since the phone calls went across state lines, he may have had a point, but the extent of the perceived investigation did not add up.  It was a few hundred bucks high- jacked over several months by a trick that thousands of young people were then using.  Besides, no regular person gave a damn about it because we all hated the all-powerful AT@T monopoly at the time, so within minutes, I questioned his fear.  It did not seem to me that the FBI had the resources or inclination to throw several agents at him over so small an infraction, one that certainly didn’t endanger the life of liberty of his fellow Americans.  More certain that I was correct, I took a deep breath to continue my reassurance, but he quickly held up a hand before his terrified eyes: not here, his gesture said.  Then he whispered that it might be better if we took a long walk in the stretch of woods out back.  I protested that I needed to brush my teeth first, but his urgency was overpowering.   I put on my shoes as I began to suspect what was happening, and soon we were in the quiet of the forest.  
 
“Can we talk now?”
 
Don looked around nervously and shook his head.  “Wait until we’re in the cedars.  They’re listening everywhere.”
 
Uh oh.  I shut up until we were in the thick brush of a twenty acre stretch of dense cedar trees and then said, “Don, you think they’re listening to you out here in the trees?”
 
“Everywhere,” he said, now so nervous that his voice trembled.
 
“That’s nuts.  They aren’t hiding here and they wouldn’t have planted listening devices here.  How could they know?”
 
“They know everything.”
 
“No they don’t, Don.  Now, please listen to me.  I’ve been where you are before.  It seems real but it’s bullshit.  It’s acid paranoia.  You blew your mind and this is what it’s doing.  What you did isn’t that important, and they sure as shit aren’t following us out into the woods.  Trust me.  I have no reason to lie to you.”
 
With that he looked at me suspiciously, then again almost cried.  “I know they’re there.  You don’t understand.”
 
That afternoon after Don left, I called his older brother and told him that Donny needed help.  Two days later, this friend called back to tell me that Don had gone into his parents dining room, had confessed his supposed crimes in tears, and then collapsed in a ball on the linoleum floor.  His parents had him taken to a psychiatric ward, and he would spend that semester at home and in the care of a psychiatrist.  He did get better gradually and did return and finish; and he never once heard from the FBI.
 
Yes, I’ve been there.  I’ve been there not only in those astounding days of casual drug use, but also in my studies and in political views and in personal relationships.  I have often bought the lie one way or the other, and could not see it until months or years later.  There are lies and there are lies, however: there are those that are built upon the lies of others, and those we actually hear, as Don did, not only on the outside but speaking as a voice in our head.   These latter ones are so intimate that they seem a part of us, speaking truth as undeniable as pain in our own bodies.  With these, how do we tell if they are lies or genuine intuitions?  Of some, how could we ever tell if they are the voices of mental illness or demons, or the voices of an angel or even God?  
 
I am shocked every time I hear the story of Abraham and Isaac, where Abraham is commanded by God to take his only son to the top of the hill and slay him as a sacrifice.  He is stopped in the nick of time and his son is replaced by a goat (scape goat), but how many people have heard this voice to kill as a command from the heavens?  How many have heard this and (fortunately) not acted upon it?  Thousands I would bet.  They often believe the voices but cannot bring themselves to do something that is so wrong, but what of Abraham?  If he had not shown his faith, the history of the world would be strikingly different today.  Rome would not have converted to Christianity, so neither would have Europe; neither, then, would we have had the Christian empires that eventually dominated the world and do so through their progeny to this day.  Further, we would not have had the unknowable but undeniable quality of consciousness change that Christianity has brought to all the civilizations that it has touched.   Without question, if Abraham had not consented to obey the command to kill his son, the world would be very different today.  Yet, if every drug user and schizophrenic had acted on their own god-like inner voices, the results would have meant a sharp increase in suffering and world chaos.  How do we tell the difference?
 
In Judges 6: 11-24, Gideon is confronted by an angel speaking for the Lord beneath the terebinth tree.  He is told to lead the men of Israel against an enemy that is threatening to annihilate them.  Gideon responds that he comes from an unimportant house and is the least of even this house, but the angel insists that God will be with him.  In a very respectful way – after all, he is confronting a supernatural power - Gideon says to the angel (we can interject an “ahem” here), “If I find favor with you, give me a sign that you are speaking with me.”  The angel is very obviously talking to him.  He is, again politely, demanding proof that this is indeed the message of God, not of a demon or of a hallucination.   He gets his proof and again history is saved, but this time only after his doubts have been allayed.  Unlike Abraham, Gideon is not the chosen father of a nation preparing the way for the incarnate God, but rather a poor farm boy being asked to lead other farm boys against an overpowering army.  He’s a regular guy, and he recognizes the need for proof - just as I do, and just as I pleaded with Don: please, please look at your situation rationally. 
 
So it is not so strange for people who have never had use for God or religion to demand proof from the rest of us.  Where is He?  And if we cannot show Him, why should we believe in the basic moral code that He supposedly struck into the famous tablets of Moses?  And if not, why can’t we all just do what pleases us at the moment?
 
I for one need to constantly remind myself that our “normal” explanations cannot even begin to explain why this world is the way it is, or why it is even here.  Beyond that, though, how do I know that the voices of my conscience, those voices that alert me to right and wrong, are speaking truth and wisdom, or only fears inlayed by parents and society during childhood?  More so, how do I know that this spiritual force which has subtly taken hold of me and millions of others is not just a mass hallucination?  Recall Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid.  It can and has happened. 
 
Of the former, morality, we are told to look for the fruits of our beliefs.  For instance, has murder and theft ever improved a neighborhood?  Has adultery ever – or at least hardly ever - improved a marriage?  Has disrespect for a divinity based on peace and justice ever led to something good?  Or disrespect for moral parents? 
 
The latter, the voice of the spirit, can be looked at similarly.  Does this voice lead to peace and order?  To a reverence and respect for life?  For a respect for parents and legitimate authority?  To a healthy balance overall in one’s life, and an increase in care for others? 
 
Since I have to say “no” to the first set and “yes” to the second, I suppose I have no choice but to follow the religion of my background and the voice of spirit.  I have not always been above the party scene, to say the least, but it did not lead to inner peace, let alone hope and meaning in life. 
 
Nor did the voices in Don’s head.  In the end, no FBI came looking for Don, and God has not told me to kill my son.  If he did, he would not be my god, for I am not meant to be the seed for the Savior of the World, whose sacrifice was necessarily foretold in Abraham and Isaac.  Rather, I am only one who has taken a second look at the nature of the world and Man and found what I had been given all along.  Like Don, I would not believe until the illusion that seemed so real had given way to the real that had seemed such an illusion.        
 
 
 
 
 
​July 17 – Pink Moons
 
It all seems a frantic hustle, that long life I have left behind, Shakespeare’s “storm and fury signifying nothing,” and that is the good part of it.  There is also the sloth and vanity and corruption and all that other stuff you tell a priest if you are Catholic, or live with at night regardless of your faith.   Worse still, beyond the lost chances and bad behavior is the evil, mostly done by others, those grown classroom bullies who slink from the shadows or loom large over the world like rotting eclipses.  They sell victims for pleasure, steal your honest pay by sleight of hand or ledger, or coalesce the lesser bullies into criminal gangs that ruin nations or rule nations and threaten the world.   
 
There are also the simple evils that cannot be stopped, those that waft towards us on warm days from furry clots on the blacktop, or form in us in shocking lumps here, or in damaging clogs or dysfunctions there, or in despair and depression or failing brains in those or them or us.  These we dodge like acrobats or hide from like ostriches until we fall into a panic of sweat when it is us and not them or those, even though it has always been inevitable.  All hard, hard things.   
 
There are bugs that bite, too, and here it has been hot and dry lately after months of cold rain.  They are at large at all times now, the deer flies during day and the mosquitos at night, and both at dawn and dusk.  I am drawn out at these times, as the dog needs the early morning, and the garden, now dust dry, needs watering both morning and evening.  If one is now used to the whining vampires, and we know that there are always nasty things afloat in this world, these are the best times in the hot months.  In the morning, the sun is only warming as it filters through the fans of black walnut leaves or the stir of jagged red maple, leaving ripples and shards of yellow-white light that call like happiness and youth itself.  And in the evening – well, in the evening one never knows.  No one ever knows, because each sun set is a new display, never to be repeated exactly, like the work of a Chinese master of pyrotechnics.  Fires are burning in Canada now, and that is a good thing – bad for the moss and toads and porcupines of the north woods, but good for us evening dwellers, as the high drifting smoke scatters the rays of our falling sun into the most stupendous colors ever. 
 
Such it was a few nights ago on a too-late journey to the garden, after a day of one thing after the other.  On those days, one thing leads not only to another, but to other days when things led to other things that stand out in memory because you don’t want them to.  You don’t have to be a combat vet to feel the weight of the world, and when the shoulders sag and the heart slows and the joints hurt, there are often those days and memories of those days, and sometimes on one of those days, one walks out of the house to water the garden a little too late, as it is nearly dark and the mosquitos have become impossible, and then there it is.  It grabs you like a doctor once grabbed your ankles and you are new again, reborn, and all the other things are left behind like a past life.  Yes, there it is, the pink moon. 
 
Not just pink but orange-pink, although not really, because it is not the moon but the sky behind it, or really in front of it, although it looks behind it.  It is a huge swath of pink-orange glowing in the darkening but still-blue sky with a crescent moon gleaming as if embossed upon it like a profile on a broch, lighting the deepening night in a color that I cannot name.  It is a thing of stark and wondrous beauty on a warm summer night whose lower fields are filled with rising fire flies and the wings of doves late to their roosts.  It is a warm wash of beauty that cleanses everything, past, present and for the moment, future, and nothing else matters because it names itself without speaking.  It is the purity that we seek and that finds us now and then when we look up from our mire, and it reminds us with a jolt that the world is not really as we think it is, but greater than any tragedy or death or evil, those dark things that ensnare us because we cannot look away from that which frightens us.  It tells us this in its infinite silence, a silence that goes beyond anything we think we are and takes us like a happy dream to where we want to be.   But it is not a dream.    
 
I did have a dream, though, or a vision where something floated before me over cool, dark steps of stone that wound to a tower or main hall, to somewhere important.  It was a key, and it spoke to me in the same silence as the evening sky, telling me it was a key.  It said that the door was open, but that I needed the key because I could not believe the door was open.  It said that I needed to place the key in the door with my own hands to believe.  Oh ye of little faith.  
 
What, then, was the night sky but a door, and beauty the key?  This it did open, open as it already was, but will I see it open again? 
 
We wander all our lives like a man hung with an albatross he could remove if he knew it, telling our story of woe to all who will listen.  But all along the sky presents an open door and life gives us the key that we should not need but do.  It is a key built on the solid stone of the ages and nothing shall prevail against it.  What it unlocks is before us like the sky but grander, and with an infinity of colors that we could not ever begin to name.  
 


July 5 – Love Is Love
 
            I do not believe that anyone on campus today would describe me as “woke” in the current political sense.  I know what they, the Woke of America, mean, though: it is a seeing of the world as if the veil of false myth were removed and the truth exposed.  I am trying every day to be “woke” in a cosmic sense, but I find the ‘woke’ world of the campus radicals more myth than the legend of young George Washington and the cherry tree.  It is as if one is woken by being clubbed in the head, by which all sense of reality is removed.  Unicorns fly about trailing purple stars, and everyone is more equal than the others, especially those who were victims of the old American myth.  This includes women in general, whether they want to be included or not, or everyone and no one, if you are really woke, because in the end, you decide your true ‘whatever,’ including gender – which is woke, unless it corresponds to the old Western patriarchal myth of biological determinism.  In this woke world, the only thing objectionable is that which has always been abundantly clear to the rest of the world. 
 
            Given my troglodyte perspective, one might guess that I am not fully ‘down’ with the LGBT cause.  One would be correct.  This last month (June) I have been bombarded with fake rainbows on everything from the state flagpole to my computer face page, the latter even asking for donations for the cause, whatever that might currently be, all displays without my consent.  I am not sure exactly what the endgame for these rainbow people is, but one thing I know for sure is that there is a pot of gold at the beginning of this rainbow, wherever that might be.
 
            On the other hand, most of us don’t really care what people do in their own space.  In the olden days, the phrase was, “Whatever two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is their business, as long as they don’t shove it in my face.” The latter few words are unfortunate for their possible misinterpretation, but so it was, and still is with many of us. 
 
            So when a 20-something nephew of mine from back east, who I shall call “Jack,” told me about an incident at his new work place, it made me a little defensive, even a little “woke.” 
 
            Jack was working near a young guy who was using a large machine to cut off sections from a bar of chromium, a very hard metal.  He was trying to hurry the job and had set the cut at a size that was more than the machine could handle.  Parts broke, money was lost, and the supervisor yelled, so Jack ambled over to offer some advice.  Yes, he said, he had done the same and had found that the metal had to be cut at a certain slower rate for this particular machine.  The young guy – let’s call him “Richard” – did not appreciate the advice.  He bellowed, “Shut the F- up, you F-ing faggot!  Don’t f-ing tell ME what I should do…” and so on. 
 
            This did not endear Richard to Jack, and so Jack did what young people do with others their age - he looked him up on Facebook.  There he found that Richard had placed something like “God Hates Fags” at the top of his public display, which shows both a remarkable stupidity and a certain vulnerability.  Jack also found that Richard had a large, diesel-belching pick-up with big chrome pipes and a set of steel testicular-like balls hanging from the trailer hitch in the back.  Richard’s problem seemed obvious.
 
            “Looks like he has a macho problem,” I said.
 
            “Yeah, complete with a compensatory vehicle,” said Jack. 
 
            It was no big deal as far as I was concerned, but it got the “evil Kirk” in me spinning.  “Say, Jack, they got all this gay pride stuff going ‘round these days, what with Gay Pride Month being pushed by every corporation in the country, so it seems to me you could do him a favor.  It should be easy to find a Gay Pride sticker to throw on that big shiny chrome bumper of his.  Seems fitting.” 
 
            I was kidding, but Jack seemed to take it seriously.  Next day, he tells me that he found such a sticker in a local “quicky mart.” It was a swish of rainbow with the words “Love is Love” embossed across the rainbow, both background and words in the bright, all-too-familiar colors.   I laughed but quickly caught myself.  “You don’t mean to really do it, do you?  They got cameras everywhere now, and you could get fired.  Why don’t you slap it on a friend’s truck for giggles?  That would be pretty good, huh?” 
 
            Apparently not good enough.  A few days later Jack calls again and gives me the lowdown:
 
            “I put it on the guy’s bumper just before work.  This Latvian guy (‘Boris’) was with me and he hates Richard, so I had his full approval.  After lunch, Richard comes storming in to the shop screaming, ‘Somebody sabotaged my truck!  Who the f- did it?  You?  You?’ he’s screaming, moving from one guy to another who didn’t like him, which was just about everyone.”
 
             He didn’t approach Jack, probably because Jack was new and barely an afterthought.  When he got to the Latvian, Boris told him, “Oh, how nice to see you show your sensitive side!” (all in a heavy Eastern European accent.)  Said Richard, “F- you!  I hate fags!  It was you, wasn’t it?”  Answered Boris, “Now, now, it’s hard to come out at first, but you’ll feel better for it in the long run.” 
 
            To which Richard swore again and took a part that Boris had been working on and threw it on the floor.  “There,” he screamed, “Now you’ll have to start all over again!”
 
            It was then that the boss stepped in.  “Ok, what’s the problem?”
           
“Some asshole sabotaged my truck.  Look!” 
 
            Since the supervisor couldn’t see it from the shop floor, he asked what this sabotage was, and when told, shrugged.  “A sticker? That doesn’t excuse you for breaking company property.  Go home now or I’ll have the cops make you go home.” 
 
            And he did.  I found out several days later that Richard did not lose his job, but was sent to work on the production line with the illegal immigrants.  He had kicked his bumper in anger with his steel-toed boots to remove the sticker, putting several dents into it, and instead of steaming the sticker off with a hairdryer later, had spray-painted the entire bumper in macho black. 
 
            I didn’t ask, but I assume his steel balls remained where they were, dangling from the trailer hitch. 
 
            Mind you, I wouldn’t do this myself, and I DID advise against it, but doesn’t it somehow speak of justice?  And might that make me – square old me – a Social Justice Warrior?
 
            Alas, no.  I still believe in live and let live within the old American standards, but there is a right way and a wrong way, or certainly ways that are better than others.  Relativism is a quagmire we really should run from like the plague.  Love certainly is love, but sex is a whole lot of things.  It can be an aid to love, but it can also be cruel, selfish and downright perverse – and yes, there is such a thing as perversion.  In nature, some forms of sex are at best useless; in society, some forms of sex are downright destructive.  If we use the former, nature, to inform the latter, society, we can understand which way is the better.  And if we logically extend ‘Gay Pride’ to society in general, we simply lose society.  Artificial means of reproduction are possible, but the act itself hardly augments love, and cannot replace the benefits of the real thing, the natural family, which is most likely to promote responsibility, self-sacrifice, and the kind of enduring love that grows beyond infatuation, even unto dozens or hundreds of generations.
 
            But alas again, this argument can, and often has, gone on and on.  In the end, Love is Love and need not have anything to do with sexual intimacy at all.  It does not require a rainbow, or a set of macho steel balls.  We all know what it requires, including an allocation of dignity for all souls beyond their temporary actions.  I say, keep the rainbow off the flagpole and the macho balls well-zipped.  I say, look to those who have given real love – from Mom and Dad to the center of the Easter Passion – for models of love in our own lives.  It is in those relationships where we might find the Love that cannot be put on a bumper sticker or hung from a trailer hitch.   
 
 
 
 
Feb 16 – Invasion 
 
It was Lumpy Larry’s fault.  When my mother called his mother to hear what had happened, she frantically denied any proof, but we were there and we knew.  Not that it mattered.
 
Already my mother had called the ophthalmologist for an emergency appointment, and when we got there, he said almost gleefully, “A B-B in the eye, huh?  I’ve taken lots of little boys’ eyes out from B-B guns.”  He didn’t take mine, but that pretty much sums up the story: Lumpy Larry – the same guy who had kept me from going deeper into his house one day because, I would figure out later from a then-inexplicable sight, his parents had gotten drunk in the afternoon and were screwing on the living room rug – had taken a long shot at me with a B-B gun and had, out of sheer luck, hit me in the eye.  It was then that I had had my first out-of-body experience, which has hung over me ever since, and then that I had ridden the four miles home on my bike with one eye blinded that I had prayed to God to either fix the eye or kill me. 
 
I am still alive today and seeing as well as a man my age has a right to, and so my prayers were answered, but back then, with eye intact, there still was a recovery plan that I had to undergo, and it was a tough one for a very active nine-year-old: to stay in bed for a week with a bandage over the eye.  I could still see out of the good one, but there was only one TV in the house in the days before cable, with nothing on in the daytime but soap operas (“Like the sands in an hour glass, such are the days of our lives…”), and I was advised to not use the good one that much anyway for some reason.  That meant scant reading as well.  This could have led to a week of hell, but for one really great invention from only a few years earlier – the transistor, which had led immediately to the cheap and portable transistor radio.
 
Our wonderful kids’ radios were made in Japan of very brittle plastic and sold for five dollars everywhere, which allowed us all to get one if we carefully watched our weekly allowances.  This also meant that we could all listen to the AM station of our choice (no FM then of any consequence), which, for central Connecticut, only meant WPOP out of Hartford, which had the cool music that all the (potentially) cool kids listened to.  This liberation from our parent’s musical choices, which focused the kids of the 1960’s on specific tunes that defined our generation, may have contributed later in the decade to the Cultural Revolution, but that was far from my thoughts then.  Then, I had something to do to while away my sentence to bed.  I could listen to all my favorites and hear the upcoming top 40 hits without pause or distraction. 
 
Against any expectations, this little gadget was to turn my time in purgatory into a certain form of bliss that I recall vividly to this day.   This was due not just to the radio, but to what would be called the British Invasion, which happened to happen exactly during the time that I lay in bed waiting to not go blind.   As everyone knows, the Invasion was a new form of pop music out of England, and as everyone also knows, the stars of the Invasion were the Beatles. 
 
From where came their magic?  I was as subject to peer influence as anyone, but as I lay in bed and heard the Beatles for the first time, I was alone.  And yet, when I heard that simple little song, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” I was enthralled.  All on my own, I figured it to be the greatest sound ever.  Within a day of my first hearing, everyone else was talking about them, and soon the flip side of the 45 RPM record, “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” came out, and then others, creating an instant sensation among the younger set.  Even my cynical older brother (he was eleven) and the kids in the neighborhood even older than he understood that these Welsh boys had brought something so spectacular to our shores that it was nothing short of a reverse-revolution.  Without understanding it one bit, we all knew that life had just changed for the post-War generation forever.  We did not know how, but we knew that something wonderful and different was coming our way. 
 
This I felt while still a prisoner in my room.  Less than two weeks later I was back in class, and there saw the effects of the invasion writ large.  Yes, there were a few detractors: Patrick S., who would one day land himself in prison for multiple crimes against property, thought them too goody-two-shoes, but he was drowned out by the rest of us guys destined for a more ordinary life.  Even Lumpy Larry was forgiven, especially since he had, in that mere week or so of time, gotten himself a Beatle’s Haircut.  Since his hair had been short to begin with, the bowl-like trim made him look like Friar Tuck, but still, he was with it, as we all were or tried to be.  We had been made ‘one’ with the Beatles just as WWII had made our parent’s generation come together.  And just like the war, we were ready and willing to ride out whatever the Beatles were to give us regardless of the outcome. 
 
I can’t say how it all happened, and might have to simply invoke magic or God or the volkgeist, but I can say in retrospect that what Patrick-the-criminal had to say was accurate in its way.  The Beatles, or at least their image, was composed of nice boys, boys who wore narrow black ties that dangled down crisp white shirts.  They were young – all around twenty – and short and fresh-faced and gave an English lilt to the harsher Rock and Roll of the era, with its gritty Southern Black roots.  They sang of youthful infatuation, never crude, with simple joy or longing.  Although the streets of Liverpool where they came from were still mired in semi-poverty from the effects of the War, we relatively prosperous Americans knew they sang for us.  
 
They were also like us in that they, too, were being led, just as they were leading us.  They did not start English and Celtic folk songs, or the Blues, but they merged them in such a way that we could take them straight into our hearts.  In a few short years, they would also follow the trends of psychedelic drug use, Indian gurus, and anti-war activism, which again they did not start, but brought to us in songs and whole albums that related them to something deep within us.  With their irresistible sound, we followed; we followed, too, because the journey seemed so exciting and, most of all, because we trusted them.  Somehow – and this might be as magical as their music – four lightly- educated youths from Wales with little formal training in anything, were able to garner almost 100% of our fawning support.  They were like us but apart, special in that the ringing of their guitars and vocals and drums stirred something in us that now seems almost inevitable.  They stirred the ashes of our destiny, for good and for ill, to light a fire that would cause one of the greatest and most sudden cultural changes in American history.
 

            All that is only history now, written about and analyzed in a dozen books or more, covering everything from the first Ed Sullivan Show to the Maharaja to the infamous record-burning to the even more infamous introduction of Yoko Ono and the band break-up, but I could not know anything of that as I lay on the bed in early 1964.  I could not know that the Beatles would travel an almost mythical odyssey that would shape all our lives.  But somehow I, as well as most people of my generation, knew that a new era was about to begin.  I was to follow their template - or rather the myth that was within many of us waiting for the right form - almost to the “T.”  I lived their myth in my life, from the days of youthful innocence to psychedelic experimentation to a flirtation with Eastern Religions, right to the break-up, which marked for me and many of us the tragic end to the script of hope and change that had guided our lives since childhood. 
 
When the Beatles broke up, it was signal for all of us to grow up.  The boys in the band went their separate ways as grown-ups usually do, as did most of us, kicking and screaming all the way.  The bad boys, portrayed by the mythological image of the Beatles’ counter-band, “The Rolling Stones,” continued on their path of drugs and sex and rock and roll without the sincerity that the Welshmen had brought, but with all the destruction.  These bad boys live among us still, just as the preternatural Rolling Stones still do, but the Beatles have receded into a youthful dream, a “Yesterday” of nostalgia more often heard in elevators and supermarkets than in black light-lit basements and dorm rooms. 
 
The good-guy myth, too, is still alive, but we no longer listen to a single top-forty radio program.  We are scattered across a confusing landscape of diversity that was supposed to enlighten us but has only confused us.  We hole up now in our distinct communities at work or at play or at church, unattached to this, that, or any generation, trying only to live out a myth, a story that works for us and gives us hope.  But first we must find it, and to find it, we need someone to bring it to us from their heart to ours, just as the Beatles so naively did, spinning us off into a brave new world.  Who is there now to lead us?  There is always Jesus, but he was there then, too, in 1964, his image too stern for a bright new age - a bright new age that is turning darker by the decade, tarnished by self-serving false prophets who threaten us with man-made hell so that they can bring us their version of a man-made heaven.  
 
Heaven save us, if the Beatles no longer can.  Maybe, then, the tide has turned; maybe, then, the bright hopes of our youth have matured and we are ready for the stern image.  In the stern image there is disappointment, hardship, illness and death.  In the stern image there is also hope and light that stretches out much farther than a rock band and a Japanese Helen of Troy.  It does not change from album to album, either, but it does not pretend that a broken roof won’t leak, or a broken soul will find happiness.  All those are youthful dreams, meant only to bring us here where we are, at the foot of the rock that simply is.  
 
I could have lost my eye, although I did not think of it at the time.  As I listened the first time to the light ballads of the Beatles, a very bad thing could have happened, as bad things have happened since to John and George, as well as to Ringo and Paul, and, last and least, to Yoko.   And to me, and probably to you.  At the foot of the rock that does not roll, we now find ourselves awake and astounded.  We clutch to our devices still, and although they are smarter than the transistor radio, they do not bring the same fellowship and joy.  Our myth in its mature form is still waiting to come alive, and it will, but only when we realize we are no longer children. 
 
I still think of the magic of Sgt. Pepper or The White Album, but I never play them, ever.  They are history, but I am not.  I wait like a grown child in bed with a bad eye, hoping that the right music will come and I will be there, right on time.  No Portland nihilism or erotic pop, but an Ode to Joy that was written so long ago that it is new again – same as it ever was.  
 
 

​​Nov 28 – Magical Humor
 
There is a book I bought for my wife, Night’s Bright Darkness by Sally Read, that she claims I really bought for myself.  I loved it and she, well, meh.  I don’t know why.  It’s about a somewhat entitled woman English poet who discovers God in Catholicism (she also moves to Italy and marries an Italian), who has all the baggage of derision and doubt that the modern academic and artist has to hinder faith.  Now that I write this, apart from the woman bit, I suppose that would describe me more than my wife, but no matter.  The point is, Read gets in with a bunch of artist-type Italians and expats in Rome who are reborn or converted Catholics, who sometimes carry their new-found faith a little too far.  For the most part, that means looking for godly and angelic influence in everything.  As an example, she describes the breathless delight of a woman friend who lay her umbrella down by her side just before a bus passed, protecting her from a muddy splash from a puddle exactly where the umbrella had been so casually placed. 
 
Yes, I understand the reasoning of the faithful: if everything is a miracle from God, why should we not see miracles in everyday life?  On the other hand, if we are looking for truth, we should not feed our simplistic fantasies.  That you put your umbrella down at the right moment was most undoubtedly divinely influenced, because everything is divinely influenced.  However, the truth is that we cannot always understand God’s reasoning behind these coincidental miracles.  It might just be, for instance, that by putting the umbrella down, this woman caught the attention of another woman on the bus who was able to see beyond where the umbrella had been to locate the lost child she had been frantically looking for during the last several hours. The umbrella holder, then, would only have been collateral “damage”, not the point of the miracle. 
 
Still, there seems to be some humor there, and if God is omniscient, why not?  It’s not as if He’s going to forget His main mission because of a little side-joke, right?  Not only that, but this would be all for the better, as any miracle, no matter how small, might help to strengthen one’s faith.  Why would He not, then, throw in a little sunshine on the side? In admitting our ignorance of God’s will, why not believe in the small things if it gives us a little divine mojo?  As often as not, some might be true.
 
Which brings me to my long Thanksgiving week, which started, by my calculations, the Sunday before. 
 
The bathroom sink.  It had been an ugly festering sore in my mind for some time, and if it were flesh, would have been vulture-torn road kill.  The basin was stained and crusted by the limestone powder in the water, while the faucet handle could barely be moved through this same crust.  The basin had developed (somehow) a hole in it that was not going to get any smaller, and the lever to the stopper had long stopped working, needing a sponge tucked beneath it to keep the stopper closed as I shaved.  This, by the way, was the small bathroom, sans shower, that was primarily mine, although my wife seemed to be bothered by it a lot more than I.  This might just be because I was the one who would have to contort myself on the floor all day long to confront the challenge, but perhaps I am being too suspicious. 
 
In any case, it was on this weekend before Thanksgiving that I was dragged to Menard’s to, oh, maybe look for a new sink and faucet, and, what the heck, get a new cabinet to go along with it.  Although I was able to push the purchase off until the next day, Saturday, we still bought all of it because they were having a special 11% percent sale that was ending that very day.  I figured that I could wait several more weeks before I even began contemplating the project, but what fools we mortals be.  The boxes took up much of the free space to the TV room, and after stubbing my toes on one thing or another into Saturday night, my son and I began the adventure the following Sunday afternoon.  
 
Avoiding as many details as possible, we found that the faucet was too rusted on to remove.  We also had to remove the cabinet holding the basin and faucet, which had been gratuitously tiled in.  Almost miraculously, we came up with solutions to both, and after a few hours of permanently damaging my aging joints – Jeff’s remained just fine – we had the new cabinet and basin and faucet in place.  My wife found replacement tiles in the attic for those blank spots that fit perfectly, and even the cabinet somehow fit exactly-so into a slot that was slightly beveled so that being just one sixteenth of an inch off would have ruined everything.  And yet, everything fit.
 
But that was not the miracle, or at least not the big one.  The big one involved a part much smaller in size but of greater importance.  How the problem was solved shows a level of humor that simply must be too subtle and complex for mere chance.    
 
It was the water supply connections.  For some inexplicable reason, the water hoses had not been equipped with shut-off valves.  This means we had shut off the water to the toilets and the shower and to everything else as we worked, hour after hour.  Of course, we took much longer than we could have guessed, and by the time we got to the last detail of our work, which was the water connection, is was past dark and past closing time for the local hardware store.  I was still not worried, though, when my son found that one of the hoses – the hot water hose - was not long enough to reach the connection to the new faucet, because I had found just that morning a hose in the basement that for some reason was just lying around that was the long size.  It was as if God had crowned us with his final blessing.   This, too, fit perfectly. 
 
My elation did not last long.  The pipe from the sink to the p-trap, that little thing underneath that collects all the hair and gunk before the water goes to the sewer or septic tank, was too short.  We had the water hooked up but could not run it until the sink was connected.  That was OK, as we could have the rest of the house running, but I wanted it all done, and so I hunkered down and drove the 20 miles to Menard’s to get the extension before it closed for the night.  I got there just in time, got the part, and arrived home in triumph.  Yay.  But when we turned on the water with great anticipation, the hot water sprayed around like we were at the kiddie section of the water park.  The washer within the “found” hose was shot, and now the stores were all closed.   Because we had no specific turn-off valves, we would have to do without any water until the next morning.   The finding of that hose, then, had been a curse, because I would have simply gotten another hose along with the extension when I had gone to the store.  
 
Vicki melted down.  Since we live in the middle of Green Acres, finding a toilet would be no problem (as far as I was concerned), but what of a shower?  What of the dishes that had piled up in the sink all day as we had worked?  It was the worst day ever, a tragedy, a meltdown, until …
 
“Say dad, what if we take the washer out from the hose that wasn’t long enough and put it into the one that leaks?”
 
It took a few minutes to figure that out, but it worked.  We had indeed been saved by the hose in the basement, but in such a round-about way that it simply had to have been a cosmic practical joke.  It also brought with it the comradery of a father/son team that had the joyful precision of a Three Stooges movie.  I continue to admire that sink every time I walk into the bathroom.
 
But some jokes are harder to take.  On the night before Thanksgiving, I went to the store for some last minute items that included corn bread dressing crumbs, necessary because the stove had gone caput and I could not cook proper Yankee stuffing on the grill where I was now forced to smoke the turkey.  The store only had pre-mixes that would simply not do for a woman born and raised in the Deep South.  I did not want to disappoint, so I made a special trip to another store just in case.  They also only had pre-mixes, but as I was about to leave, I came across this strange being with a long white ponytail who happened to have an employee name plate on his sparkling white uniform shirt.  It turned out that this “being” was an athletic-looking man of about fifty who had the odd look of a California surfer dude who had been surprised by age.  I assumed he was doing this gig to make money for his next surfing stint in Maui, but no matter – he worked for the store and maybe he knew a secret place where they stored dried cornbread crumbs.   He showed me the pre-mixes, which he knew would not do, and then took me to a section with a cornbread mix in a box.  It was made by Jiffy and sold for exactly fifty cents.  I got it, expecting to be laughed out of the house.
 
Oddly, I was not.  We inspected the ingredients, and yes, the 3rd on the list was sugar, but regular breadcrumbs and other things would be added to the dressing, so maybe this would be OK.  It didn’t appear to be enough, either, as the recipe called for four cups at completion.  But it cooked well in the little toaster oven and, when measured, came to exactly four cups.  The following day, the dressing was excellent.  Whatever stuff Jiffy had put into their mix had just the right touch.  We were, I figured, saved by an angel who just happened to be, maybe, a surfing dude.  Hey – go with the flow.
 
Except I didn’t go with the flow.  On Thanksgiving morning, I decided to take the compostable stuff down to the composter before a whole lot more was added with Thanksgiving cooking.  I searched for my shoes, and first found a pair of summer loafers.  They were not really adequate for the inch of frozen snow on the ground, but what the heck, it would only be for a minute.  So I took the slop bucket and dog down past the side of the driveway to the little hill on the way to the composter.  Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, I was falling, flying high in the air with the slop bucket shooting over my head.  When I landed, I heard an ominous “crunch” and then experienced the greatest pain I ever remember having in all my 64 years. I screamed to the gray sky, but it did not relent.  The pain was so unbelievable that I spent part of my thoughts wondering how such pain could be possible.  After a few moments of screeching, I understood that I could not walk, but could not spend much more time on the ice with my bare hands and sneakered-feet.  I yelled to Vicki who I could clearly see through the kitchen window, but she blithely continued walking about doing some chores as mindlessly content as June Cleaver. 
 
Rambo never had it so tough.  I realized that I would have to claw my way up the hill to the house, and did so, my hands numb but hardly as tortured as the leg.  Nearing the top, I looked back at the dog.  I was still loudly moaning and thought she might be upset at her beloved master’s plight, but no – instead, she was greedily gulping down what she could from the slop bucket.  Good ‘ol faithful.  I made it to the door, clawed my way up to the handle, and dragged myself in to meet my surprised wife who did – however briefly, as I recall – help me somewhat on the way to the couch.  The pain was still unbelievable, although my complaints were reduced to a continuous, low moan.  It went on and on for either days or a half-hour, depending on who you were, until we decided we should go to the emergency room before the rest of the world got sick or had accidents during the joyful holiday festivities.  There was no one in the waiting room but the desk nurse when we got there.  In less than an hour, I was stripped to my underwear in front of three unknown woman, measured and probed like a dog on show, then seen briefly by a polite but bored physician who told me the leg was not broken; rather, the muscles had been twisted free from each other.  He said that I should not walk for the next two weeks, when the leg should heal on its own.  The suggestion of using ibuprofen for the pain landed on me with a big “duh.” 
 
And so we drove home and after, I even took charge of smoking the turkey with a cane and without the heavy lifting.  Both the turkey and the dressing and everything else turned out fine, and the ibuprofen went down real easy with four or five beers set in front of the never-ending football games.  Not so bad.
 
So sure, it could have been worse, but it could have been much better.  That pain had been so bad that it haunted me for the rest of the day into the next.  What good was it?  While I was searching for my little miracles and unexpected angels, it seemed that a great deal of grief was hidden behind it all just for me.  The former had been nothing more than trifles; the real deal was, for its impact, the fall and its consequences, one of which is this very essay.  What good was there in that?  Had I been cavorting with holy spirits or with demons?
 
It’s always like this, I think.  It seems that no good deed goes unpunished, but that is not the truth.  Rather, simply, with the good and the playful comes the bad and the painful.  The connection between the two is not really there, except on the deepest of level, where all things pan out in the great cosmic will.  Until then, God seems both friend and punisher, or just as likely, the present and the absent parent.  
 
There are many explanations for this, original sin being, for me, the most compelling, but I heard it differently just yesterday.  To make flour and juice, the speaker said, you need to cut and crush and grind; to get soft bread and sweet wine, you have to work and mash and roast.  As the Bible and the old alchemists put it, one has to throw the raw ore into the furnace to get the refined gold.  
 
But that seems so far away, and makes me feel no better for the pain.   Rather, one needs to trust in what is beyond, where all things are connected, and to be grateful for it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The miracle then, as Jesus says again and again, is our faith, through which mountains are moved and trees are grown on oceans.  Faith is what is tested in the crucible of our bodies, where it is refined by trial and pain.  Here, we must believe, is where torn limbs are made acceptable, and even sinks and corn bread dressing come easy.     
 
 
 
 
 
       Ricker’s Mountain
 
We would find that we had lost our FM antenna on the washboard road we had to take to the park, everything rattling down to its teeth, before facing the formidable sign at the check-in, reading “Active Bear Present.”  Oddly, it was a permanent, glossed-over metal sign, even though the active bear, seen by some people in front of us in a tree on the way in, could not have been permanent.  Apparently, that’s just the way it always was.  Active bear present: as it was meant to be in the Green Mountains of Vermont. 
 
As a kid growing up in Connecticut, I had looked at Vermont as the lost paradise, having everything I wanted in greater abundance than I had: more snow, bigger mountains, and bigger woods.  Better all-around as far as I could see then, and still, I was surprised to find on our visit, as I now saw.  I still loved Vermont, even though it had changed from the rock-ribbed Republican state of wizened farmers in the 1960’s to the Socialist Republic of New York Hippies and Hipsters of the 2000 teens.  In fact, it was they who had maintained what I loved about the state, for their regulations and high taxes had kept away the population and industry that had invaded neighboring New Hampshire.  Vermont had become a kind of park, with almost no population growth since the 60’s, a place to visit and ski and take pictures of foliage, but not to live in.  Active bears and inactive people.  Perfect.
 
Not that changes hadn’t been made.  This state park was only a few miles from Waterbury, which was a short distance from the capital city of Montpelier-Barre, and those who still worked, including the hippies who had kept their weed smoking in check, had created something of a tourist trap of the area.  Ben and Jerrys and Cabot Cheese had outlets there, along with niche breweries and outdoor stores and hip little restaurants, which was all fine, for the not-too-distant mountains were as green and the bears as active as in the days when Indians raided Puritan villages in Massachusetts for gunpowder and women.  As we checked into our campsite, that’s the only thing I cared about – not the Indian wars, but what had made the Indian life possible.  Green.  Mountains.  And few people.  As it had been and still was.
There had been other changes, too, ones far greater even than the exchange of hard cider for weed.  After we had backed in and unpacked and set up, we headed for a nearby walk up the mountain on which we were camped.  The path we took had once been a dirt road that had connected farms on what became known as Ricker’s Mountain.  Settled first in the early 1800’s – one can guess, long after the better land had been taken -  placards were now placed  before the ruins of farm houses, barns, apple orchards, and family cemeteries.  Some told of sturdy Irish settlers who had owned large sugar bushes – sugar maple groves – and farmed hundreds of acres, others of tough old Yankees like Ricker himself who had also prospered, and others of failed farms, of dead children, of poverty and decline. 
 
Through the miles of such signs, one got a feeling for the place.  They had worked harder than any of us can imagine, chopping forty cords of wood a year to heat their un-insulated farms and light the cooking stoves, in addition to maintaining the animals, the orchards, the sugar bushes and the fields, all without engine-propelled machines or a hint of government assistance.  They were religious as only hard-working, self- sufficient people can be, their religion the final arbiter of what was good and right, their god the only arbiter of their fate.  Newly married couples planted two sugar maples before their houses at marriage, using the wood from each to build their coffins as they died.  They were buried out back or along the side, somewhere close, with other relatives whose graves they had seen since childhood.  They lived hard lives, faced always with their limitations, and with the uncertainty of life and mystery of death always present. 
 
And then the floods came in the 1920’s, and the government in the 1930’s to build a damn to control the floods, which flooded much of the best flatland property, causing the rest to sell their farms to the government to create the state park in which we were camped. The former inhabitants moved to cities to another kind of life, which has led to what we have become.  One might think that, unlike the maple trees they planted, they would not recognize the Vermont that has sprung from their roots, let alone the America these alien descendants now inhabit.    
 
I could not help but feel shame as I lit a campfire each of the two nights we stayed, the wood cut by someone else, the beer I drank while comfortably beside the flames brewed and bottled by yet another stranger.  It was a worthless emotion, really, for I had not created this present world.  We buy all our stuff from others now as we have specialized, working in our own little niches, and I could not even legally cut my own wood there in the park.  It was mostly out of my control.  We had traded the hard work and uncertainty of the past for something easier and more dependable, for something that would give us the money to travel around the country to simply re-create in our comfortable machines.  We were softer, but better off, thanks to the ingenuity and hard work of our ancestors.  What shame was there in that?
 
We never saw the active bear, even though I looked for him as we drove down the washboard road towards I-89 to Burlington.  Back on the highway, most of the miles to the city cut through those same Green Mountains, many returned from the sheep fields they had once been to the current expansive forests.  The city, Burlington, began to appear in shopping malls and small housing developments, but only a few miles out, as even Burlington was small by comparison with other cities.  Soon, we were on conventional streets traveling through the University of Vermont, its students hip-looking, the young men with scruffy beards and the young women carefully dressed to look more assertive than feminine.  One can imagine their casual, even critical views of the civilization that had brought them there, of the unconscious ways in which they assumed their future ease and prosperity as if it flowed like maple sap that was ready to eat like syrup straight from the tap, their difference from other university students as minor as one tree to the next.
 
Then the long hill began that would lead us down to Lake Champlain and the ferry we would take to the Adirondacks on the other side, some twenty miles away.  In front of us was the harbor, the great blue expanse of water, and the bars and restaurants that lined its edge.  To the left were residences and a few businesses, and to the right, a green that  might once have been the original city green that all New England towns had so that visiting farmers would have a place to keep their animals.  By its side was a sidewalk with a few casual walkers, the green itself being nothing more than a grassy space dotted with shade trees and a few benches.  Because I was driving, I did not give it two looks until I noticed a peculiar but familiar motion out of the corner of my eye.  It couldn’t be.  Risking our car and everyone in and around it, I turned to look directly towards the motion, and then turned once again to make sure.  It couldn’t be, but it was: there, right in public on the green, was a couple engaged in our most basic intimate act.  They were dressed or covered in what seemed to be rags or blankets, like Cockneys out of Oliver Twist, a rather large youngish woman sliding back and forth on top of a burly youngish man with a tangle of hair and a wild beard.  One of the rags or blankets covered the point of contact, but the woman’s naked butt showed clearly.  The man was having a great time, laughing, as three other Oliver Twist-type characters looked on.  I wondered at that until my wife mentioned that perhaps they were waiting their turn. 
 
But what I wondered at most were the other spectators, the casual walkers who continued on their way as if nothing were happening.  No one seemed shocked, no one was frantically calling the police, and no one was shielding the sight from their children’s young eyes.  In fact, no one seemed to notice what was so very obvious to all.  Even for us, it was only a sight of interest, something to talk about later on or write about as an amusing tidbit, something gained like a trinket from traveling to the hip center of a hip state.  Nothing to see here; welcome to our new, diverse and non-judgmental reality.
 
We know what the people of Ricker’s Mountain would have thought, after the offenders had been tarred and feathered and ridden out on a rail.  They were a judgmental people, perhaps too much so, but who could say that they would not have the higher ground?  More importantly, what does our stance say about us?  How is it that we have taken the great good fortune of being born into such a country and at such a time when we do not have to worry about our children dying before adulthood of disease, or of starving to death if the weather goes bad, and turning it into – into a ball of yarn unraveling faster and faster as it spins from nature’s lap?
 
The issue is so large that it cannot be compressed into a small essay, but I believe the word “nature” is the key.  In fending off the grosser uncertainties that have always been with us, we have come to think that we control our own destinies; in controlling many of the uncertainties of nature, we have come to think that we truly control nature; and in pushing back the inevitability of death, we believe that we have all but conquered death.  None of these beliefs are true, but in having them, we have come to exclude from our lives the greater power of nature that is all about us – and in doing so, we have come to exclude the natural reverence and fear of that great power that once resided within us.  We have come to believe that Man is the measure of all things, not nature and not that which has formed nature.  And with that, we more and more do as we please and let others do as they please, wherever and whenever.  It is, after all, the tolerant, modern way to go.
 
But we know, we have always known, right to this day, for it is still deep in our nature; we know that it is unravelling, that it is ending “Not with a bang but a whimper.”  By denying our nature, we have denied our own greatest power, which is to learn from our relative weakness.  We try to hold heads high that will someday turn to rot, then dust, while never using them to grasp what was once so obvious; we are spectators to the great and inexplicable miracle of being and are meant to kneel before it so that we might rise into its height, but in standing tall in ignorance, we fall all the harder.  We lose even as we think we win
 
We are, indeed, the Hollow Men, and in our emptiness, beg as a people to be crushed, to be humbled so that we might find our higher destiny despite our worldly desires and success at fulfilling them. 
 
And we will.  We will either fall willingly before the greatness of being, or cause the whole ball of yarn to come undone.  We have always known it.  We know it now.  But still, we drive on.
 
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men          (From The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot)
 
 
 
 
 

April 21, 2018 – The Legs of Jesus
 
We had been this way before, to the side and behind our hotel by Apparition Hill, where the first vision of the Blessed Virgin in Medjugorje was seen by the children decades ago.  That time we had gone to a place called Cenacola, a religious retreat for young men with serious addictions. There, a guy in his late twenties from New Jersey had told us of his decent into alcoholism, of his loss of job and driver’s license and girlfriend, of everything, which had sent him to this miracle town in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  What courage, and what humility it must have taken to tell such a tale in front of strangers, but how could all these young men live this life?  No big city excitement, no girls, nothing for kicks except hard work and coffee.  Lots of coffee, I suspect.  It was pretty and peaceful there amid the trees and foliage, nestled against the blessed hill, but how could that hold so many young men for months, even years?
 
This time, we were brought just short of that encampment to another, set in even greater verdant glory – a place of natural beauty.  It was a retreat for the Catholic religious, a quiet place set around a chapel of native stone and hand-worked stain glass.  It was to this chapel that we were directed, and here that the director, a priest from Germany, lectured us briefly in a voice of incredible calm before he asked for questions. 
 
I complied: “How might we retain this holy feeling of peace once we return home?”
 
His answer took nearly an hour, as he carved out the things we must do and thoughts we must have, making the answer seem so obvious after a while that I began to feel the fool.   Around us, statues of saints held out their hands or pointed to their martyred wounds as they basked in the rainbow of colors coming through the glass.   It was tranquility itself until a wizened gnome materialized from out of nowhere and ran towards the front besides the pews.  “No, no, no!” cried the priest, shifting to speak words in Italian that sent the gnome – what I then could see was an elderly woman in a dress and long scarf - scurrying back through the rear door.  When we returned our astonished look towards the priest, we could see that he had become troubled. 
 
He apologized: “They come here to touch the statue of Jesus.  It was worked by ------ (a sculpture who was apparently famous) and is made of (some material) that is very life-life but also fragile.  If I were to let everyone touch it, it would be destroyed.”
 
He did not need to apologize, as we had seen what millions of pilgrims could do, for even the rocks on the path up nearby Cross Mountain had been smoothed by the passage of so many feet.  But that Jesus – yes, I had already noticed it.  As the priest had talked and the light streamed down, I had seen that statue, set up on its cross on the floor rather than in the wall with the saints; I had seen it and shuddered.  Yes, it was realistic, the colors of the flesh slightly gray as if that person were about to die.  Worse still, the sculpture had put precise, human-like hairs into the naked legs of Jesus, hairs that shown as hairs will in the ethereal light.  It was that touch that had made it so real.  And it was that touch, I suspect, that had made it the target of that Italian woman, and probably thousands upon thousands of others.   
 
What is it about touch, about the article itself?  In this same village of Medjugorje, there is a bronze or bronze-like statue of Jesus at the end of the Stations of the Cross outside behind the church.  It is a wonderfully conceived statue, with Jesus slumped hard forward on the cross, with his shadow-like silhouette impressed into the very ground – also of bronze – behind him.  It is this “shadow” in Earth, of course, that reminds us of the impression his sacrifice made on the world today. 
 
But that is not what draws the pilgrims.  Instead, it is again his legs, or in this case, one leg.  From just below his knee, there are often, but not always, droplets of water that come forth.  Always there is a line waiting to soak up that water for miraculous cures, good luck, or simply for faith.  It is so important to the Italians that someone has made little cloths to buy that say (approximately), “This is the drop given to you from Jesus.”
 
I remember well the first night I went to see the statue with my son Jeff.  It was off-season, March, and there were only a few Italians at the base soaking up the drops with their special clothes.  With the night lights on it, and the Stations of the Cross lit up nearby, it was a magical scene.  Jeff and I just stood there waiting for the Italians to leave so that we might have a look, but soon one of the men waved me over.  From the Spanish I know, I understood him enough to hear, “come, see the drop.  Here, take this cloth, wipe it up.” He then did it himself and handed me the cloth, then gave me another to do it myself so that Jeff and I would each have one.  (Oddly, I did not know that this was a special cloth with writing on it because it was night.  Nearly a month later, my wife pulled it from a jacket she was about to wash and showed it to me.  Without the writing and the little design on it, it would have been thrown away.)
 
Magic.  The magic of touch is and has always been recognized throughout the world.  In the Gospels, there is the bleeding woman who touches the tassels of Jesus’s cloak to be healed, where Jesus feels “the power flow out of me.”  Yes, even Jesus admits to it, and the belief is there in us all, even if hidden by the practical man of common sense.  But is it good?  Is this belief good for the person of faith?  
 
Some Protestants would say no, and I understand this.  At some point, magic replaces faith, which the full-time priests at Medjugorje know all too well, so much so that they advise people to stop looking for “signs” and to start praying to Jesus.  But of course, it is signs that bring people to Medjugorje, or to Fatima, and, for that matter, to Machu Pichu or the Mayan pyramids.  It is not just about objects, but about the place, the reality of a substance, or an area itself.  It is about a cross, a substance, a place that is especially blessed, that has what the students of religion and magic call “manna,” after the Old Testament’s mana in Exodus.   The Hawaiians believed in manna to such an extent that to simply touch their chief without special preparation would kill one.  In the movie “Jeremiah Johnson,” the graveyard of the Indians had such manna that those who approached it, again without proper preparation and reverence, were condemned to death.
 
What is it, then, that is in both tribal and civilized (as in “of the city”) religions? 
 
We of most faiths know that the world was created by powerful sacred forces.  We of most faiths know that it is “manna” or supernatural force that sustains this creation at all times.  To the human mind, then, all of creation is a magical act itself.  Young children know this, but something alchemical happens as we grow older.  The magic of everyday people and objects fades into a bland normalcy that is the mark of the human race.  Some might call this mark original sin, but for whatever reason, the profanation of material reality is almost universally inevitable.  But some things come to stand out; some things are made special by “signs,” oddities or things and places that are associated with oddities that we often call supernatural, even though the natural is, in its miracle of existence, supernatural to our mundane way of thought. 
 
We have been cursed in a way, set under a blanket that hides the stars, but sometimes, a hole appears in the blanket; sometimes we or someone sees a star, or maybe the whole sky, through the blanket.  We know what they have seen; deep in our memories we recall this magical world, and Oh God do we want it again!  And then, there it is, made plain by an accident, or miracle, an oddity that shows us that world of wonder does indeed still exist.  And, if we are not too jaded, we take it to ourselves as if the world depended on it.   
 
Which it does.  Not the thing or the place, but the sense of magic that is the sign of the sacred.  Just like the young men in Cenacola, those who became addicted to drugs and alcohol, we are all looking for that magic, for the sacred, for the sense that fills a world made empty through our own device.  We take pills, we drink, we buy yachts, we travel to Bali to see them dance– and we travel to Medjugorje to touch the legs of Jesus.  Some ways to the sacred kill, but others remind us.  Better, some remind us so much that we are able to sacrifice the ordinary now and then – our food, our time, our pleasures – to find what is beyond the ordinary, which has become ordinary only through careless habit. 
 
In things we can go beyond things; in things we can find the sacred within and behind and beyond all things.   It is and always has been about approach and about attitude, from the Indian graveyard to the legs of Jesus.  If we do it right, we find the sacred in one thing or one place and through it, find the sacred in everything.  That is the meaning of sacred objects, of the tassels from Jesus’s robes; that is the meaning of Medjugorje, or of Jerusalem: to open the sky through a portal, through a hole that brings us back to the whole.  To make of one thing holy, then to make it all holy.  To, if we have our minds turned right, see the world as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be. 
 
  
 
           



Wine Coast

          Every town you drive through is a magic box, ready to bring surprise, tears, joy and mystery to you if you know the magic words to conjure its unfolding.  That apartment building over there near the McDonalds’s, the one with the peeling paint and shoddy sliding deck doors? That’s where the big heroin bust took place last year, and also where Jimmy’s wife came from – Jimmy, who did nothing in high school but who then got his engineering degree from Cal Tech.   Three blocks away is where Andy Scholes, the science teacher, used cyanide to kill his wife who was dying from Alzheimer’s.  Next door lived Miss Stein, who never got married, but who was at the Olympics in Germany when the PLO took hostages, where many of them were  killed - including her boyfriend the soccer player and medical student from Israel.
           
            And so on, a magic box that can only be opened by digging into the seams and grooves of memories that lie within like tilled earth in spring, a hidden world laden with seed waiting to grow again into the stories that filled the last season, now shut into the inscrutability of time that opens and closes with careful tending or neglect. 
           
              I am new to my current home, arriving, mostly against my will, 19 years ago.  I entered this magic box unaware, as all newcomers do, and so could not know of the magical beans that were lying in stasis, waiting to grow from almost nothing into something giant and grand, or pale and pathetic, but into something that I could not know until time interceded.  19 years – that is my initiation, and already I can conjure many magical stories, many magical seeds dropped from the past into the world inside the magic box.  Most grow into stories both small and intense, concerning relationships of jealousy and abuse or of great love and sacrifice, but some are large in both size and complexity.  Of these, there is one seed that can be charmed into growth with the simple phrase, “The Wine Coast.” 
           
               I would not have known of this had we not had our son, then six, and our desire to give him some kind of religious education.   That’s how we met Jerry and his wife, who had just become rich after a lifetime of austerity.   Jerry had discovered a unique way to track the markets and the needs of upcoming industry with a new computer algorithm, and with a loan and a lot of faith, he had started a company, Market Watch, which had made him a fortune. 
           
                 He needed that fortune, for not only had he been broke, but he and his wife also had seven kids to raise – or rather six, because one had become old enough to join the Air Force.  Unfortunately, and that is too tame a word, that son would die in a freak helicopter crash stateside a few years before the family bought a mansion and forty acres just outside of town.  Life would continue to move on; a few years after the mansion was bought, the new church was finished with the generous help of Jerry’s money, and a few years after that would come Jerry’s jewel in the crown: The Wine Coast, christened with all the fanfare Jerry could muster.
           
                 Too bad about The Wine Coast, though; if there had ever been a white elephant that looked more like a white elephant than a real white elephant, The Wine Coast would be the place. 

                  Coming from the west of town, one takes the new bypass to cross the river, and then takes the exit onto the old road heading directly into the town center.  There one travels along a half mile or so stretch of corn field before hitting houses and older commercial buildings.  This field was supposed to be the new big industrial hub that was to blossom with the completion of the bypass, but instead, the Big Recession happened, so that all one now sees along this drive is a sign stating, “commercial property for sale,” corn (or dirt in winter), a trucking company set way back at the edge of the field, and The Wine Coast.  It is just fine for a trucking company to be set a quarter of a mile deep into a corn field, but not so for the Wine Coast.  It was supposed to be an up-scale restaurant and dance club, but those are seldom found in undeveloped industrial sites at the edge of small, blue-collar towns, especially during major economic upheavals.  
           
                   I could have told him so, but before its building, Jerry was flying too high.  He was not a bad guy, in fact was the opposite, but he was so flush with victory that I think he thought nothing could go wrong.  I actually did try to tell him so from my small, non-rich corner, along with several hundred more of us when he passed out a little questionnaire in church that asked: what would you rather have in town?  A brew pub or a fancy dance hall and restaurant?  There were a few other options among these, but those didn’t count (at least not for me).  Our town is made for a brew pub; our town would repel a fancy dining club like baby diapers and royalty.   We wanted a brew pub; Jerry wanted a fancy dance place just like one he had seen in the wine-growing area of central California.  He loved wine; he loved dancing; he did not listen to our advice.  He had been successful before, so what could go wrong?    
           
                      It was doomed from the start.  Built of white cement made to look like brick, or of white brick that regrettably looked like cement, it was massive, unlovely, and intimidating, all at once.  Every time we drove into town and saw it sprouting out from the corn, its vast parking lots empty, it pained our hearts.  How much money can even a rich man afford to lose?  Every year there would be a half-price special to get us rubes in to see its magnificence, and every year I would trot in for the deal with the rest to observe how the rugs were beginning to smell of mold and how the eggs Benedict had turned into dry English Muffins and rubbery over-easies.  It had never been comfortable or affordable, and within four years it had become run-down, low quality, and just as unaffordable.  No one, or at least few, in town knew how to dance anything fancier than the Jump and Shout, or knew of any wine better than standard commercial brands.   And even if they had wanted to, even less could afford it.  The poor building: its overly large ears flapped and sagged as its weighty trunk drooped between its white cement tusks.  Poor white elephant.  Doomed.  
           
                  It would hang around Jerry’s neck like an elephant-sized albatross for a few years more until it drove Jerry to bankruptcy before he could find a buyer.   The elephant would eat most of his fortune, but the rest would be taken by a strike from fate that was simply not fair: Jerry would find that he had cancer, and not the kind that usually ends in sighs of relief.  He had not been in church for a while, and so I did not hear of it until I took my car in for an oil change at the garage through which all local secrets pass.  It was Jerry himself who had told the owner that he did not expect to last another six months.  By that time, the bank owned the elephant, the mansion and company had been sold, and all the children were gone.  Jerry and his wife were back where they had started.   It was as if the two had just woken up from a dream, except that Jerry was not in bed but unexpectedly standing at the edge of a cliff.
           
                 We have not heard of Jerry or his wife at all since that time.  The white elephant was bought for a song by some concern a few years ago that has done nothing with it since, and nothing, no gossip, no little side- note, nothing at all has come concerning either of them.  Some say they have moved to another state, but no one who knows is talking.  They have disappeared from the landscape, leaving behind a Taj Mahal of their own, a dream risen from white brick that looks like cement, a monument to an idea, to a man, to a soul, to a couple whose outcome few can understand.  What they left behind is an enigma of waste to most of us, but probably not to them.   If they both are still alive, do they wince at their ignorance, or do they grimace at our, us local’s, lack of vision?  If he is dead, did he look back on his life as a failure or as a lesson?  His fortune was not built of greed, but of an idea that came to him for a reason.  Is the reason the Wine Coast?  Will it someday be something of worth, or will its value lie in its story – that all things are vanity, that all dreams turn to dust – or something even more? 
           
                   Maybe someday we who live here might figure it out.  No one else can or would want to, because no one else possesses the spell to open our magic box.   Here we can whisper “The Wine Coast” and a story grows that sends chills up the spine because something in those words speaks to us of a great mystery that has passed before us, only to disappear like a rabbit in a hat.  The story of the white elephant remains as a fist from the grave, so unexpected and inscrutable that it has to be true, and so true that few can know why it should be.  It is as if magic is magic because it cannot be explained; as if magic is more like life than life itself, because we initiates of time have learned that life is both more and less than it seems.  Often, it leaves us to wonder, taking us from sunlit days into the misty realms that surround every family, every neighborhood, and every community, each bound together by spells that only time can weave.                  
 
 
  
 

 Mouse Trap

The house we live in is something of a marvel; marvel, I said, not marvelous, as it is nothing like a luxury home.   No – it is a marvel to me because it was built by one retired contractor from Chicago who had this dream of living in the country, and he fulfilled that dream single-handedly.  I know this because the long-term neighbors have remarked upon it, telling me, “you know, he dug the basement out with his old John Deer and a bucket,” or, “He did the wiring all by himself, every bit,” and so on.  He built it from the ground up, relying on the materials closest at hand.  This included the tan sandstone rock that is quarried locally, which he mortared and stacked himself, as well as the wood for the roof and the frame, which was scavenged from old wrecks of houses and barns in the area.  I know this about the wood, because the underside of the roof is in view in the attic, and you can tell its advanced age from the weathering, and that it had been used by the holes left by nails that are no longer there.
 
None of this should matter, but this fall we had to re-shingle the roof.  Because the roof was made of irregular wood boards and not tightly-packed plywood sheets, the residue granules from the old asphalt shingles rained down onto the attic floor and all the boxes and old mattresses and Christmas ornaments that we had there.  Because they took nearly a week to complete the roof, the mice had plenty of time to discover the holes in the roof, as my son noted one Friday night as we sat to watch another episode of Sherlock Holmes.   “What’s that?” he said as the TV went silent for some change in mode.  My stomach clenched even before he said the next word, because I knew what it would be.  “Mice!” There, it was said.  Damn.  Already in my mind I was placing the live -traps filled with peanut butter crackers on the attic floor to catch these little bandits once again.  Damn again.
 
Last time we were invaded because of the installation of AC.  The contractor had run a line from the outside fan into the attic, making a hole in the wood soffit slightly larger than the line.  Because the line was covered in soft, insulating plastic, this gave the mice purchase with their little claws, and up they went, two dozen of them, into the pencil-sized hole to rattle around the attic all day.  I know how many there were because I counted them as they were caught, and again as they were emptied into the woods miles away.  The first 20 were fast and easy to catch, taking only a few days to be trapped behind the clear-plastic one-way doors.  The next two were harder, taking another 2 days.  The last two were the hardest, taking the better part of the week.  The last two, in fact, were so hard to catch that they involved me in a saga that was brought to mind once again as the little feet resounded above us.  Their – really our- story astounds me to this day.  
 
It should not have been a story at all because mice are mice and what else is new?  And so it was for those first 20.  That the next two took a few days also was not particularly special.  But those last two…
 
I would check the traps in the morning and at night, expecting at every moment that the house cleaning would be finished, but something began to happen.  At first, I noticed that the traps had been moved slightly, although they remained empty.  Later, I found that they had been dragged or pushed a considerable distance.  Later still, I found that they had been knocked over violently, as if attacked.  It was easy to figure out what was going through their minds: they knew now that they could not go into the traps and return, for they had seen what had happened to the rest of their family and friends.  But I had patched up the hole to the outside and the attic was tight.  They were starving to death, and they were experimenting with all the ways they could without the use of oposable thumbs to get the food out without being trapped. 
 
Yes, experimenting.  These apparently brainless mice, whose species is essentially popcorn for the predators of the world, were trying to figure out how to stay alive without being trapped, which to them must have meant sure death.  They tried this way and that, fully understanding that they could not enter the one-way door in the clear plastic boxes without being unequivocally stuck.  They took several days to knock the boxes this way and that, turn them upside down and sideways, and even whip them around the floor to effect something.  And although I could not know it until later, on the last day before admitting defeat, they kicked the boxes around so violently that it looked not only like desperation, but anger - anger built up over several days of frustration, until it had to be recognized with great sorry and remorse by the two of them that defeat was inevitable.
 
Defeat.  Finally they succumbed and I found them trapped in two boxes, food gone.  They had, as far as they knew, had their last supper before extermination and they were facing it with the kind of fatalism that only species on the bottom of the food chain can have.  They did not look like anything special, and I would otherwise have been hard-pressed to think that these mice – let alone any mice – might have minds and feelings that eerily resemble our own.  Yet they did, and it made me think of how I would have acted in a similar circumstance- that of being trapped and on the verge of death, and unable to think my way through it.  I thought of people stuck on lifeboats, of adventurers in the arctic, of climbers stuck on Mount Everest.   Then I thought of us, of all of us, and how such a situation isn’t so exotic after all.
 
In fact, we are all stuck in the one-way box at some times in our lives.  Sometimes it’s that test that we forgot to study for, and there we sit in the classroom, screwed; sometimes it’s that social faux pas where we are caught before everyone in some embarrassing admission or wrongly-placed joke; and sometimes it is a moment of panic when we really are caught in a life and death situation, where an exit does not seem to exist.  Yes, I have had those, too, as many of us have, and something has always occurred to me, or some miracle of coincidence has happened, or help has gratefully come in which the door to that one-way box was opened. 
 
But we all know how this ends; we all know where the story of the one-way box is going, for we are all caught in one regardless, all of us all of our lives.  At first, we have plenty of food and possibilities within that box, so much and so many that we don’t know that we are in a box at all.  Then the possibilities begin to diminish due to personal circumstances, like marriage and children, and then to the limitations that age brings.  It is then that we begin to understand that we are in a one-way box in which there is no exit possible, ever.  Some “rail against that dark night” in excesses of one kind or another, as if this would blot out the truth, while others or those same revelers eventually accept their fate with humble trembling like those species on the bottom of the food chain.  Others get religion, giving lip service to the sacred texts until the day that the door violently closes shut behind them, and then they fear like everyone else. 
 
That last will probably be me, even though it is certain, most certain that more exists, that there is another place for us outside the box.  It is most certain because of the way all of life is laid out, the way it is planned, the way life always comes back in one way or another.  If the mice had known my mind, which for them would have been the mind of a god, they would not have feared so much, for they would have understood that they were to be freed someplace else, to live and die on their own terms once again.  I know that I, too, should not fear so much, because I know that I will be released in another land, to live on my own terms again, however different that environment might be.  But I do fear.  I fear what I cannot see, even if it is known; and I fear the nature of God, that which has planned it all, for if not all is nice in this mansion, then why should it be in another?  How much trust and faith might I have?  How much trust and faith did the mice have as they were lifted from the floor by my giant hand? 
 
It is all known – so they tell me, and so I have understood myself.  But it is one thing to talk of the box when the door seems so far away, and another when the door is beginning to swivel on its hinges.  No planning or tricks or ordinary effort on my part will change a thing.  I am in this box either by external design or by my own desire, and someday it will close me in and take me elsewhere.  Still, I ramble about like the doomed mice, even though it is known.  It is already given, within and beyond those ancient texts, and all I have to do is follow the path they show me with the courage of the trapped explorer – and with the desperation of one who has no option – to find the infinite world outside the box.  Still, I continue to scurry around like a mouse, given only to pray that the giant hand that one day will pick me up be gentle and kind.  
 


                            

Finding the Key
           
          “Why am I going?”  This she said for the third time as we headed north to the cabin, and it was all my fault.  I had been unable to sleep the night before and had been furious for it, and had not let that fact go by as I rushed around to pack, throwing things around more than necessary and swearing as I did so.  At one point I had stopped to realize what a jerk I was being and had stopped that, too, but the damage, or so it seemed to both of us, had been done.  I had spoiled the mood and that was that.  My bad. 
            But hold on: things have a way of setting themselves up.  Over the miles the mood had changed, and by the time we got to the Way –Up- North cabin, things were at least OK.  Everything there was in order, we listened to more of the book on CD as we sipped this and that, and we both slept well that night.  All the darkness had seemed, again, my fault, and that had fallen away as it always does.  It was all normal, as always, dark moods followed by better moods, wounds healed and all that. 
              Life seemed to be continuing at its ho-hum pace, just as the morning sun proclaimed its glory the next day.   A cup of tea, talk of what to do, everything was back to normal.  Except: something, we would soon find, was hidden in that light that had passed over from the day before, something that had been working its way towards us, and it would be my fault again.  But not really.  In fact, what happened next that morning seemed, over time, to be something that was downright supernatural.    
            It was the car key, or really, the fob, that electronic gadget that you put in your pocket and forget about until you forget to put it in your pocket.  It acts like magic, sending invisible waves out that unlock the car and start it up without you doing a darned thing.  Great, sure, but when that little idol, that little voodoo doll, is gone, nothing works.  Unlike a key, which functions like everything else not attached to the computer age, the absence of the fob makes one feel that a piece of the universe has disappeared.  And that is exactly what happened: as we dressed up to take a great walk on a trail a half mile away, I went to find the fob where I normally put it, and it wasn’t there.  All of a sudden, just after I had thought that the darkness of the past day had vanished with the hours, it had returned.  The universe, once again, no longer seemed in place; the Will of Heaven, it seemed, was lost once again.
            Of course, when finding that the impossibly awful has happened, there is often some lingering hope.  That cancer diagnosis?  Get another test!  Fallen stock market?  It’s just a fluke!  Lost fob in the wilderness?  Gotta be in that other pants pocket!  Except that it wasn’t, nowhere, no how.  I reconstructed the night before, of course, and narrowed its loss down to two possibilities: it had either fallen out of the hole in my pocket when I had gone out to retrieve the CD from the car, or had slipped out of said pocket as I had lain down that evening to read for an hour.   Rooting around in the grass around the car found nothing, and besides, I concluded after a while that the hole in my pocket was too small for the fob to slip through.  Therefore, it had to be upstairs in the bed – but after a quick search, then another, it wasn’t.  It was just, simply, gone.  We even searched in the freezer of the fridge and in empty containers, me fearing that we actually might find it there and confirm my premature senility, but no, there was nothing.  Gone.  Just like the magical tool that it was.
            All was not as dark as it seemed, and the reader might groan sarcastically when I say that we had a back-up.  The battery had run out, but hidden within the spare fob was a real, old-fashioned key that theoretically could route us around the magic of the fob and start things as they should be started.  However, when I followed the instructions to use the key, it did not work.  Not only that, when I reassembled the starting button and tried it, just in case, instead of lighting up “Key Not Located” it lit up “Damaged Starter.”  Damaged starter!  By inserting the key wrong (somehow), I had ruined the starter!  Now I would have to hitch-hike into the nearest village 20 miles away, call AAA and hope that they would drive up a half-mile driveway that was nearly buried in pine boughs.  They would, of course, but only after a rather large extra incentive of cash, and even in that case, the day would be ruined.  Hundreds of dollars would be spent and all our time lost to unappealing anxiety and business necessary only because I, once again, had somehow screwed up.  She had been right - we should never have gone.  All the universe had warned us, and one way or another we were going to pay.  Oh, woe with us!  Oh, woe with me who had caused it all!
            However, the universe rarely acts as we expect.  As I began searching desperately in the grass to find the working fob once again, just in case the damaged starter would change its mind and work on the off-chance I did find it, the car started behind me.  What?  I would be told a minute later that a voice had told her to go into the car with the spent fob and try once again, even though it had been tried many times before, and the voice had been right.  Half an hour later we would be in Grand Marais, and within a few minutes we would have a good battery in place and a working fob.  A miracle had happened, and we both attributed it to her regular praying of the rosary.  Saved!
            Almost, that is, and for the most part.  But a fob, unlike a key, costs two hundred dollars or more, a pretty good hunk of change for something one should never have to buy.  So, while in the hardware store to buy the battery, I also bought a rake (for ten dollars.  Hey, I needed one anyway).  Back at the cabin I raked and sifted for about a half hour until a voice came to me as well: it’s not out here, Fred.  Go back and have a cup of tea.”  And so I did, and so it happened that as I sat there, calmly now, the voice spoke again: “It is by the bed upstairs.  Not in it; you had pulled the covers up after reading there and had knocked it off the bed.  Yes, you had looked there, too, but it is on the OTHER side of the bed, where the mattress is against the wall.”  I went straight away upstairs, and sure enough, the damned fob was there. 
            She told me then that she had told me to check on both sides before, but I had not heard her, or so it seemed.  But when I thought about it, it occurred to me that my explanation did not seem right.   In fact, nothing about that incident seemed right.  Like a befuddled Sherlock Holmes, I had reasoned it down to two, then to one possibility, and that had been right.  But I had searched wrong, searching “right” the easiest thing about the equation.  And then another conversation of that morning hit me, one about dreams.  We had talked about our weird dreams of the night before that morning, as people often do, and I had pointed out the obvious strangeness of dreams, so obvious that few people think about it; that is, that WE do the dreaming, even though it seems that we do not, at least if we accept the idea that our thoughts come from ourselves.  In dreams, we are as subject to “fate” as we are in the real world, but in reality, at least as far as we can know, we are the ones creating our dreams.  Because of this, we should not be surprised or upset or held emotional hostages to our dreams, for we should know what is coming up next and why.  We should, by all reasonable thinking, be in complete control of them.  But we are not.  In dreams, we act the passive victims.  Why?
            We can ask the same question of waking reality.  Depth psychologists have long known that the unconscious knows far more about why we do things than our normal selves do.  Yet, just as in dreams, our reasons and our very direction in life – that is, the self-directed portion of our fate – is known to us all along.  One can say that we hold such reasons from ourselves to keep the play interesting.   But why have the play in the first place?  For me, the incidence of the key answers at least part of the question.
            What came of the incident?  Instead of a normal hike, we got drama.  More so, we also got wonder and religion – me, wondering at the magic of the disappearance, and both of us of that first “voice” that was a blessing.  Then had come the second voice that had ended the drama after it had fulfilled its mission.  Of course, I really knew all along where the fob was, but had obstructed its finding.  But then the wonder: neither of us could have gotten a dead fob to work just that once to get the car going, no matter our unconscious.  Yet the two, the loss of the fob and the working of the dead one, were not separate, for if the fob had not worked, all of it would have simply been an exercise in blind stupidity. 
            Instead, we had learned to believe, and I had gotten this story and this thought, this thought that keeps teasing as it opens itself: that somehow, we – at least the “we” who we think we are – are guided.  We are guided by our unconscious in coordination with other beings, who are all in coordination with a greater consciousness that not only knows our inner thoughts, but also – as we in our dreams – can actually change things.   That many of us think this idea is superstitious or preposterous is only part of the cover; we all KNOW that miracles (as we call them) both big and small are happening, and we also know, at least on a much deeper level, WHY.  But we have to keep the mystery going.  We have to allow room for faith, because that points our direction back home, to the source, to where the masks are taken away and everything is as it is, in total, in the open.  But first we must have the journey, to find faith in what is and was and forever shall be, a journey which began for reasons we cannot quite grasp and will not be able to grasp until we are there, finally there.
            As I went upstairs to find the fob where I suddenly knew it was, it occurred to me: stories often tell us of those who travel the world in quest, only to find that the key was at home all along.  Just as was this key – or rather, this fob.  Right under my nose all along, and I knew it.  But that would have ruined the adventure, and the story.  FK       
 

​
Zombie at the Picnic
           
           The last time I had seen her, things had not gone well.  We were visiting relatives in Connecticut and were staying at my mother’s when I had woken in a haze and there she was – my cousin Margie.  She looked about as rough as I felt, and as soon as I offered a flat good morning, she started in on the politics.  To her, everything was politics and she and I did not share the same point of view.  Whatever she said that morning made me snap back out of habit, which brought her to some triumphant point that did not concern me one bit.  I changed the subject and things went along as well as can be expected by two people not feeling too well so early in the morning. 
            Ah, but it had not gone along as I had expected.  That afternoon, my brother had a cook-out for the immediate local family and friends where I had volunteered as chef of the grill.  It had been a cheery time, spiced with a few beers, and Margie had not made her expected appearance until late, when she apparently had gone straight into the house, because I had not seen her.  It wasn’t until the grill was closed that she made her appearance again, where she moved as if to leave in her car.  I saw her and called her over: “Hey, Margie, can I get you a beer?” She had paused as if thinking about it, and then had replied, “Yeah.  I guess I could use one.”  We then talked about pleasantries until she had to leave and all, again, seemed well enough.
            It was not until all the guests had gone and I was helping put stuff away with my brother that he told me what had really gone on.  Margie had come into the house, apparently quite drunk, and had complained bitterly about what an awful person I was.  It was my politics, and she had told everyone within that I should not be allowed to raise my son, given how I would pervert his view of the universe.  It was from this diatribe that I had had that beer with her. Who could have known?
            Not many.  How often do you go from excoriating a relative – not a boss, but a relative – and then sitting down for a pleasant chat with him?  Not often, but Margie had her problems, so many and so deep that her behavior that afternoon did not shock me.  Her father, one of my mother’s brothers, had been an alcoholic and bon vivant of the first degree, a good match for Margie’s mother, her father’s third wife, who was also an alcoholic.  Not surprisingly, Margie had also been an alcoholic and a drug addict, having birthed three children with two different men who both got custody because her life had been such a mess.  At one point, she was even running a bar for her third husband – her next to last – who had been a drug dealer for the Mafia, who was then doing time for attempted murder.  An exciting life, to be sure.
            But she had since calmed down, married a decent man, and let her drinking go down to only after- hours.  Still an occasional evening binger, I would get drunk-dial phone calls from her late at night, which I would have to terminate after she got around to repeating her phrases the third time, which didn’t matter anyway, because she never remembered the calls.  But at least she was sober during the day, had a job that she was good at, and had a husband who was on the right side of the law. 
            She had changed recently, however, and for an understandable reason.  She had gotten to know two of her children in adulthood, both boys from the same father, and had developed a tolerable relationship with them.  One of them had become a local cop and by all appearances seemed to have had a decent life until his divorce.  This had not gone well, and he himself had gone too heavily into drink, but that was certainly not unusual.  What was unusual was that one night, just a few months before the cookout, he had taken his service pistol and blown his brains out. 
            It was I, then, who should have known better, should have known that I should have treated Margie with extreme delicacy, but Margie had made it difficult.  Instead of covering herself in mourning, she had kept up with the old tough veneer, acting as if everything were the same as ever, even her obsession with politics.  But, of course, things weren’t the same.  Her protection was to keep up the act, and like many actors, she had to resort to medication to maintain the façade.  With her background, it was not surprising that she was doing so with a vengeance.  Her probable future was too grim to fully discuss.
            The thing with the future is, it comes whether it is discussed or not.  A year later, my son and I were back east again for a special event: my other maternal uncle was celebrating (or, rather, was being forced to celebrate – he couldn’t have cared less) his 90th birthday.  He was an especially tough buzzard who had been a bomber pilot in WWII and a fighter pilot in Korea, and then a math teacher, and then an athlete who had run marathons into his 70’s, until his knee had given out.  Much of the scattered clan had gathered, bringing children and even grandchildren that I knew little or nothing about, all appearing fairly healthy of body but obviously eccentric of mind, as is the norm for the DNA on my mother’s side.  I was to be the cook again (this is so because my wife is from the South, and almost demanded that I learn to barbecue.  Up north, at least when I was growing up, grilling out was for Labor Day, and sometimes Memorial Day, only), and had come late to the scene due to some errand to the store.  My brother’s wife had already started the grill, and as I fingered through the meat patties and hot dogs, I said my sometimes awkward “hello’s” to many I had not seen in decades, and who I hardly recognized.  Gray or bald or fat or all of the aforementioned, defined all of us - except for Margie.  Seated beneath the shadow of a tree, I had not noticed her until she made a request for a hamburger.  “I want mine burnt,” she said, “like a hockey puck.”  Sure, I said, looking at her fully for the first time.  That’s when the horror hit me.
             Of course I had known something of it – how her liver was shot, how she would have to stop drinking for six months before they would even consider finding a donated liver for her, which had seemed a bit harsh to me, considering she was only 53.  But I had not known just how gone she was.  Sitting in that lawn chair with the same wise-acre smile on her face was a form so emaciated that the flesh hung off the bones like soft leather.  Her arms and legs were absolutely skeletal, which was frightening in itself, but it was her belly that really caused alarm.  The damaged liver, now desperately trying to do the job it could no longer do, had increased its size to such an extent that she looked six or so months pregnant, so much larger for the skeleton she otherwise was.
               That was not the worst of it, though.  It was the eyes.  Her skin had become dry and yellowish, but her eyes shown out of her darkened, now - cavernous sockets like yellow lights from an airplane in the night sky.  These eyes were not just yellow, but golden and shining with a frightening brilliance. 
                I tried not to stare, nodding at her request and passing off a little joke about it.  It did not seem that she even knew how she looked until it came time for the family picture, which she declined.  Nobody said a word about her decision, letting it rest in a vacuous pause that was gratefully broken up by calls to group-up.  There, Margie sat and watched it all from under the tree, her half-eaten burger in her lap, her eyes glowing like the cover of a Steven King novel.
                We adults simply couldn’t say what we were thinking, for it was all so painfully obvious, the whole story.  But that didn’t stop the kids.  At one point Margie had gone into the house, just before some late-comers arrived with several children.  They had naturally gone into the house as well to go to the bathroom while we grown-ups settled into the real party-time of a cookout, when the food was done and more earnest and substantial talk began.  The sound had quieted from the boisterous to the conversational when one of the children, a little girl of about 4, emerged with a face beaming with excitement.  She might have gone unnoticed if she had not possessed a piercingly high voice that was as loud as her expression.   With this tool, this weapon, she proclaimed to us and the whole world the reason for her amazement: “Wow!  There’s a zombie at the picnic!”
               The façade had been stripped away.  My brother may have laughed with his odd sense of humor, but I, as well as everyone else, was aghast.  The truth was public now, told without pretense, and there was no hiding it.  Margie looked like death itself from excess drinking and was going to die.  Soon.  
               We had been hiding these obvious facts just as Margie had hid her deep, deep problems all her life.  Whether she had started to drink and use drugs because of a genetic predisposition or her background or both is a matter for the experts, but certainly she caused her inadequacies from their use, and then hid from these failures in the same way.  Years later, after finally getting her life together, the past had come back to haunt her with a vengeance as the son she could never raise killed himself.  His problems had apparently become too large to hide any longer, and after his final solution, his mother disappeared once again into her own final solution, one from which she would never return.   
                  She denied it all to the very end.  “Doctors always exaggerate,” she told my brother the following week when he visited her in the hospital.  “And turn on CNN.  I want to see what’s happening in the campaign.”  Two hours later, she went into convulsions and died, taken from the bed to an emergency room while the news continued to play. 

                   I’m sorry for everything, Margie.  It was the life of others that pushed on yours, and your life that pushed on others, too, but we cannot always control our actions, or know where they will lead.  Once the pebble is tossed, the ripples go where they will.  It is a hard thing to take, this life thrown back on us, and it’s easy to see how forgetting – or really, denial, because we never forget - might seem like the solution.  But there will always be the little girl in the crowd with the big voice.  We will always be exposed. 
                   Life is sometimes too much to take.  Some do not choose to hide or forget, though, but instead search for signs of the first big voice to see if The Word ripples still; for if it does, surely it will carry us to the end, to rest at last against the shores where all is as it should be.  Perhaps she is already there, too, in the all-time, waiting for us to emerge beside her and shake off the waters and laugh at the oddity of it all.  Surely she is, for if the world is the Word, in the end there will be nothing to forget, and nothing ever again to regret.   
 
 
 
 
House of Usher
 
            It happened again – the dream, the house.  The house can be anywhere – field, woods, city – but it is always an old house that is falling apart, and often, but not always, a farm house with chipping white paint.  It is dangerous and unpleasant, and always – always – filled with malevolent spirits.  I know why I get it at certain times; as with two nights ago, it is usually the next night after drinking too much, as I did while talking late with my brother.  It is reflective of a nervous system readjusting, but it tells something more as well.
            When my parents got old, they let the house of my upbringing fall apart.  It is made of cinder blocks, and at certain points the blocks developed cracks, which let in the ivy that was creeping along the walls.  My mother trained the ivy along the large plate-glass windows to look pretty, but still, the outside was left to come in, often with unwanted critters like rats and black snakes.  Finally, my parents were just too old for the place and my brother – the same one I was talking to a few days ago – bought it.  The parents moved to my grandmother’s little house, which had been vacant since her death, and my brother moved to the old house and began repairs.  First, it was to the leaking roof, where the carpenters began clearing its flat top before covering it with several tarps for work on the next day.  That night, four inches of rain fell.  The rain pooled in the depressions of the tarp, and with that weight, the roof came crashing down, dumping hundreds of gallons into the house.  People screamed, many things were ruined, and the project of the house got that much bigger.   
            The ruination of the house was a reflection of my parent’s age and creeping senility, whereas my dreams are about the jangle of the body recovering from alcohol.  Both, in reality and in image, are reflected in the state of the house.
            I know about this because of a special English teacher I had in 11th grade, who had us study the works of Edgar Allen Poe.  Edgar had once been a literary critic, and had not always been the odd “Raven” as he is now known.  He was also known, however, to drink a lot and perhaps that was how he envisioned his story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  It was my teacher who told us, in fact, that the house WAS a symbol of the self in disrepair.  Appropriately, when my parents were letting the house go, I would joke that they were living in the House of Usher.  How prophetic that was, and still is with my own internal house.  Yes, all clear except one thing: why the evil demons? Why the same house almost every time, and the creepy spirits who lived upstairs in the dangerous disarray of the attic?
            I have lived in many old and crumbling farm houses, from the one in Storrs, CT, when I was a student, to the one in my home town owned by an old famer, to the one in northern Wisconsin when I was there with friends logging for a summer.  Only in one, that in Storrs, had there apparently been a spirt.  She would often wake me in the morning with the sweet voice of a young woman, calling my name so clearly that I always looked around to make sure no one was in the room.  The buzz among my housemates was that someone had hung themselves in the attic, but hers was never the voice of despair.  In fact, I wish I could have seen her, but she never showed herself in any form and I have never heard from her since that time.
            So, from where?  Last night’s dream had a very obvious location, and it was NOT in an old farmhouse.  Instead, it was in the wreck of a self-made modern house in Eastern Connecticut that we had bought for a song, considering it came with twenty six acres.  But God, what a mess!  I have written of it before, but here is the synopsis: the man who had designed and built it was a musician who had been carried away with the idea of a solar “envelope” house, where heat from a panel of windows would be directed beneath the house to warm from bottom up.  Thing was, the knoll he chose to build on was solid rock, so no “beneath” was ever made, causing the house to be unbearably hot when the sun was out, and to leak heat like crazy at night through the large south-facing panel of windows. 
My first fix-up on the house entailed replacing all the water pipes and shower and toilet and so on, because the musician had run out of money and had been forced to rent the house to live himself in the little A-frame outbuilding he had made for an office.  Unfortunately, the renters were custodial workers at a hospital who had developed heroin addictions.  Their last act in living there had been to tear out anything they could get a buck for.  They were arrested, thanks to neighbors who eyed the truck leaving the place with a load of pipes suspiciously, but the house was re-possessed by the bank and sold at a small price just to get rid of it – sold, that is, to me. 
            My next act had been to replace the windows with insulated roofing, which worked, but there was so much more.  The more I worked on the house that we were then living in, the more I understood how poorly it had been designed and built.  One of the many things I discovered was that this knoll, being largely treeless and above a swamp, had (probably for centuries) and still was the site at which reptiles came to sun themselves.  At certain breaks in the wood walls, snakes would congregate in the sun beneath windows inside the house.  The horror.  And there was more, so much more, such as finding used needles hidden in holes in the dry wall.  There was so much horror, so much to fix, in fact, that it kept me anxious for all of our two and one half years there.  I fear, too, that I might have neglected our two, and then four-year-old son as I sprinted through the house fixing one thing and then another.  My final fear had been that I was about to lose our one great nest-egg, the horrible house itself. 
            Fortunately, just when we were forced to move by my wife’s company, the right couple came alone – a builder who knew his stuff but wanted land - and handed us a handsome profit.  We were free of the nightmare house and our nest-egg was saved. 
But the nightmare has never quite left me.  Yes, it was an excess of alcohol that probably brought the dream to the fore last night, but this had not invented it.  It lay there and lays there still waiting for the right time to express its – my – worst fears.  My fears see their spirit in every crumbling house in which I have lived, but I know that they come from that single, two and one half year episode of house repair. 
What, then, of spirits and nightmares, of houses and physical disrepair?  While I was living in Venezuela, I read a reporter’s interview with a priest who had gotten a long prison sentence for smuggling cocaine to Spain.  When asked of evil spirits – the Caribbean culture is loaded with them – he had scoffed: “Evil spirits?  They exist only in a bottle of rum!”  It was his cynical truth that people experienced spirits only after they had overly indulged, odd thinking for a Catholic priest. 
In a way he was right – it is the jangling after-effect of alcohol that often brings the mind to the presence of evil spirits.  But, as I have found, the spirits are always there, and may come in moments of uncertainty or anxiety as well.  They appear as our worst nightmare, and are the stuff of the dark side of life – death, disease, loss, all of these and more that spell FEAR. 
Evil spirits, then, are fear itself.  In my dream last night, I was at that awful house on the knoll, and above was an attic that was crumbling and was filled with evil, vile spirits.  I reality, though, this house never had an attic.  But there were places for snakes and other creepy evils, and they were housed forever in the attic of my mind.
Are these spirits, then, just mind-images of fear?  It might seem so, but what makes the fear in the first place?  Why did I fear that house so much? It was the snakes, yes, and the needles, but more than that, I feared the loss of big bucks, of the money we would need to comfortably live.  None of these fears, including the snakes, had a natural right to impinge on my well-being, but I let them; I let them haunt me far more than I should ever let such passing insecurities haunt.  Whose fault is that but my own?  But since I cannot control my dreams, who or what is behind this great, overblown fault?   Psychology, some will say; the unconscious, others will dutifully note; but isn’t it really the fault of my obsession with my own well-being?  Isn’t it really the fault of my short-sightedness, of my inversion of values that bring about my own psychological misery of fear and failure and worse?   And since I obviously don’t want these fears, who, again is responsible for this affliction? 
It is not the occasional over-indulgence in alcohol – that, really, is only a catalyst.  Rather, it is the spirit of the self that allows itself to be consumed with worldly worries, with money and snakes and needles and other environmental factors that are not really a danger, but only magnifications of our own fears of safety.  To allow that fear to manifest is, to me, a lack of faith.  But again, I do not want this fear; I have not asked for it.  From where does this lack of faith come?
In the East, the theory of karmic attachment tells us that we make our own hell - our worries and nightmares – from attachment to this world that is so much like a nightmare, if we let it be.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this attachment is called original sin.  Original sin, like attachment, comes from our own misconstrued will.  In the East, this going astray, this original sin, is given no precise location and time, but to the west, we are given the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden – and the mishap with the snake, Satan.  While in the Garden of immortality, he could do no harm; but once humans were expelled, he could do all the harm in the world.  Ultimately, it was humanity’s plunge into mortality that gave us anxiety, and it was the snake that allowed us to open this gate.  The snake, then, was responsible – coupled with our will to believe him.  The snake was Satan, the ultimate demon among minions of demons, who are nothing more or less than our evil spirits.
It is asking too much in our era to have people believe that our fears come from real demons, but we should ask ourselves: in a world of all possibilities, why these gnawing fears that only harm?  In this house of fear, this house that is the picture of our state of being, what are these fears telling us?  That here, there is no comfort, no power over the evil?  That here, in this dark valley of disease and death, there is no place to go, no place to hide?
No place to go, no place to hide, yes; living in the House of Usher, we can only await the inevitable fall.  On a sunny day, it is clear that this cannot be so, but in the darkness that we must all confront, there is the terror.  It is a lie, for the night never lasts forever, but we get lost in the darkness of the house, and the house becomes us, and we fall mad with fear, grasping at straws, desperate and alone, alone except for our demons.  Or so they tell us. Or so they lie.                   
 
               


​Canned Chicken
 
            You could feel the sizzle, the crack of electric-white nerve synapsis as they brought the mind to places unimaginable and unspeakable.  The world of classrooms and parents and politics and careers took on laughable proportions, paraded out like cheap cartoons that had nothing to do with a reality that burned with the unbearable heat of meaning, each living moment a shocking revelation of being, of NOW.  Our books of poetry, of religion, of art came alive with a depth that gave them the authenticity that our teachers could never teach, nor could ever really understand, and nature spoke as it always had but we had never heard before.  We were now the illuminati; we possessed the key. 
            At the age of fifteen, we had bought segments of that key for three, four, or five dollars from weasel-eyed dealers who slunk in the shadows to make a few bucks from stupid kids with no common sense, but that didn’t matter.   In the hyperspace of illicit LSD, the pushers were no more mysterious than the rest of the cartoon world.  Self-centered and unaware, they and all the others of the old world just didn’t get it.  The revolution was here and it was not armed with guns or angry mobs but with us, smooth-faced child-rebels who were slicing like ice-breakers through the dense ice of the fallen world.  Our weapon was gnosis, and this weapon, this unknowable known, had made us invincible and inevitable.
            So we had thought in the old, pealing dorm rooms perched above the Doric columns and brick walls covered with ivy at the prep school, and in the fields and woods and low mountains of southern New England that surrounded it.  In the heights, in the rush of that four-dollar hit, anything had seemed possible.  With the arrival of spring, when the sun was bringing new heat and comfort after a frozen winter, almost anything had seemed doable.   But even for us, what Chris did that one week in May was shocking in its breathtaking stupidity.  With the hindsight of many decades it now appears to have been par for the course, but that is beside the point.  Because Chris had been the most bold, from that time on, he would be known as the moron with the can of chicken. 
            I recall it had begun in mid- winter of that year, when one of us “townies” – locals who did not board at the school – had discovered from our friends a dealer who oozed around the local public high school selling an assortment of black-market drugs.  This guy, who we nicknamed “Pablo” for his alienating slickness, was one of the bad ones who offered everything from black beauties (speed) to heroin for anyone with the cash, but our gang of self-described intellectuals wanted only the pearls of not-so-great price, the hallucinogens that “Look Magazine” said would drive you mad, but that the rock stars and hipster gurus – the ones who really spoke to us - said would bring instant enlightenment.  Surprisingly, the latter had been the more accurate of the two, which we discovered one cold day on a long walk through the local hills as our minds crackled and popped with revelation.  From that time on, things began to open up like oysters, which bore truths about ultimate being as well as those of our social structure.  Our minds had not only been expanded, but our adolescent sense of rebellion had been given voice.  We were no longer rebels without a cause.  Still, most of our gang – myself included – continued to study for exams and worry about the next regional conference JV meet, living in two minds and two worlds.  A few others did not: Roy, who had discovered morphine in his hometown in Pennsylvania and now only wanted to get high, and Chris, who could never do anything in half-measure.   
            Chris was a boarder, a full-time preppy whose father was paying thousands of dollars a year to bring him into the upper echelons of the Ivy Leaguers, those best and brightest who ran everything and had a leg-up in anything, from banking to the Foreign Service.  The cost to townies was less, but our parents were paying for the same thing on the cheap.  It was a lesson that was lost on all of us, as it would certainly not square with our philosopher-king status, except for Chris.  He would have none of it, now that he knew the shallowness of social prestige and wealth compared to the wisdom of Zoroaster and Siddhartha, and he began to actualize his rebellion by skipping classes; then by staying out past curfew; and then by simply staying out of the ivied campus altogether.  He had little money, however, and was several years from majority, a ward of the school in every way.  Where he would live would be a problem.  Who in their right mind would take in a fifteen- year-old fugitive? 
            My parent’s place was the only logical choice, if there was any logic to Chris’s thinking.  We lived in a large, disordered house managed loosely by a woman, my mother, whose heroes included every social misfit that ever put pen to page or brush to canvass.  Her youthful dream had been to freelance in New York City, to live in Greenwich Village with the free-thinkers and travel the globe with exciting assignments from the New York Times, but her father, who she loved dearly, would have none of it.  Years later would find her hunched over her paints or curled up by the stereo with the classics while we kids happily did almost anything we wanted to do.  The house was perched on a hill in Old Yankee farming country, where most of the farms had been left to fallow, and the surrounding hills had returned to their near- virgin glory for mile upon mile.  This, thought Chris, could be his new wilderness.
            And why not?  We had learned that our time-weary world had it all wrong; that we were sleeping cosmic beings who, once reawakened, could live in the aura of vibrant Godhead by a mere chance of thought, plucking our needs from the one true energy that ran through everything and united everything.  That the rest of us were not willing to go that extra mile only showed our lack of faith. 
            Chris had plenty of faith, but we soon found that even my artsy mother did not, which the rest of us had expected.  “What is Chris doing here when he should be at school?  We can’t take him in.  He’s a minor!  He has to go back before tonight.”  Yes, we nodded wisely towards Chris, we told you so!  Think what you want, but that other world isn’t going away anytime soon.  Stop being a fool!  Drop out, go back home, but you can’t live here or any other place free of adult rules.  Accept reality.  Which was funny coming from us, we of the cosmic brotherhood, but we understood our limits.  It’s one thing to THINK something, and quite another to LIVE it.
            Still, Chris would have none of it.  “I’ll live in the mountains.”
            “You’ll freeze to death.”
            “Lend me some blankets.”
            “You’ll get wet.”
            “Give me that tarp, then.”
            “Fine.  But what ya gonna do about food?”
            “I’ll hunt.  I’ll make a spear.”
            “Oh, that’ll work, city boy.”
            I can’t quite recall the exact moment, but I can still picture the scene: we were standing in the kitchen area next to the big island table that was covered with orange Formica, me and Dave and Chris and a few others, and it appeared that we had stopped this fool in his tracks.  Food, yes; that was important.  Spearing rabbits and deer did seem a bit difficult.   But just when it seemed we had talked some sense into him he swung around from us and opened the pantry.  Digging around a bit, he finally emerged triumphantly holding a large can.  I recognized it immediately.  It had been something that we had convinced my mother to avoid cooking for many months: a full, uncut canned chicken.  Just imagining a chicken released from months stuffed in a tight can had been enough to drain the family’s appetite, and it is amazing that anyone had bought it in the first place.  In fact, I don’t recall that anyone had ever owned up to buying it, although it had to have been the work of Mom or Dad.  And so we laughed.
            “What?  You gonna live off a canned chicken for how long?”
            “It’s big,” Chris said defiantly.  
            “Maybe three days’ worth, and if you got anything left, it’ll rot.”
            Chris twitched uneasily. “I can make it last.  Smoke it or something.”
            “Yeah, you’ve been smokin’ something all right.  Forget about it.   You’re cornered.”
           
            He did not forget about it, at least not right away.  When the boarding students left for their dorms before dark, we two townies, Dave and I, helped Chris tie up the tarp and the sleeping bag and then led him into the woods, can of chicken under his arm.  We might have helped him build a fire, although I can’t recall, but I do know that we left him as darkness approached and the temperature dropped.  Back home, my mother had become unusually stern: “The school is calling, his father’s calling – you’d better bring him back right now!”  With a mandate and a flashlight, we lit out for the territories and discovered Chris shivering under the tarp.  He accepted our guidance back out, leaving behind the tarp, but taking the chicken.  He had not wanted to, but we made him.  Live by the chicken, we said, and die by the chicken.
 
            By next morning Chris’s father and mother had come to take him away, no doubt in disgrace, although we didn’t put ourselves anywhere close to the scandal – not that it mattered.  That we were associated with something so strange left us branded at the prep school like a wanton woman, which would follow us until graduation day.  Within months after that final release, we would find that Chris somehow had gotten into the same university as us, with more bizarre and exciting adventures to be had.  But we never let him forget about the chicken, and to this day, Dave and I still laugh over it. 
            As we should.  Chris was so out of his depth that is was hilarious in a pathetic way.  This is not to say that I have proven to be the hard-headed realist over the decades.   Recently, in fact, I have lived and learned to contradict pragmatic thought at every turn, surprisingly because of an increasingly conservative bent.  Not the political kind, though; rather, I have begun to study the Gospels once more.
            “Give up everything to follow me;” “Worry not about your daily bread.  The birds of the field neither reap nor sow, and yet how much more the Father loves you;” “If two or more of you pray for something, so it will be given; ” “If a man asks for your coat, give him your tunic as well.”  There are many other phrases with similar meaning if I could remember, many other words from the man who gave the Western World its values, words that tell us that God will provide if we have faith; words that tell us to give up everything for our beliefs and leave it all to God; words that tell us that this is a divinely conscious universe, where all and everything can be provided.  Just as there was mana from heaven for Moses and the Tribes of Israel, so there could be sustenance for us all.   If we have faith.  If we believe.
            So who was the fool so many years ago?  Was it the school, which pointed us towards riches and status?  Was it us, who laughed at Chris for his outlandish faith?  No: certainly, it was Chris, for somehow he had gotten it wrong and would have died within a few weeks in the woods, found lying by a can of chicken licked clean.   But why?  What part of “faith” did he, did we get wrong?  With all our cosmic knowledge, what did we not understand?
            If I had all the answers, I would not write, for writing to me is a way to look for solutions, but I think I know a part of the answer: time.   To get it right, we need wisdom, and to gain wisdom we need time.  Moses struggled with his people for forty years, and Jesus, as the very son of God, still needed forty days of fasting in the desert to shake wisdom out from knowledge.  And while God provided mana and water for Israel, and loaves and fishes for Jesus, for the rest of us, wisdom means learning how to get by while living with knowledge.  It is the way of the world, the narrowest of paths, the razor’s edge of human existence.  Time, then, gives us our greatest challenge but also our greatest gift, for time provides the crucible, if we are willing, necessary to purify the gold – to distil wisdom from knowledge.
            In that, who knows what is possible?  I think that we did when we were fifteen and burned with the fires of pure being, but we did not yet know how to apply the flames.   As we pass into aching older age – those of us who remain - I can only pray that our time is not spent worrying about pain and death, but rather in finding time’s greatest reward.  A can of chicken does not appear to be a sufficient crucible, but with time, perhaps we will see that it was.                    
                                                           
                 


​A Cross of Gold
 
            A few years ago I was driving up to our cabin in the Michigan Upper Peninsula (UP) with a friend of mine.   We were almost there, far into the back woods, when we pulled up at the last store for the next thirty five miles.  It was small, and I knew from experience that all it had was old white bread and big name commercial beer, but we needed fishing licenses – and Kevin had to pee.  Because it was nearing dusk and pretty woodsy, Kevin began to walk over to a small field besides the store to go, but I thought otherwise and called him back.  Good thing and just in time, because just as he turned back, a scraggly old man came rushing out of the store in a “I got a gun and will use it!” furor, looking quickly over to where Kevin was now standing harmlessly near the car.  To stop any questions, I immediately asked if he sold fishing licenses.
            “No,” he grumbled, as if he had one of the world’s worst hangovers. 
            “Oh, Jeez,” I replied innocently, “I thought you would, being out in the woods and all and it being summer.”
            “Nah,” he snarled. “The damn machine costs too much.  Anyway, I don’t like summer.  Too many damn bugs.” 
            As it happened, the road construction at the time was driving the man out of business.  A month or so later when I visited again, the place was for sale.  I suppose I could excuse his grumpiness. 
            He had it right on bugs in the UP, though. They are simply awful, going from bad to really bad depending on the weather of the last few weeks.  When it’s cooler, you get the black flies, or no-see-ums, called so not only because they are very small, but because their itch doesn’t hit you until after they are gone.  They are so small, in fact, that regular window screens will not keep them out.  In such weather, I always wake up with itching welts on the back of my hands and feet and face, those spots that are exposed during sleep and have soft skin.
            When it’s really hot, you get the sand flies that go for the legs and are not affected by bug spray in the slightest.  Their bite hurts almost as much as a bee sting, and you may get dozens of them in a casual stroll – which usually ends in a desperate run back to the cabin or car. 
            When it’s rained recently, you get the mosquitoes, which you always get, but after recent rains, you really get them, so thick you breathe them in.  DEET works against them, but with such numbers, they find any place without it - your eyes and ears and what-not – so much so that you can’t stand it.  On such days, I keep a pee-bucket in the cabin, so when I have to go I won’t let mosquitoes in. 
            I could go on a bit more, but the reader gets the idea.  The bugs in the summer are very, very bad.
            And so it was with great delight – even shock and intense gratitude – when my wife and son gave me a combined birthday and Father’s Day gift of a fat-tire bicycle.  Not only was it the most expensive gift I have gotten in quite a while – this one worth about $240 on sale – but it was exactly what I needed for the cabin.  Located as it is among hundreds of thousands of acres of state and national forest, there are hundreds of miles of logging trails available.  Because of the sandy soil there, however, they are not even manageable by your average trail bike.  The sand requires those fat, fat tires, and now I had them.  Now I could explore much more territory because of the greater speed of a bike over my feet.  And now, thanks to the breeze set up by that greater speed, I could travel around without getting bit by the bugs.  Try as they might, they couldn’t catch up or hang on.  Sweet victory!
            The logging roads, however, are so many in number and cover so much territory, territory that looks virtually the same almost everywhere, that it is easy to get lost.  As a matter of record, you – or at least I – will most certainly get lost, especially if the clouds are covering the sun.  The first time out on the bike I did exactly that – got lost - becoming more convinced with every additional unknown mile that I would have to spend the night with the bugs and no cover, a truly horrible thought.  Eventually, I hit the one paved road in the area, and I instantly knew where I was.  Relief.  But from then on, I knew that I should never go out for a long ride without my compass.
            The next time I did not forget, taking my favorite compass from the coat rack and hanging it around my neck.  With this item I was suddenly free, and felt it, for if you know your direction but are lost, you can simply head one way consistently to find some kind of real road.  It may take an hour or more, but you’ll then be somewhere that goes somewhere and be able to get back to where you want to be.   Yes, it looks a little ridiculous in print, but it works.  It is like those explorers of old once they invented the chronometer; however far they might have been away from home, they knew how to get back.  That is the definition of not being lost.
            And so, paradoxically, I promptly and happily got ‘lost,’ taking trails that had only been the beginning of mysteries previously.  It was woods, woods and more woods for sure, but there was also the occasional pond or surprised animal or special glade of trees or steep hill that added to the sense of discovery.  On and on I went, occasionally looking at my compass to keep an approximate idea of where I was going, secure and happy in my lost-ness.  Until I noticed that, at one sharp turn, the compass marked no change in direction.  Uh-oh.
            Compasses don’t break.  There are no circuits to burn out or mercury to leek, no springs to rust or snap.  Only some form of electrical charge or magnetic barrier can make them malfunction.  There were no electrical lines anywhere, and I briefly thought of that book I had read about the cross-country skiers who had gotten lost in the Arrowhead, the iron ore-rich region of Minnesota because of the iron in the ground.  Of course, that’s what it had to be – iron.  It only took a second to remember where that iron was: around my neck, right next to the compass.  It was an iron cross, and the irony hit me immediately – the cross that is meant to help find one’s way had led me astray.  Thanks to the cross, I thought I had been found, but now was lost. 
            The cross.  Besides the necessary compass, I don’t like things around my neck because they make me feel confined.  This cross, however, had a history.  A year or so before, my church had held a revival of sorts, a marathon of patience held over three long days that was meant to inculcate renewed faith.  My wife had eagerly signed up, as she doesn’t mind sitting around for hours on end, but I had at first balked because I do.  But then something happened: I felt compelled in a way that was very unusual.  While every part of my normal self yelled “run away!,” something else quietly but insistently said “do it.” I could not refuse, and a month later there I was, spending twelve hours at a clip being revived.  It must have been what a calling is like, as even the prophets of the Bible often speak of being compelled to act on their faith’s behalf even though they dreaded it.  So it was with me (without the torture and death part), and so I finally emerged from the event somehow grateful that I had gone.  It was during the last hour of the travail that we were presented with the iron cross as a mark of honor, something akin to a graduation diploma - or to me, completion of Marine boot camp. 
            Since then I have often worn the cross, even though it makes my chest break out where it chaffs.  I wear it to religious meetings but also when I feel a need for additional spiritual strength, a need I had felt on that trip to the cabin.   I thought that in the solitude of the woods, the more intangible chafing within my mind – within my soul - might find solace behind the cross.  In the deep woods, though, its failure, its lack of power, had been made evident in a comedic farce.  There I discovered that I was lost, thanks to the cross.
 
            Nothing is meaningless, wrote Dr. Freud, and I believe he was right, although from a spiritual perspective.   It did not take much thought before I realized that on the trail that day, it had not been the cross that had led me astray, but rather what it had been made of.  Had it been of gold, it would have given no problems.  From there, the analogies lept.  These days we believe that gold is valued because it is pretty, because it is easy to work, doesn’t tarnish, and is scarce.  Besides that, it has simply been accepted as valuable by the rest of the world.  But the rest of the world has always valued gold beyond what one might think, and the reason for this is often found in the deepest core of cultural mythology.  Gold not only does not tarnish, but it never degrades and can be separated and made whole from anything with which it has been mixed.  The alchemists of old understood it to be the physical representative, or sign, of the eternal.   They did not try to transform led into gold to become rich, but to find the essence of the universe, that which can never rust and can never be adulterated – that which lasts forever in pure form.   They were attempting to find pure soul, or the God in man, from the most precious physical reflection of God’s being - gold.     
            We have long forgotten this and are led astray by things that tarnish, that die, that end in dust.  What was that ‘calling’ to the revival, that something that spoke to me beyond me?  It appeared in me, that being who will become dust, but it was not from me; it was not “me” itself, but something beyond. 
            And what was that cross to me?  It was on my neck, but it would disappear in time along with me.   Its ‘gold’ was beyond the physical symbol, beyond what I could grasp or hang from my neck.   As a talisman by itself, it was nothing but iron.  But in it, if I saw beyond the iron, was a reminder of the golden word, of the eternal, the secret script of the philosophers’ stone of old.  There was no magic in the iron cross, but in the eternal gold that lay behind it, placed there for seekers of the truth to mine.
            It, life, is all like this.  The miners of the Alaskan God Rush suffered misery and death to find the gold that would make them rich.  All, winners and losers, are dead now.  But their struggles and desires are symbolic themselves, reflections of a greater reality, of our individual struggle to smelt gold from the iron of the earth – or from the iron in our hearts.  To pursue only the form, the external shadow, is to lose oneself in the woods. 
           
            After my laughter, I put the cross in my pocket and eventually found my way back to the road.  The speed of the bike kept away most of the bugs, but still I was bitten and so remain.  The sores of life continue to itch, and I continue to scratch and scratch, as if I am digging for gold in my own flesh – which I am.  It is all like this, this life; a shadow, an illusion that we believe to be true but which only swings crazily like an errant compass until it is placed upon gold, a gold that is rested only with relentless effort from the depths of a rusting earth.           
                      
                                       

​Bill’s Head
 
            It must be good to be a turtle, to always have a full house around you, ready to take you in for a nap or nighttime or foul weather.  True, it keeps you slow, but what of it?  Why rush to somewhere when your home is everywhere?
            So it was for us on our first long, many-day trip from the open green fields of Wisconsin to the narrow hills and forests of Connecticut.  We now had a pop-up camper, more spacious than required for just the two of us, and we were in no rush.  Like the turtle, anywhere we happened to stop would be home, and our trip would be utterly changed by that.  Tired in Toledo?  Why, there’s a campsite just over yonder by Lake Eerie!  Peeved in Pennsylvania?  Why, looky-there, a great place for camping in the Allegheny Mountains!  We would stop only at places we liked, even if out of the way, for what matter another day on the road?  $30 more for an electrified spot would be all, and we could sit by a fire and drink beer until the cows came home, or the mosquitos drove us back into our shell.  With the dog in tow, we hiked, swam, and felt as free as we had ever felt on the road, even if so encumbered, for freedom is, more than anything else, a need to do or be someplace else.  And in that, we were free.
            But like the Allegheny’s in early morning, there is always a mist, a cloud that is riding upon the mind, reminding us that only the turtle can truly be free.  As humans, we always have obligations or expectations or some such to grab us by the nostrils, and so had we, our obligation centered around the most irrefutable obligation of them all – death; irrefutable when it calls, and irrefutable when we are called to pay it heed.  In our case, it was a collision of deaths, a coincidence of having two final bows in one weekend.  One was for my mother, who had died a year earlier at a ripe old age, and the other for my high-school friend, who had died two months earlier at an age that was still too young.
            After our round-about tour of the northeast, including a visit to Niagara Falls (which was great, surprisingly), we trundled onto my brother’s three acre field and pitched camp, two days before the first event.  Our camper gave us all emotional elbow room, and the entire stay, all five days of it, was annoyance-free, not so easy as it might sound to the young and idealistic.  Perhaps, though, I give our camper too much credit, for there still was that cloud, or set of clouds, to confront, which lent perspective to our own problems.  First came the scattering of my mother’s ashes. 
            My mother had been the consummate artist – that is, someone for whom art is at the center of creation, or really, is creation itself, for to her, the greatest of all artists was God itself.  To hear her talk, to have her make you aware of the nuances of shade and light and color in a cloud, made her claim irrefutable.  It was her divine duty to copy the works of God in painting and poetry and story, and that she did all her life.  What kind of send-off could you give to such a person?
            She had grown up by the shore of Long Island Sound, and had loved the ocean above all else, so of course she would go into the sea.  Since it was somehow illegal to do so, it would have to go into a section of the Sound in summer that was not overly crowded.  Meg’s Point, off to the side of Hammonasset State Park, would do, we thought.  We arrived much later than planned, as is usual for our family, and we – her four kids and their spouses and a cousin and his wife - climbed around and over the barnacle-encrusted rocks that tumbled into a falling tide.  At some point it seemed right, and then it suddenly seemed (was it real?) that there was nobody else around but us.  We four stepped into the waves that had darkened with sunset into the wine-dark of Homer’s sea, and we opened the urn.  And with that came my own private horror.
            Out she poured, not just a pinch of dust, no, but pounds of it, enough for my mother in life to mix with water and make a tea cup and saucer and probably a big pot to go with them.  So much of her!  Although only white gritty powder, it was all- too real, too corporeal.  Yes, how lovely, really, the setting sun on the lightly churning waves, and the barnacle- encrusted rocks and the wine-dark sea, but so much!  The water whitened and then whitened more – and then stayed white.  For half an hour we stood up to our knees, finally kicking at the milky water to make it go out to sea, damn it!  Yet she stayed, in part, even as we slowly walked back, noting the radiance of the reddening sun, of the tinted clouds, the silent whoosh of a single seagull that might, we thought, be her.  Go!  Be free! 
            So it ended, and we all went to eat at a great pizzeria, the type that only exists in and around Jersey and New York City and coastal Connecticut, the very best, noting that it had all been perfect.  And it had.  It was only me, as far as I know, left thinking – too much dust!  Spirit should be free, absolutely, dustless and free!     
            We drank a lot of wine that night, but not so much that the following day was ruined for a tribute to my friend Bill.  Bill had been a musician with a day job, and had acquired many friends along his musical way, so many that my brother had set up an open-sided tent to hold the dozens who would come to honor Bill’s life.  Both my brother and I were nervous about it, though, for we would be meeting people we had not seen since our twenties, when we were young and care-free and often delusional idiots.  My brother had even had a few altercations of the violent sort with some disgruntled band members, and they and others who were not always happy with us were to come.  For my part, I would be reminded of all my foolishness, of all my carousing and my overall juvenile bravado.   To take up the nervous energy, I helped with the set-up of grill and beer and tent and seats and so- on with unusual vigor. 
            I had promised myself not to drink until after 4:00 PM, but as soon as the first few people arrived around 1:00, I had a cold one in my hand.  By my third I was more curious than anxious about who would come next, and it was then that the afternoon leveled out for me, comfortably soothed but not drunk, friendly but not falling.  There were so many surprises.  First, there were the last of my life-long buddies who had palled around with Bill along with me – Jim and Dave, with whom I had kept in touch, and Randy, the brother of Brad who had died trail biking only two years earlier.   He had disappeared from my life in my 20’s, after he and Brad and Brad’s girlfriend (to become his wife) had moved to California, where the brothers had gotten into a fight, where Randy had found Jesus and Amway products, where they had split up and Randy had gotten married, become a cop, gotten divorced – ah, the story, his and so many others as they came to talk and unfurl the years. 
            So many.  There was Harv, the one-time rock star and athlete who was almost unrecognizable, colon cancer and maybe alcohol having taken their toll; Corey, who’s sister had been my first serious crush (a disaster), and who now lived a life astonishing for its entrepreneurial spirit; the band members who had fought with my brother in the heat of alcohol, now peacefully sipping their bottled water; a dozen or more others and all the women, the wives formerly known or the new ones not, each surprising for who they had become or who they had married, with all their warts, as I knew them.  All like a geological rift, the pieces of our lives together falling out at different strata like fossil finds, long dead but oddly and strikingly preserved.    
            There, too, was the widow, gracious in her grief, and all those responsible for the ceremonies, for this was not to be only a gathering.  There was great music playing, first on track, then by the musician friends themselves.  Then there were the speeches.  Alas for poor Bill, this is where the chickens came home to roost.  Bill had died a drinker, and in his day, his drinking had been notorious, so much so as to have left even my own tremendous feats of abuse far behind.  Drinks were often free for the band, and Bill had always gotten his full payment.  Just imagine what fifteen 151 proof rums drinks would do to you.  One time, he had taken a wrong turn into someone’s swimming pool – a ‘someone’ who was there at the wake and told the crowd all about it; at another, he had stepped out of the back of a van to take a leak, even though the van had been driving down I-91 at full speed.  He had not, incidentally, suffered a scratch, which had shocked his panicked band buddies as they pulled him off the medium.  He had done many things memorable for their drunken stupidity, and I cringed as the stories unfolded, thinking of my own legacy and wake someday, and also about the widow, who might be listening to this, well, the wrong way.
             To all looks and appearances, though, she did not.  Perhaps it was because there was something front and present which had taken, and continued to take, front stage, far above anything else.  It was Bill’s head. 
            There is something about perspective that messes with the mind.  When, for instance, the likeness of a head is life-size, it’s OK; and when it’s way-big, it’s OK, too.  But when it’s just so much larger, it has an eerie affect, as if the world has turned slightly nightmarish and we wish only to wake up.  That was Bill’s head.  His cousin, the artist, had payed Bill homage by carving a larger-than-life but almost life-sized head of the Bill we had known before he got really scraggly with age.   Bill had been a drummer’s drummer, so perfect for the role that he could have been cast in a commercial.  In fact, Bill had provided inspiration for the Henson Muppet “Animal,” the wildly red-headed, wildly bearded drummer seen on Sesame Street and at theaters near you.  That was Bill.  And there his head sat in a work of wood that looked a size and a half too big and three times too heavy to be Bill.  It was too life-like as well, for she had put his Beatnik touring cap and his too-cool-for-school shades on, riveting one’s looks to the “outsizeness” of it all, as if Bill had not died but was now only very ill from elephantiasis of the brain, his head preserved like that of a billionaire’s in a cryogenic lab awaiting the day he (it?) could return to his fortune.  It took one’s breath away.  Worse, it was rumored that his ashes were housed within. It was Dave who whispered to me from our seats as we listened to another tale of drunkenness, “God, that thing’s hideous!”  I could only laugh and take another pull at my glass, for how could it be denied?
            It ended early, as it never would have back in the day, and as the last of the guests wandered to their cars with half-full bottles of water, the widow came to me among the ruins of folded chairs and tables.  “I’m glad that you came,” she said, dropping her smile as she spoke before fastening her arms around me and sobbing.  “How couldn’t I,” I said as she cried on and on and on.  The head, still set on its little table, never looked so small.
 
            We turtled on back to Wisconsin with a single night’s stay in Pennsylvania – or was it Indiana? – where we lost and then found ourselves again on a morning hike before the last push through Chicago to home, where all the chores and duties awaited like the demons of a rough hangover.  But as if a clinging fog, the events of death remained, leaving my thoughts swaddled in a gray haze.  What, really, was so disturbing about the ashes and that outsized head?  Wasn’t it their thing-ness, their being in place where there should have been nothing? Wasn’t it that the spirit in death was to be left free of all things of life?  For even our foolishness, our mistakes, were made in the muddle of thing-ness, which had confused and distorted the spirit until our mortal selves no more resembled it than the ashes or monuments left behind.  Even the memories, whatever they might be, were unworthy.  In death, there is no wink and nod, no chummy inside jokes, no familiarity whatsoever.  It is spirit, born from life but bearing so little of life as we understand it that nothing we have learned here can compare with what will remain, what always is.  Thus the hush, the goose-bumps, the absolute stillness as that cloud, that whatever it is, passes by. 
            The shell of our caravan squats in our back yard awaiting another adventure, which it soon will have.  It is meant for freedom, but that is just a notion.  It is a shell none-the-less, and it, too, cannot make us free, except as it brings hope of flight, of escape.   We have many shells, some lighter than others, and as each is discarded or taken, we become less sure, until we face that final shedding where we are left alone, far from all we have known or done.  Nothing else can speak to what remains.  It is terrifying, this truth, yet so right, better than anything we could ever make or say to capture or preserve what we thought we had but understood less and less with every effort.              
 
 
 
 
 
​Car Wash
 
            Between gasps, I think I may have laughed.  I had known “Laura” since graduate school, and although we ceased to be an item decades ago, we have still managed to not only remain friends, but to have shared some remarkable experiences together: hiking through the mountains of Mexico, rambling on the infamous “Road of Death” in Bolivia, and living several years with Indians in Venezuela.  All those adventures ended some time ago, and since, our phone conversations have been on small matters or politics or the latest speculations in anthropology.  But not this call.  This time, she spoke of the greatest adventure that either of us had ever had, and one that neither of us would ever want. 
            Her voice came over in bursts, forced out between gasps of breath, as if she were still there.  After the preliminary expose, this was her story:
            It was spring, and for the last year she had been teaching in a small college in the foothills of the Catskills.  The snows had recently melted, leaving the land so saturated that recent rains had caused flooding problems in the valleys where most lived.  After her last class, she had stepped out into the parking lot that once again glistened with rain, and I suppose she had tightened her coat, given a sigh, and slid onto the dry seat of her nearly-new car.  She had gotten her license only a few years before and appreciated the comfort – at last! – of her little car that could take her anywhere she desired, without need of tickets or change.  Freedom!  With the door closed and the windows up, she was as dry as she had been in class, but now she could pop in a CD and relax.  It was only an eight- mile drive home, but on the roads that curved through the mountains, that could take half an hour.  The music, and the misty mountains outside her windows, would accompany her on her magic carpet of steel and plastic.  Life must have felt pretty good.
            When she came to the sign at the curve in the road, her mood must have changed to one of annoyance.  It said “no thru traffic,” and that would mean a much longer drive around the mountains.  Reacting with lawyerly logic, she reasoned that she was not one of those defined by “thru” traffic, because she lived only a few miles past the sign.  Satisfied that she was complying with the letter of the law, she drove on, blind to what might lay ahead by the mountain side that required the curve.  Then, in an instant, she saw the muddy stream running across the road.  Before she could think, her front tires entered that muddy stream.  With the water deepening, she finally regained enough reason to put the car in reverse, but with a shock that must have been horror, she found that it was too late: the car was already being carried away by the muddy stream.
            And the stream had a place to go – within seconds she was cascading down the side opposite the mountain, flowing quickly with the stream into a river that normally was barely visible from the road.  Now, however, it was very visible, haven swollen its banks and captured acres of forest in the tight valley.  She panicked; she could not swim, and the car was moving too quickly!  In a few moments, she saw, as in a dream, the cold river water rise before; in another instant, she felt the car lose any contact with land.  In a horrible moment after that, she saw that she was in the current of the flooded river, and was being dragged downstream. 
            As water poured through the door and undercarriage, she felt the front end, with its heavy engine, tilt towards the bottom and then drag the entire car with it, until she was entirely below the surface.  As the front quickly filled with opaque water, she struggled past the headrests towards the back, which remained tilted upward, buoyed by the remaining air.  She thought to tap the window button so that she could escape, but being electric, something had happened in the water and it no longer worked.  The water in the back rose to her chest.  With her head now pressed again the year window where the last of the air remained, she suddenly realized that she was going to die.  As she said,
            “A strange kind of peace filled me.  So this is death?  It’s so easy!  I began to relax, waiting for the last of the air to leave, when another thought came – no!  I would not die!  I pushed myself into the water and tried the rear door button (perhaps the other?  She did not say) and this time it worked!  The water came in faster and the opening was very small, but I somehow managed to squeeze out, and then managed to float to the top.  Suddenly I was above water and alive!”
            She could not swim, however, and this was an icy, fast moving river, but luck was with her.   Apparently, the car had not been washed along the bottom current because it had been caught on the branches of a tree, one that must have grown very close to the normal river bank.  She grabbed for the branches, and they held, even though he tree was dead.  She then climbed several feet above the flood and clung to the branches like some kind of baboon, shivering in the wet and cold, helpless in the flood. 
            It must have been at this time that I had laughed, for the worst of the drama was over, and the picture of her dripping form marooned on a lifeless tree against the tide was somehow hilarious.  I don’t know if she appreciated the humor, because she continued with her story almost without pause.
            “Pretty soon I saw someone standing on the bank of the river, and he must have called the police, because not too long after that a fire truck arrived.  They couldn’t get me out with a rope and I wouldn’t anyway because I can’t swim, so they extended a long ladder out to the tree.  I couldn’t move, so a man climbed out to me and held me as they retracted the ladder.  They gave me a blanket and let me sit in a warm car.  I was shivering and numb all over.”
            Maybe it is because of this, that she was beyond thinking, that no memory of how she got home comes to mind, but she did tell me that they pulled her car our within a day or two of the flood.  Of course it was totaled, which required some correspondence with the insurance company.  But that was not all:  not much longer after that, she was to have some more correspondences with the police, the fire department, and finally, the department of justice.
            These other stories came to me over the phone during the next several weeks.  First, the police department issued a citation for disregarding a road sign.  This amounted to only a small sum, but because of this, she was to be held responsible for the expenses of the fire department, which went into the many hundreds of dollars.  Because of this, she had to contest the citation, and with this came her court date.  When that day came, her story so raised the sympathy of the judge that she was moved to scold both the police department and fire department for putting her through this extra trauma.  Laura was off scot free, but still the issue of insurance hovered over her.  The company would pay the value of the car at the time, she was told her, but that would not be enough to replace the car with anything close to what it had been.  The incident, one might say, was at best a financial wash.  Her new car would not be new and would not hold the sweet new -car smell of the last, but at least she was alive to drive again and was well.
            Well from a physical standpoint, that is.  After the initial shock wore off, she discovered while going to the soda machine in the basement of her school that the confined quarters caused her to panic.  “I got really dizzy and had to hold on to the machine to keep from falling.  I couldn’t breathe.  I could barely pull myself up the stairs to run outside for air!”  These panic attacks would re-occur for many more months, until, as far as I know, they receded into a dark and hidden pool in her memory.  But there are a few things that stand out in my memory of her adventure to this day.
            One: it was not only her own mind that gave her the energy to try to escape from the car one more time.  It was also the voice of her deceased grandmother, the one who had been her primary caretaker in her childhood.  Of this I am not absolutely sure, because she has talked with the spirit of her grandmother quite a bit over the years.  For instance, during our several- month stay with an Indian tribe in Venezuela, she told me one morning about a dream she had had the night before.  Lying in my hammock beneath the mosquito netting, I listened as she explained how she heard the voice of her grandmother calling her from another room in the house in which she had grown up.  Nearing the room, she saw that there was a gauzy curtain before her, thin but one which she could not pass or quite see through.  “You can’t come through here anymore,” her grandmother told her, a phrase which Laura understood immediately, for with surprising bluntness, she finished her story by saying “My grandmother has died.”  Two months later, when we were able to communicate with the world again, she found that her grandmother had indeed died right around that time.  As far as Laura was concerned, however, she had never left, but remained only partially hidden beyond the veil.  It was her voice, as best as I can recall, that really saved her. 
            Another part of the story that was remarkable was the sense of peace that came over her once she realized that she was going to die.  This brings to mind a story of a French explorer in the early 20th century who had been taken from his hut by a lion.  The lion had not killed him outright – obviously – but had instead fastened him in his jaws, to dispense with him after leaving the settlement.  The explorer had said something like, “oddly, I did not have a sense of fear or panic at all.  It was as though I were in a dream, or in a waking stupor.  It was not until the natives noticed and chased away the lion that the fear came to me.”
           
            Both these may be labeled as “those strange things that happen at the portal of death,” but it had never occurred to me that dying might be connected to Laura’s vision of her grandmother until I retold her story just a few days ago, for reasons I cannot now recall.  Death by drowning in a submerged car, as well as by being hauled out for slaughter in the mouth of a lion, must rank right up there with some of the most frightening ways to die, and yet, with both, immanent death was met with peace rather than panic.  Could it, might it be that death is closer to life than we have ever imagined?  Could it be that we are separated from it only by thin gauze, such that it truly is a simple passage, one that is imagined in horror, but in actuality, is only a change, a short hop to another shore?  Might this gauze separate life and death just as dreams set us off from waking life?  Might we compare the two, where our perceived “real” lives are the dream, and our deaths the waking life?  For, in ordinary time, our panic comes in dreams, and our peace in the light of day – just as in life, where panic comes from living while peace comes in death.
            We might conclude that if death is only a step to the other side of the gauze, then only the imagined horrors of the transition would cause alarm.  With the transition imminent, it might well be that our consciousness understands what another part of us has always known: that death is only a one stage in the slow and eternal movement of being, no different from life than night is to day or wet to dry.  Each comes in its turn.  Each is a surprise to the other, but neither, in the end, is a horror in itself.  Only before transition does the terror come.  In analogy, once the race begins, the nervousness goes, and we are left, once again, only to the running.    
 
            Oh, so nice and neat, and perhaps true.  But still I am left to wonder: why did the voice, whether Laura’s own or her grandmother’s, call her back to life?  If life and death are only the flip sides to a simple repetitive transition, why must we have all the fuss and drama?  Might it be just as well if we all lay about, living and dying with little cause for concern, with few worries about today and none for tomorrow? But that is not the case.  Whatever we think we know, when the car sinks or the lion comes, we will fear, and we will fight until we can’t fight any more.  Perhaps this in only a trick of God, for life could not continue if it did not care about living.  On the other hand, perhaps it is trick of Satan, to have us fear and grasp and fight in a world that was meant for eternal peace.  Either way, it seems our crux sits not on one side or the other, in life or death, but in the transition.  It is there where the true meaning resides, which can only be told through the startled eyes of the dying or the wandering eyes of the just-born.  Herein lies the problem, though: neither can talk.  And so we are left to wonder. 
            Perhaps it is this wonder, this awe and mystery, which is our greatest gift, for if we could speak of it, what would we say?  Instead, we are left speechless as the flimsy veil fades, revealing to us in the depth of sacred silence the fulcrum of both our horror and of our peace.                      
         
                   
 


Werewolves of California (Excerpted from Dream Weaver, Chapter 14)


When I hit the road a few days later, leaving my aunt in a little heaven of her own, I repeated the chant over and over again to help get the right ride. Nam myoho renge kyo, Nam myoho renge kyo. It did seem to work, albeit imperfectly. It was not for me to demand any better.
Coincidentally, it was during this stretch that I saw the vision that made me aware of the Western spirit and how it struggled with the progression of civilization from the east.
It happened somewhere up in the Salinas area by an ugly stretch of road that ran through some weedy farmland. I know it was near Salinas, or at least near a highway turnoff going to Salinas, because I remember seeing the sign and thinking, “hey, this is John Steinbeck country!” The sign would come into sight just as the last hint of evening was disappearing from a ridge of desolate mountains to the east, whose crests were outlined by a fading ribbon of pinkish purple. Soon it would be night. As the traffic was nonexistent, I began the now-familiar search for a safe hiding place to sleep. The trouble was, Billy wasn’t yet ready to throw in the towel.

Billy was a card in the odd hand that the West continued to deal me. Although I was not aware of it at the time, things of and about American Indians had decided to appear in my life for a purpose that can only be guessed (were they not the only Americans with “place”?). It had begun in Arizona and was still happening through Billy, who was part Indian. This had surprised me at the time, because he was from Washington and I had never paired Washington State with a large population of Indians before. Billy also surprised me by not being anything like an Indian should be.

Billy had come into my perimeter that morning at an exit when his ride veered west toward the coastal highway. I was still brushing the cobwebs from my mind after a restless night in a roadside bush and did not welcome his presence. I was not up for conversation, and people often wouldn’t stop for two. One way or another, he was going to make my morning longer.
He was a short guy with straight black hair and a hint of earth brown to his skin that told of Indian fore-bearers. The hair, however, was strikingly short for the decade, let alone for an Indian, and he moved in quick, restless jerks instead of the smooth, confident gate Easterners expect from the Native West. His skittering motions soon brought him right up beside me.

“You goin’ north? I’m goin’ north. Pendleton or Walla Walla, I got folks in both places. What you up for? I’m on leave from San Diego, Navy, got my uniform right here but thought I’d go in civies, ya know? The women, they don’t go for the uniform no more, anyway, whose gonna smoke pot with a swabby? You got some weed? I got pay, liberty pay, ya know? You from Washington?” and so on, as quick and jerky with his mouth as with the rest of his body, a talking machine that made me feel mute, and that’s a tough thing to do. For some reason, though, his manners didn’t bother me. He was something like the little brother that you like in spite of yourself. It would prove true that our hitching together would keep us from getting many rides, and we would split up the next day because of it, but for that day and that night near Salinas, we were hitching partners.
As it turned out, the few rides we did get were from local farmers and diesel drivers, so we smoked no pot. We did get a six-pack toward the end of the day and split it, but that was nothing to me. By that evening, the beer had only made me a little more ready for a decent rest.
I say all this to convince the reader that what we saw that night was no chemical twist of mind for either Billy or myself.

We had been standing in the weeds by the Salinas sign for long enough to finish the six and start feeling thirsty again. It was clear that whatever traffic normally passed there had come to an end. Billy, however, was still full of beans and tried to convince me to keep on hitching. I told him that he could go on if he wanted but the rides were through for the night and laid out the parachute on a soft patch of alfalfa as a final statement. There came a rare silence as Billy realized that he had lost momentum. As he stood there stumped, we both heard the noise.
It was a movement of bushes, not by any wind but by something with volition, something that had a reason and a plan. Although little animals could make big sounds, this signaled something really big. The hair along my head and down my back stood up like that of a cornered dog. The sound seemed in some way to come from a human, and nothing is scarier than a creeping human in the middle of the dark.

Billy was just as stricken. We were like deer sniffing the wind at the sound of breaking twigs, stiff and straining with every sense to find where the danger came from. Another rustling sounded out, and we both located the spot at the exact same time. As I focused hard, my mind briefly went blank. A large clump of tall bushes stood near the highway about fifty yards from a streetlight that lit the fork to the west. The bushes pressed up against a cyclone fence, eight or so feet high, which lined part of the exit ramp. Stepping from the bushes was what appeared to be a man, except that when he moved into the light, the uniform darkness of his form, from face to feet, did not change. And he was huge.

My mind started working when the ‘being’ moved again. The impossibility of what was happening was pushed aside, allowing details to be clearly witnessed and recalled. As this thing crouched to make a two-legged leap, I could see that it was covered in dark brown hair. When it sprang into the air, I could see that it cleared the top of the fence with room to spare. When it disappeared behind the bushes again, now on the other side, I clearly heard a sound that is familiar to most hunters: the cry of a dying rabbit.
 
Billy and I gaped at each other. His mouth was wide open, and mine probably was too. He wasn’t quiet for long.

“Did you fuckin’ see that?”
“You bet I did.”
“Its fucking Bigfoot, isn’t it?”
“Can’t be anything else. Holy shit.”
“He got a rabbit. Did you hear that? He was hunting for a rabbit.”
“Yeah.”
 “Well what are we waiting for?” Billy fumbled around for a second in his pocket, and then brought out a small jackknife. “Let’s go get the fucker. Shit, we’ll be famous! First proof ever of Sasquatch!”
“Get it with that? Are you fucking crazy? Did you see the size of that thing? Did you see the jump it made? It could tear our fucking heads off before you could pull out the blade. Besides, why would you want to kill it? It’s not doing anything to us, man, and, Jesus it could.”
“But we could be famous. And rich.”

“No way you could find the thing in the weeds now, anyway. It’s dark, it can see, we can’t. Could be a mile away by now. Let’s just get some sleep.”
“Sleep? You fuckin’ crazy? Who can sleep after that?”
“Me.” And with that, I did. When I got up to pee a few hours later, there was Billy, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the parachute with his unfolded knife in hand, looking toward that big bush. He was still there in the morning, sound asleep, knife still in hand, dew clinging to the blade. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fame he could have had, an adoring crowd dancing with the other shards of life that tumbled through his sleeping mind like shells in ocean waves.
 
 
For years, I thought of that incident as just another True and Amazing tale that you told to unbelieving friends around a campfire. Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed anyone telling me the same, especially given the nature of living on the road back then. If it weren’t for Billy, doubt would have overcome myself as well. Now, though, the importance of its “realness” has diminished. Instead, I see it as part of something bigger that is happening in America, something that asks the question: Bigfoot, aliens, desert spirits, all those implausible things that seem to live with the people of America, what are they? Here’s what I think.

​In the first place, I do not think that we are “alone,” that is, alone with our special human self-consciousness amid a planet of unconscious and semiconscious things and plants and animals. I do not think reflective or imaginative thought is an evolutionary fluke or a gift (and curse) given only to us. It is, in some way, manifest throughout nature, both in what is seen and what is unseen.

It also seems clear to me that reflective thought is not merely a passive recorder of sensory data. It gives meaning to the data and “sees” data where our sensory organs may not. These “unseens” range from electrons and electricity to the ethos of an age, from the measurable to the empathic. Because of this, the mind sometimes, even often, sees or hears or smells what is empirically only thought. The mutual sight of the American Flag in the sky with my friend back in high school comes to mind.

The nature of human reality is more mysterious still. Sometimes visions take miraculous forms and affect us directly in the material world. One might receive a dream message from grandma telling you that she has just died unexpectedly, and you wake and find that it is true. One might experience the sudden disappearance of a cancerous tumor after a vision of Jesus. One might hear the call and part the Red Sea. One might also experience Bigfoot. And as with the other miracles, one might expect that the manifestation of Bigfoot had some personal connection with the witness.

Of course, he might be as real and “out there” as a coffee table, but where are his bones? Where is his lair, his feeding grounds?

Then again, if we are to treat him as a reflection of our collective inner mind, what aspects of ourselves does he embody? What exactly is he to us?

He is, for one thing, a very Western totem, a spirit form of the bear whose likeness is on every Californian flag. He is large and powerful, a solitary hunter, without tribe or pack, unable to be tracked or traced or hunted. His fur makes it unnecessary for him to make clothing and his strength makes hunting tools superfluous. He is in so many ways simply a bipedal predator. Yet his cunning is indubitable, for no man has snared him or pierced him with weapons or poisoned him with bait. He is more cunning than human beings, yet also a beast of the forest. He is large and gamy, yet ephemeral, impossible, for how can he be? Yet he is seen, again and again.
From this I believe he is part of the American self, a projection from our imagined past into our imagined present. He competes with another projection, a group projection, of our imagined selves cast from our present into the future. These counter-beings achieve great technical and mental skill as their bodies atrophy. They fly advanced spacecraft and master time travel and come back from our future to subject us to inexplicable experimental horrors just as we do with our lesser creatures. They have throbbing heads floating on thin, rubbery necks. They peer through the dimensions of space yet dryly search our souls and bodies in vain for an elixir that will give them joy and lustful abandon. They are the white-smocked lab technicians of today who create cold and awful secrets in government caverns hidden from view and the light of day, one hundred centuries removed. They are Organization Man, merged into one leaden mass like a mound of termites in a growing desert of their own making. They have made their pact with the devil and can only intuit their damnation as the last primal urge of life evaporates from their large skulls and leaves only desiccated spirit.

They are one voice of America, one that floats to us on the wind. They warn us never to think without heart or without passion.

Bigfoot is the other voice. Powerful, free, and wondrously clever in his elusiveness, he is dependent on no trade or industrial complex for his livelihood. With no need for others of his kind, except for the periodic ritual of all flesh, he has no culture, no village, no home. He is Man in spirit and animal in form, animal in spirit and Man in form. He eats like a beast yet moves like a ghost. He follows no law but his own, gives nothing to others but personal space. He is Daniel Boone without Manifest Destiny. He is the logical consequence of extreme individualism.
 His voice is also in the wind. This voice is hair raising and strong, yet brooding in the way of dark forests in a great wilderness. But in his voice is no music, no art, no lofty thoughts or touches of kindness. There is no sound of laughing children around him. Ask him why and he can only grumble: “this is my life. Listen or not, it is no concern of mine. I talk only of my way. The path you follow is up to you.”

I think that in our alien and Bigfoot sightings we are seeing ourselves in two pure forms and are struggling for a middle way even as we slip toward a future with big heads on rubbery necks. Perhaps this conflicted tale of America is what the spirits were scrawling in my mind in the Arizona desert. Perhaps their message came to me near the reservation through a people who knew Bigfoot long before Europe stepped into their world. Perhaps we must make a place of our land as the First People did before we can read the message in the scrawl and take the right path.

All speculation aside, the final truth is that I saw Bigfoot. For whatever reason, America showed me one of her great secrets. Whether the sighting was connected with the First People or not, the West would touch me with their spirit again and again.


By Chance, a Cold Dread
 
            Perhaps it was the eternally gray skies, skies that had not seen blue in weeks.  Something was missing as my wife and I drove with the dog three hundred miles north to the tiny cabin in the way-back of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The dog never settled down, and the road coffee didn’t give its customary rush of enlightenment, stirring magic into radio music, and even the off- preacher of doom or love.  Yet everything went without a hitch, or with the flawless hitch of the wagon that held the snowmobile.  No flat tire, no shifting cargo, no engine trouble, no big snows or overly-slick roads.  We made the last thirty mile stretch into the wilderness on time, giving us two hours of light to get from the end-point of the plowed road to the cabin four and half miles in.  The sled was already packed, and the one snow-mobile was unloaded quickly and with usual effort.  It was all so easy, yet so uneasy.  The wind blew cold from the vast stretches of pines under the occluding clouds, and in it was something disturbing.
             I knew what it was as soon as Vicki took to the snowmobile lanes with the dog.   I would meet her just before that last half mile, where the snow was not groomed, and its three-foot depth would not be packed for easy walking.  She would ride that last stretch with me, after I had gotten the cabin fire and the propane gas going, while the dog would run behind.  But what, by chance, if the snowmobile wouldn’t start? It had just been serviced by the small engine mechanic, and I had started it with ease the day before.  But what if?  The last walk- in would be nearly impossible alone, but worse, how would we get the big sled with all our gear, all our beer and food and extra clothes, past those long cold miles? 
            “What if the snowmobile doesn’t start?,” I yelled into the wind and lake-effect snow, which spit back silence into my face.  She was already on her way.  I was alone with the sled and the snowmobile and had two hours of daylight and it already felt too late.  How did I know?
            Unease and foreboding are often only psychological intrusions, portending nothing but our own insecurities, and that first seemed the case.  With five difficult pulls on the two cylinder engine, the snowmobile popped to life in the blue haze of two-cycle oil.   I had not yet attached the sled nor put on the helmet, so I drove the ‘mobile around the large parking space that was plowed by the county to warm it up a bit.  All was good, so the engine was stilled for the final adjustments that would lead to the triumphal return to the cabin, after almost three months. 
            Nothing to it, you silly old man.  Attach the rope, tighten the straps around the gear, put on the helmet, and slide away.  Don’t let the clouds and the vast loneliness of space, of cold non-human presence, get to you.  You’ve worked it just fine.  It’s just another fun day in the fields of the Lord.  At worst, some bag will fall off and you’ll have to go back and repack it.  Shake that chill.  With almost two hours of daylight left, you’ve got nature under control, the mojo at your back.         
            Forty five minutes later, I was still pulling the starter cord, my arm so sore that I could barely go on.  How much longer should I try?  It would take at least two hours to pull that sled in by hand, and it would be long after dark before I got to the worst part, that last half-mile, if I could find the turn in the cold drifts.  The longer I waited, the worse it would be, but walking in would be SO bad, almost impossible with the load.  The light – there was no sun – was decreasing noticeably and the snow picking up in the bitter wind that blistered off Lake Superior, eight miles away.  I said another prayer, almost in tears with frustration and pain, and pulled.  The engine turned, then stopped, but it had turned!  After a few more tries, it got going, and away I went, helmet barely on top of my head, now covered with sweat.  It would be a cold ride with that, but I passed Vicki, now two-thirds the way down the main path, and successfully bulldozed my way in the last half mile, with gear hanging tentatively off to one side, threatening to stop short at any moment against a pine.  But all was well.  An hour later, with everything lit in the cabin and the path to the outhouse cleared, I started the beast again, now with ease, to take Vicki that last mile in, although that last mile turned out to be the last four hundred yards.  Still, the snowmobile had made the pass easier, and we soon settled in with the dog, to food and then, for us humans, for beer. 
            I could barely move the next day, but we were there and that was good enough, no?  But the gray continued as did that nagging dread.  To get stuck at the cabin is to get really stuck, and it had happened before.  There is no cell service there, and no other house for six miles, and those few deep into the woods.  I had gotten stuck before, that time in the summer with a broken old Jeep, and I had miraculously been saved by a seventy- year-old local who was just checking out the new road they were putting in.  She had actually stopped for this wildman of the woods standing by the rutted dirt of construction, and had done what I had asked by calling my wife to come to the rescue.  Brave soul!  But that was luck and summer.  What of now? 
            I worried because of where we were.  There is no mercy in the deep woods, as there is none at sea.  Mercy comes from people, and that is it.  Nature will yield what you can take, just as engines will start only according to natural laws, but it will not soften or bend to pleas.  God does not exist in the woods; God does not send mere mortals mana from heaven.  ‘It’ lets you get yourself into a pickle, and then lets you get yourself out.  Pray all you want – it is a mere mosquito whine in the great forest.  There it is like darkness, not because it is evil, but because there is no merciful light.   And that lack feels evil, devoid, menacing, although it is only itself.
            Worry was left behind that first night, as the physical stress and beer made for peace, but the next day the nagging started again.  There was something wrong with that monster, I could just feel it!  It was not until afternoon that I had the heart to try my aching muscles against the pull of the machine, and when it started on the third try, I quickly throttled up and drove a five mile circle along the trails. 
            Something was wrong, all right.  It ran so roughly that the vibrations nearly put my hands to sleep in only that small amount of time.  Something was profoundly wrong, and the only question was, would it make it back to the car with that cursed sled?  It was becoming more and more apparent from the weather radio in the cabin that we would have to leave by noon the next day because of an incoming ice and rain storm that would make the going a nightmare.  Already I was sweating it.  I supposed I could pull the sled out if I started early enough, although there was a mile-long hill going out.  It would be hell.  Could the monster make it those last miles?
            That night, apparently there was no peace, although I did not know it.  Somewhere in the middle of it, my wife told me that I had shouted, “I hate you, God!” Horrible!  I made light of it that morning, but felt the blasphemy in it, and the curse of it.  I was no longer fighting against nature, but also God, for if God does not help one in nature, ‘It’ is most certainly ready to destroy the unfaithful anywhere – or so one believes when at nature’s hollow mercy.  Worse than this superstition, though, was that non-ending sense of foreboding – an unnatural cloud that extended from an unnatural machine that had taken on the trappings of the forbidden forest.  If no God, then darkness; if darkness, no mercy.  It was Aristotelian logic frozen into a dark Platonic cave.
            We had planned to get some cross-country skiing in before leaving that morning, for the storm was definitely rolling in, and the old metal monster nagged with its silent presence.  Let’s just say it won’t start, we reasoned.  How long would it take to get out, three hours?  Maybe more?  And what if I took an hour to try to get the beast started, and then it didn’t?  That would mean four hours total, and we didn’t want to get home past ten that night.  With this simple math in my head, I finally worried myself into packing, and then set upon the machine.  The joke about “hating God” had already been rung out and left to dry with its curse.  The machine just had to be tried.  Of course, there was no other choice.
            Fully suited, helmet on and ready, I pulled.  And pulled and pulled.  Nada, nothing.  How could that be?  It had started just fine the day before, even if it had run like crap.  What magic was working against me?  Time after time I pulled until exhausted, then waited, letting the sweat settle.  After forty five minutes, I took off the helmet and coat, stripped down to the snow pants.  Fifteen minutes later, Vicki shook her head.  “The hour you had given yourself is up.”  Her calm was incomprehensible: had she any idea how hard it would be to pull that sled out by hand?  After taking a break, I tried for fifteen more minutes, then took out a tattered tarp to cover it, as with a body bag in a morgue - and then swept it off and tried again, then again.  I prayed again to that God I had hated in my sleep, and still nothing.  The tarp was pulled over one last time.
            “I must have known last night that this would happen.  No wonder I hated God,” I joked, but in times of trouble, jokes sometimes fall flat because they have become shadows of a deep and terrible possibility – that one can be cursed.  We have all felt it, I know; we have all said, “it’s going to be one of those days.”  We have all believed in the curse, no matter our stated beliefs.
            The way out was as horrible as imagined.  All the pulling on the starter cord had tired my lower back and even, somehow, my legs, so that each step with the weight of the sled behind me was an act of pain and pure will.  We made it to the snowmobile route, and then another half mile to the start of the hill.  I unzipped my coat, already bathed in sweat, and dug in like a beaten old mule on the Erie Canal.  When you’re screwed, you’re screwed…
            Except Vicki had not shared these dark feelings and had, in fact, been nothing but cheer all morning long.  Still light with hope, she waved her hand at two snowmobiles that were passing, at last, the right way, and they immediately stopped. The man was not only amenable to dragging our sled to the parking space, but to giving us both rides, and pulling out the beast machine from the cabin to boot.  The latter was too much of an imposition, I thought, and with the dog we could not both ride in, and so we would walk.  He sped off with the sled after leaving us his cell phone number, to call when we could to let him know that we were all right.  I offered him twenty bucks, gladly, but he scoffed.  “We help people.  It’s what people do.” 
            The walk continued to be painful, and I realized that I probably could NOT have made it with the sled, but all went well after that.  Vicki texted the man when we got near the town of Munising, and he texted back with a thumbs up. 
            Days later - today - the snowmobile sits under a tattered tarp by the cabin, as useless and senseless as it had been that day, and we no longer care.  That adventure is over, and the extraction of the wreck will take place at another time, sometime in a future not yet felt or feared. 
           
            Dark foreboding: do we manufacture our own bad luck?  Are we prescient of things to come?  Or is it just silly superstition, with life as plain and workable as a machine which has no volition outside design and function?  If the latter, though, what then of nature?  Is it really the clockwork of Newton’s mind, another machine whose parts and function are rationally solved?  But we are just parts of nature ourselves; wouldn’t we then also be cogs in the natural and immutable design of a distant maker, or of even darker chance?  
            These questions hover in time, like children’s inquiries about what is beyond the universe.  The woods, the lake, the sky, the reeds, none give solace to the human; none could or would stop their motion, their natural functions, to help or aid.  And yet, we are of them; we stop and aid, most of us; it is what we do.  If humans are also parts of nature, does that not say something about nature? How it can be both distant and horrible, but also close and beautiful?  How it can kill us, but also caress us with wonder and joy?  How it can share its being with us as brethren, as a circle joined, as part of a family that cares?  
            And what does this say of Newton’s distant maker or of dark chance?
            These are not just idle questions, for their answers can shake the world.  Just yesterday, I got some disappointing news, news that spit in the face of all my prayers.  It was just like the snowmobile not starting, I thought: nothing cares, nothing listens.  It is all just mechanics, I reasoned bitterly, and in the end, regardless of anything, we’re screwed.  From dust we come and to dust we go, so who the hell cares? 
            And yet, something does.  Care is not made from whole cloth, just as we are not a species born from nothing.  We carry all of life within us through the astounding workings of time, and with that, from somewhere, we carry not only care, but love and beauty, interest and joy, pathos and the art.  That these are mere aberrations, mere chance additions to the brain, is as ridiculous as saying that our failed machine could suddenly develop a sense of humor.  No, these things do not happen by chance.  If we are machines, something greater than a mere machine was built into us right from the start.  And something wanted that to happen.
 
            My prayers are almost never answered, so seldom that if one ever seems to be, it is most probably through the odds of a casino, a mere flip of the coin.  But with that broken snowmobile, I chanced upon something that has proven greater than an easy ride; and this is that, even as our pleas are not answered, something greater may come.  It may come on the harsh winds of a great wilderness, whistling with dread, but how else would we know?  How else would we hear it, remember it, and begin to understand?                                
                                                 


Costa Vieja
 
            “To the right? Which right?  Left or right”?  The elderly woman with the Brooklyn accent was nearly in a panic, while the tour guide groaned.   I ducked my head down behind the bus seat to hide my barely –held laughter.
            “To that right.  No, the OTHER right!”  Eduardo’s large shoulders were bunched towards his neck.  His face shown with the sweat of the terminally hassled.  
            “Well, come on Eduardo,” I thought, “what did you expect with a troop of American white-hairs?  Surely you’ve handled this before?”  But, then again, it was day seven of nine, and he was a tour guide, among other things, not a saint.  Then I looked to the right.  Yes, it was a yellow-beaked toucan sitting as pretty as you please in a  tree along the highway that curled down from the cloud forest and Costa Rican national reservoir, Lake Arunal, in the climate transition zone as we headed to the dry Pacific coast.   That was Costa Rica, alright: where one could see monkeys or alligators or coati mundus just about anywhere.  
            This had been an eye-opener for me, having traveled in the backwoods of Mexico and Bolivia, and having lived for more than two years in Venezuela, from Caracas to the great southern tropical forests.  In those other lands, most wildlife larger than sparrows, with the exception of vultures, had all but disappeared from populated places, and even in the backwoods, where they were still hunted for food and pelts.  This was a different world.  Nearly identical in climate to Venezuela, it had a feeling of order, of management, and the wildlife told the difference.  In populated areas, there were no great stretches of shacks, called ranchos, tumbling down eroded mountainsides; the river beds were not packed with garbage and plastic bags, and did not exude the stench of the cesspool; and the tropical animals we usually only see in zoos or in National Geographic were almost everywhere.  How absolutely unexpected.
            I believed I could detect an attitudinal difference in the people as well, but I have to be candid: we had booked ourselves on a nine day eco-tour that almost completely cut us off from the general populace.  Our hotels were mostly in the countryside or on the edge of tourist beaches, and our contacts were predominantly with those who made their living from tourists.  These had been uniformly polite, if not a bit too formal, and nearly all spoke at least a little English.  But we did get “out” occasionally, and the differences I saw from the other Latin lands were profound.  In Bolivia, there was a sense of absolute isolation among the greater population of Aymara Indians, and a sense of intrigue and class warfare among the elite educated class.  In Mexico, raw fear of violence mixed with chaos in the cities sat hovering over one’s shoulders like the buzzards in the dusty backlands.  In Venezuela, there was chaos among the poor, and psychosis caused by low-level, but constant fear of violence among the middle class.   In those lands, no one was particularly concerned about the natural environment, just as one might expect; instead, they were focused on survival.  But not, apparently, in Costa Rica.
            This took away some of the excitement, but of course it was a good thing.  Our flight time had changed at the last minute, and we did not arrive at Juan Santamaria Int. Airport in San Juan until nearly 10 PM.  In Maiquetia, the airport of Caracas, one would expect hustlers to try to separate one from one’s money at every turn, but not in San Jose.  Everything went smoothly, and our Caravan Tour guide met us on time and without a hitch.  We travelled the well-maintained freeway to our luxury hotel, and even there we were not disappointed.  No cucarachas in the bathroom, no vendors of fake anaconda skins or parrot feathers around the entrance.  At the bar, I spoke Spanish only because I wanted the practice.  Everything was just so – nice.  Still, I waited for the other shoe to drop.  Surely something would go horribly wrong, and the image of Costa Rica as a safe Latin American adventure spot would wash away like so much propaganda.  But it never did.  All was so pleasant, so uneventful, that I was not sure what to do with it.  For the first time in the land of the conquistadors, I was simply a tourist spending money. 
            That odd feeling never went away, and with each serene day, I anticipated another that would fall into boredom, but this never happened either.  As coddled as we were by the careful organization of our tourist company, and by Eduardo, our often exasperated but always attentive tour guide, even our twenty one year old son never slipped completely into his I-phone for a fuller existence.  Beautifully-kept groves of coconut and bananas, large fields of coffee bushes, and dense forest and mountains continued to engage us.  Animals, as said, were everywhere.  And nowhere was the presence of the vast, crushing poverty that envelopes most nations to our south.   
            First day after arrival: Poas Volcano, only about twenty five miles from San Jose.  After a half hour or so of shifting in the our seats as the behemoth bus hung onto the curves in the mountain road, we arrived at the park entrance, where one only had to walk a half mile to view the crater from above.  At the wooden fence that separated us from a crumbly cliff, we could see smoke bubbling up through a muddy ooze that covered the volcanoes simmering core.  The immediate area looked like a rough gravel quarry, gray and desolate, but beyond, clouds hung between wave after wave of mountains, over which could be seen the Mar Caribe about fifty miles away.  We stepped away from the older ones of our group – my wife and I, at about sixty, were relative youngsters – and took the two mile trail through the dense cloud forest, finding towards the top those great vestiges of the dinosaur age, the graceful fern tree, which had first carried me to a dream world two decades ago as I walked deep into the mountains of southern Venezuela.  This time there would be no slogging for days up and down slippery slopes.  Instead, we were all packed back into the bus a few hours later, ready for our next adventure, which seemed like a snooze: a visit to a coffee plantation, just a few miles down the slope of the volcano. 
            If it seems that I am about to detail the whole of our tourist route, then breathe a sigh of relief; for that, you can read the Caravan brochure.  Here, I will only mention those places and events that stood out for me, and surprisingly, the coffee plantation was one of them.  Sit and drink your coffee as you read this – I promise that you'll appreciate it more.
            As one might expect, we were not taken to just any old coffee farm, but to the Doka Plantation, an estate where coffee had been grown and processed for three generations.  They had a dining area open to the outdoors, and a tourist shop where one could buy coffee made on the premises, as well as countless nick-nacks that no one really keeps for long, but besides that, it was primarily a plantation and processing plant.  We were given the tour, learning first that much of Costa Rica sold high-grade stuff, because only the ripe red beans were picked for use, which had to be done by hand.  Imagine that: each coffee bean comes from one coffee berry, each picked by hand. Now, let’s say that 10% of the coffee in the US is of the hand-picked variety (as in Starbucks).  Let’s say that a 12 ounce cup of coffee requires 50 beans.  Multiply that number by the millions of cups drunk per day and it seems impossible.  Where do all those hands come from? 
            As if turns out, they come from the poor neighbor to the north, Nicaragua, but that is another story. 
            On our tour, we next moved from the bushes themselves to the processing house, where the bean was separated from the berry, then dried, then sorted, then dried again, then spread out, again by hand, to dry completely in the sun, where it is raked over several times.  And more: this facility used grinding equipment powered by a stream that had been diverted through the mill, which was then redirected back into the fields and forests below.   All was done with clean energy on beautiful land with natural cover, and so much work for your one cup of coffee which may cost you 25 cents if made at home.  Wonderful, impossible, and guilt-provoking if one thinks about it.
            Back at the hotel that night, we went to the mall across from the hotel to take out money from our home bank through the local bank.  Jeffery waited outside while we shifted from one foot to the other as the removal and conversion of currency was done, which took the teller an unbelievable amount of time.  When we finally got out, five dollars poorer for our effort, we found Jeff leaning against a wall in the hall using his I-phone.  After walking a ways, we were informed that he had a story to tell: while we were in the bank, another young guy had tried to sell him drugs.  When Jeff shrugged him off, the guy roughly shoved him and swore at him in English.  So much for paradise - although paradise was never expected.  Still, it was just another sign of how some things have gone horribly in the world.  It is both tragic and sad, but stood alone as the one truly negative experience.
            On to the town of Fortuna, then, which is a tourist town at the foot of the famous Arenal Volcano, which was forever hidden in clouds, for here is found another of Costa Rica’s cloud forests.  These are what they sound like, an environment caused by moist air from the Pacific Ocean cooling against the rise of the mountain ranges, forming a forever-wet, lushly green swath. In a national park beneath the volcano, we walked a two mile path in the mist by traversing several hanging bridges – suspension bridges made of steel, not vines – that sway as one walks over one-hundred-foot ravines.  There we saw our first howler monkeys, broad-faced and bearded things that clustered in groups in the larger trees.             
            We would see them again, as well as the white-faced capuchins, on our river cruise the following day, where we were also taken to the edge of no-man’s land, the border with Nicaragua.  It was in this area not very long ago – during the presidency of Reagan – that Contras and Sandinistas would cross this border to pillage, rape and murder.  That is over with now, although the bitter memories remain.  What has followed is extreme poverty in Nicaragua, and a mass illegal immigration into Costa Rica.  We were told that 20% of the country is now Nicaraguan, and the people are as angry with them as many in our country are with the Latin Americans who have crashed our borders over the last thirty years.  It is a phenomenon of our era, and tests whether human numbers are assets or liabilities in our time.  For the future of world economies, no one knows, but each has a mouth to feed, and for that, land is needed for crops and livestock.  What these greater numbers will do for the natural wonders of Costa Rica is more and more a concern.  
            For those who lived there, that is, but less and less to us as we wound down the mountains into the drier country of the Guanacaste Coast on the Pacific.  Here we would be put up in a luxury hotel on the shore within the sanctuary of a formerly vast cattle ranch, now open for real estate transactions for the very rich.  The pool would be vast but shallow, and the beach front a cove of rocks, but to the south, about a half- mile walk away, one could find the wide-open sandy beaches and the surfing waves.  Back at the hotel after sunset, the hotel beach was lit up with a stage which supported a variety of performers entertaining a very exclusive wedding reception.  We had been placed among the exclusively rich, those who live everywhere in Latin America but are found only at certain places, as if they float above the masses in castles built on clouds.  Every few generations in many of these nations, the elite are thrown out of public life and their assets are seized by the Revolution, but still they thrive, somehow; still they live like many think Americans do, but usually do not.  The masses are not downtrodden in Cosa Rica, but an upper class manages to live on as if the Spanish Kings had not lost their grip two centuries before.
            Day 8 – after various twists and turns, we returned to the coast further south, where our new fancy hotel was situated on the edge of Manuel Antonio National Park.   A line of people had formed at the entrance to the park, and after that, on the mile walk to the beach, we were surrounded by howler monkeys, some of whom gave us warning barks – watch out, we are the masters of the forest!  Capuchin monkeys greeted us at the beach, trying to snatch anything they could from the tourists while we shared the beautiful little bay surrounded by lush forest.  My wife, son, and I walked a path to a hidden cove, where cliffs came down to the sea, and a small island stood alone, lush, untouched.  Back at the beach, we swam in the perfect temperature of the Pacific, but nature caught me by surprise.  As I floated fifty yards out, a wave of medium-sized fish suddenly emerged from the water, rising more than ten feet, and then fell about me like fat rain.  One hit me in the side of the head with such speed that I saw stars.  Others laughed, but it took a few moments to regain my humor.  I kept a watch- out for more fish-bombs after that, but they never came back.  Only I was hit, just that once.  It is not always good to be the chosen one.
            Back at the hotel, we climbed to its roof perch, where the bar was serving drinks already paid for by our tour.  Many of us got giddy as the sun set behind a large island in the ocean before us, just as a paraglider arched across its circumference.  A beautiful last night before our return to San Jose. 
            Just another tour, just another tourist, and the question dogged me the whole time – why?  Why was I spending good money on this pleasant but unspectacular journey?  What, besides a slightly broader view of Latin America, had been gained or resolved, by me or anyone else?
            It was on the walk back from the beach of Manuel Antonio that an answer began to form.   It was then that I had a talk with a friendly guy named Bill from California, someone now in his mid –sixties who still had the aura of a California surf-dude.  For him, as it must have been for several of the older travelers, the trip had been taken to enjoy the earth while he still could, for although he was not quite old, he was in partial remission from cancer.   He openly admitted that his whole life had been turned upside-down by the diagnosis a year or so ago, causing him to question the meaning to his life, and perhaps of life itself.  The reality of the end had slapped him on the head like that fish had done to me a bit earlier.  His eternal laid-back California NOW had been crushed and turned into a story with a beginning and an end.  Travel had become a way to find himself, I assumed, but how?  How could this comfy cruise for old-timers culminate in any form of solution? 
            And so my own question for this trip, for I have always believed that a journey is only worthy if it involves suffering.  Travel is the route of the wise-man or shaman, of the archetypal seeker who climbs the Himalayas in search of his guru.  Jesus found his footing after fasting forty days in the desert, where he met and defeated the temptations of Satan, and that is how it is supposed to be – to give up the material for the spiritual; to harden oneself to self-pleasure in pursuit of eternal pleasure.  Surely, all of us on the trip - save my son - all us older and old people knew that we would never find paradise on Earth.  Still, I think, many of us were trying.  But not Bill.  But why then, this trip? Was he saying good-bye?  Was this his love-letter to a life that he had suddenly realized he loved, and now had to know?  Was this, this Earth, like the forgotten childhood sweetheart, and this travel the last visitations to a former naïve trust in the world that he, like many of us, had long since abandoned to a practical and bitter truth?  A bitter truth that, in the eclipse of a single life, Bill was perhaps learning was not the truth?       
            As for me, I brought back only a few memories and some excellent coffee and rum.   But thank you, Bill, for reminding me why we travel, even when it isn’t into the desert or to a far-flung monastery.  In casual travel, we are looking for our dreams, for a paradise that has been lost for so long that we can only think of it as a dream.  But we know somewhere inside us that it is real, and we search.  We search everywhere, but can only find the object of our desire when we understand that reality is much more like a dream, and our dreams much more like reality; that, in the end, it is beauty, simplicity and fellowship that have been calling us, which are often not found until we are in a foreign land. 
            It is there where we might understand what the desert means.  It is there where we might see that the desert is anywhere that is somewhere else, a liminal and exotic place that sets the stage for the separation from our ordinary selves, from which we might return to find that our ordinary selves were the aberrations.  It is then when we might learn that the winds of mystery and truth and wonder blow through us everywhere and always, once we can look back to where we came from; once we can truly look back to home.       
                                    
                         
           

                                    
The Wall - Part I
           

            Galbraith entered the car with a great sigh of relief.  It had been another night with a brutal homicide, the victim stabbed so many times that she appeared sponge-like, seeping dark red from every area, oozing as if from her pours into the grimy alley of Old Town.  The perpetrator had been quickly located, as they always were now, and it would be his job to interview the prisoner once he had been processed.  The question, as always, would be, why?

            The door to the car sealed out all noise, and after a simple wave of the “home” light, he lay back to relax and to ponder.  It was not like the old days, when people lived from pay check to pay check or from welfare dole to food stamps.  After great political contortions, that had all been taken care of.  With the introduction of cold fusion from O3, first mined on the moon, advances had been made to include simple hydrogen as fuel, which gave the world such an abundance of clean energy that everything had become possible.  With desalinized water, deserts bloomed and droughts were remedied; with nothing now to hold production back, machines made everything needed, as well as cleaned the streets and even public toilets.  Whole cities were placed under “eco” domes, where perfect weather could be enjoyed every day, where trees bloomed in replanted streets that no longer needed asphalt, where every child could enjoy the countryside no matter where he lived.  No one had to work at dirty, menial jobs, and everyone could enjoy an environment that had once been the domain of the privileged elite.  Now, by comparison, everyone was “privileged elite.”  But still, crime had soared and soared.  Not property crime, for there was no longer any need, but violent crime; crimes of sex and perversion, crimes of violent passion and hatred.  What had once astonished and repelled had now become every day.  Jack the Ripper would have been more at home in this modern paradise than in filthy, impoverished Victorian London.

            The car soared effortlessly ten feet over the grassy carpet of the highway, the bright eyes of deer occasionally looking up towards the glowing pod as Galbraith drummed his fingers on his chest.  Why? 

            To answer that question had become the hardest job in law enforcement, for advances in public surveillance and forensics had made identification and capture almost automatic.  The perps knew this, of course; they knew they would be caught, but still the violent behavior thrived and grew, as if it was a malevolent mold on a bathroom ceiling.  Nothing could kill it, not even the new punishment that was imposed to instill terror into any would-be rapist or murderer.   Perhaps it had not worked because it was bloodless, or because it did not involve routine humiliation as they once had in prison yards, but that could not be it.  The new punishment was so awful, so alien to human life, that everyone, every detained torturer and blood-stained madman, trembled in terror before the sentence that they knew they would receive.  And yet the violence continued.

            The car hovered obediently before the garage door, then entered at its opening, shutting off without command as the locks clicked open.  Galbraith did not live under a city dome, preferring to match his metal with the elements in the countryside that now contained few houses, including those of the farmers, who also favored the domes and hovered to their fields in the morning, or simply programmed the tractors for work from their home systems.  Life was quiet here, but so it was, without loud machinery, under the domes.  Still, it was not the work - machines did the heavy lifting in the country, too.  People simply wanted to live with other people, and that is why they chose the domes, or so Galbraith reasoned.  This reasoning informed an important part of his unfinished theory – if people wanted to live with one another, then why did they commit so many crimes when they had so much, both in things and in choices?  When they had everything they could want, or nearly so?  

            Or nearly so.  What was missing?

            Galbraith entered a quiet house that was missing something that technology could not offer.  He had had a few intense relationships in his time, but all that seemed over with, now that work demanded so much of his time.   Just as well.  Imagine raising a child in this chilling atmosphere, where the sun shined on beautiful walkways under crystalline skies, and somewhere, anywhere, someone held a knife, hidden, poised, for some random act of madness.  So he told himself, but his job was to unearth the hidden motive, and his solitary life had nothing to do with children and little to do with his long hours.  His long hours, he really knew, were due to his solitude, his empty life that wanted to be shared, but could not.  There was a clue in this, for he, too, was a part of this culture of violence that purred so easily on the surface.  Like a large cat with hidden claws, he thought. 

            To hell with it.  He brushed past the kitchen into the service room, where entertainment and work merged in harmony through the genius of electronics and digitalization.  Here he could sit in his cushy chair and have reports written, or watch his favorite entertainment without lifting more than a finger.  Tonight, he said to himself as he plopped into the chair, he would choose a movie of exploration, of what it would be like to zing to the stars.  It was possible, they said, and all understood that it was.  With energy worked out, with advances in everything from gravitation control to life supporting shields, they could wing far past the cold planets with their ugly mines to find something else, something livable, something better.  Better?  How could it be better?  It was just that question that kept them fastened to the solar system – how can we make it better?  Before a massive effort to explore the stars, it had been decided by the electorate that Earth should come first; first, we would all be given the keys to happiness.  The means seemed well in hand, but the outcome – what were they missing? 

            To hell with it again.   Before he could scan the right point for his movie, however, the answering service pulsed on in the entertainment matrix.  As God must have first spoken to Moses, the bodiless voice glowed from the void of the three dimensional ‘cage’ where his movies would dance about in perfectly realistic animation.  Automated voices often left no face, however, and this one seemed just another message from work, the smoothly modular female voice that told him of appointments and relevant events.  He was about to wave it off when the lights flickered and a body appeared.  It was female, with long dark hair and smooth brown skin, and he thought in his surprise that he might know her.  The automated voice ended abruptly, followed by the human sounds, and then voice, of the woman.

            “Galbraith?  You might not remember me, but I worked with you at the station a few years back.  I was in charge of profiling, remember?” Galbraith did, but before he could answer, she continued.  She seemed slightly distressed or excited about something.  “I got a job at the Reconstitution Bridge after they finished it and have been here since.  I remember your research when I came across something here –well, a whole lot here that made me think of you.  Shine me back when you can, OK?  My code is shielded.  It’s kind of urgent.  Bye.” 

            Galbraith left her image dangling in space, his hand poised over the control lights.  Shielded?  No code has been legally shielded for ten years, and to do so in any event was thought impossible.  And the Recon-Bridge – The Wall!  My God, who the hell would work there?  He had remembered her – Dalia or something like that – as a backroom worker, good looking in a typical way, but overall ordinary, nondescript.  This had to be some kind of joke.  Maybe Lt. Franz had put her up to it.  Or maybe it was some kind of test.  Maybe the office was baiting him in some kind of anti-terror probe.  There had been no evidence of an organized counter-social force since the Decree – how could there be? – but there were rumors.  Still, there were always rumors.  In the mystery of the recent catastrophic uptick in pathological behavior, that kind of paranoid thinking was to be expected.  But a test?  No, it had to be a set-up, a trick to get him out of the house by the jokesters at the station. 

            His finger trembled as it chose the response node, even before he could think to do it.  This was out of his routine.  He didn’t like going out of his routine.  But the mystery had given her a certain kind of allure.  Her image appeared as quickly as the shine was sent. 

            “Galabraith!”  She appeared amidst a background of circuit board lights set against night-blackened glass.  “I wasn’t sure you would shine me.”

            “Dalia, isn’t it?”

            “Dal – i –a, with the accent on the ‘I’”

            “That’s right, now I remember.” She was more alluring now than he had remembered.  This must have been a set-up by the Crew.  Hey, why not?  “So tell me, Dalia, what’s so urgent?”

            She dropped her smile.  Good acting, Galbraith thought. 

            “You heard I was working at the Reconstitution Bridge?  Well, here I am.”  She waved her arm to the farther surroundings that were contorted by the matrix.   “Did you wonder why I chose to work here with my message?”

            “Well, yeah, of course.  It’s some kind of joke, isn’t it?”

            “There’s nothing to joke about here.  This is the place of nightmares.”  She made it clear that her dark look was not an act.   “It’s that I remember your research…”

            “My job.  More than research.”

            “Yes, of course.  You want to find out why people are flying off the handle, right?  Why paradise isn’t working?”

            Galbraith nodded, thinking conspiracy again.  What was this?

            “Come on down to the Recon-Bridge and I’ll show you.”

            “The Wall?  You’ve got to be kidding.”

            “Tonight.  Now.  I can get you in.”

            “I can get in any time I want to.  I’ve got clearance.”

            “Not here, you don’t.  Not on the bridge itself.  Use this code in your pod so they can’t trace you.  You’ll be taken to the tube and I’ll meet you.  Do it now if you want to find out.  Memorize it now.”  Galbraith saw the light bars, a 50 red, 101 green and two 14 blues, slash across her face, and then they were gone.  “Got it?” Galbraith nodded.  “Then I’ll see you in, what, 20 minutes?”

            “That’s a quick trip.”

            “That’s the short-cut.  This is your only chance.”  She looked around quickly as if expecting someone, then turned back.  “Right?”

            “Sure, yeah, right.” 

            Then there was only the blackstone pad on the cage floor where the matrix lights dully glowed. 

            Who makes those critical decisions in life?  We think it is ourselves, but sometimes it seems to be the work of a silent hand that is bigger than ourselves and unknown.  Galbraith had been the rounds of transpersonal psychology and had entertained the fantastic as a student, but eight years on working social pathology had put an end to that.  There was an evil in some that maybe was in us all, but their actions were by no hand of fate.  Rather, they were the work of hatred and twisted, thwarted desire.  Sex, envy, megalomania – all mysteries in their way, but they were not the hand of fate.  But this – this was something that could ruin his career.  It might still be a joke, but if it were, it was stretching him thin.  Before leaving for the car, he had run a background on Dalia’s code and found it nowhere.  The designation colors were even more problematic, for a code might be hidden temporarily from a common interserve, but designations were real-life coordinates that constituted the bulwark of traffic safety.  One did not stray on unauthorized designations, just as one didn’t run a combine through a city grove.   It was potentially dangerous and destructive, as well as illegal.  It was also impossible to override the official controls, unless at the control center itself.  And yet that is exactly what Dalia had done.  From the moment he had motioned the designation in the garage, his car had taken a route over private terrain at a spectacular height and speed.  It was as if the governor had been overridden – well, of course it had – and the landscape flashed by a mile below as if from a flightbus.  Holy crap!  Was this for real?

            The recon-bridge – The Wall – had been built on a no-man’s land that had been a toxic waste disposal area.  It had been cleaned like all the others, but no one had come back to it out of a primitive fear, as he himself had called it.  Now, people avoided it all the more.  The horror of The Wall had filtered into the collective consciousness as Gehenna had for the Jews, and Hades for the Greeks.  It was bad country, and no unauthorized designation could get you there anyway.  But here he was, well on the way.  The contour map showed he was nearly where he had thought it to be.  He must be close, he thought, for the lights of village farmers had ceased to show in a circle of darkness giving way to lights that must define the boundaries of this hell-land.  And there, coming up right before him was a semi- circle within the circle, a scimitar made of light.  It could only be the recon-bridge itself.  Galbraith noticed just then that he was terrified. It was part tribal fear, he knew, but also something much more concrete.  He was going over his legal parameters, and that was something that could not end well.  In the end, nothing was hidden from Central, but he let the car fly.  He felt powerless to stop it.  Fate?

            Nearing the center of the circle, the car took a sudden swoop downward, almost to the lights, before he could make out the building in the middle.  Rectangular and ugly, just like any institution, he understood that the sudden move was a dodge to avoid the sensors.  It seemed almost stupid.  Nothing could avoid the sensors, and this would only alert someone on surveillance.  Again, it made no sense.  The front of the building was protectively glowed from all directions, but the car swerved around to what must have been the back.  In a moment, he was before a large black portal that slid open with instant precision just before the car entered, and then closed just as quickly.  The drive lights stilled, and he found himself in another dimly lit space that looked like a warehouse.  Only one form was there to greet him, a uniformed officer that made him or her purposefully nondescript.  As his door opened, he could see that it was probably a woman by the slender build and the long hair.  It was Dalia of course, and as she stepped into the tube lights, he could see that she wasn’t smiling. This was no greeting, but an earnest meeting. 

            Really?  Galbraith was an expert on body language, and he judged that this opportunity was more than met the eye.  There was something else going on.  A plot, yes, but what kind?

            “You’re really here, yes.  Thank God.”  She brushed her long dark hair from her shadowed face.  “Come on.  You know as well as I do that we don’t have much time.”

            “They probably already know I’m here.  What the hell is this?”

            “You’re probably right.  Let’s move it and I’ll show you.”

            “What of the trace?  They’ll know everything.”

            “No they won’t.  You’ll think of something.  You’ve got clearance, like you told me.”

            “I could arrest you right now.” Galbraith was thinking it was time to stop the game.  He might still salvage his career.  This could be his one moment.  You could say that you played her, that she was on to communications, that you had to do it blind.  You could still do it.

            Dalia paid no attention.  “This way.  It’s not far.”

            The corridor was set closely by corral beams that allowed only one person to pass at a time.  They entered a small room that was arrayed with dark sockets that looked like the UV disinfectant apparatus at the station.  That was what they must be.  Then this must be…

            “You recognize the processing room? This is where they take them to the beamer.”  They moved through another door and another small room that was blandly designed like a purely functional coat room, and then into a shock of colored lights blinking from panels which reflected off a large sheet of glass.   Galbraith recognized the room from which Dalia had shined him.

            “So this is The Wall?”  It looked something like a traffic control room, and probably was.  He smirked.  A hoax.  That’s what it had to be.

            “No.” Dalia sat with familiarity in a chair with various control lights set in the armrests.  A wave of her hand stilled the reflections on the glass.  “That,” she said with an emphasis touched with anger, “is The Wall.”  

            Galbraith recognized the curve of the glittering spikes before him as the semi-circle of lights he had seen from the air.  But they were not simply lights.  He starred with incredulity.  They were crystalline pyramids arranged side by side that arched for several hundred yards to either side from their vantage point. They were beautiful, starkly spectacular like the ranges of Titan.  It was the sort of beauty that was devoid of anything that resembled life, as clear-cut and sharp as diamonds.  It sent an unaccustomed chill up his spine.

            “Marvelous, isn’t it?  Or them.  You can see that it’s not really a wall, but a set of arranged structures.  Remind you of anything?  They should.  The pyramids of Egypt.  They housed the corpses of the eternally alive, too.”  Dalia spoke again with subdued anger.  “Yup.  This is where the people’s paradise sends its incorrigibles.  Nice and clean and pretty, just like our nice and pretty lives.”

            Galbraith leaned against a panel without noticing, his eyes captured by the glittering structures.  “I’ve read of them, but never imagined.  In there?  So many, all in there?”

            “Yeah, efficient, isn’t it?”

            “You don’t seem overjoyed.  Why do you work here?”

            “Why do you work with violent scum?  To know.  I phase them from here, sure, but I don’t condemn then. I leave that to our wise and great.”

            “You yourself said they were scum.”

            Again she did not give his remark attention.  “You know how they do it, right?  They’re stripped and scoured, just in case – don’t want to torture any microbes – and then phased into the crystal.  It has to be crystal, you know, for its stability.  Wouldn’t want to kill the little darlings, now, would we?”  She ran her hands high above a panel.  “These are their profiles.  You’ve written many yourself.  And these,” she leaned towards another panel, ”are their molecular profiles.  Just as important, as you can guess.”

            “I thought it was a euphemism for total confinement.  I thought they’d given up phasing.”

            Dalia laughed with a quick snort of sarcasm.  “For travel like they have in the movies, yeah.  Too much disruption for any distance, and you can’t materialize something in thin air.  The table’s got to be solid and stable, like this crystal.   You probably heard that there are experiments with entangled particles, but that’s ersatz.  You get replicas, ghost reflections like sundogs, but we can phase just about anything a short distance into a solid matrix.  You, me, the entire Council of Community Life.  Want to know how many are in these tombs?”

            “All of them?”  The facts that came up in his mind startled him.  In this continent, there had been five hundred thousand incorrigibles convicted in this year alone.

            “All of them in this hemisphere.  Pretty tidy, huh?  With long sentences, we got 2.5 milion, and room for twice that, at least.  You can pile on the molecules as cleanly as a scalpel cut.”  She dropped her sarcasm, her voice becoming a whisper.”  It’s so goddamn lonely here.  Like all the horror of humanity piled into one.  I’ve learned that horror isn’t a scream, but eternal silence.” 

            Galbraith felt that she was going to cry.  Surprisingly, this tough woman was remarkably vulnerable.  He quickly moved on to what had to come next - the main topic.

            “What’s it like?”

            “You should know.  You do the exit interviews.”  Steel had returned to her voice.  Galbraith let it pass, feeling somehow offended.

            “You know I only get them after processing.  They say they’re not in shape to talk right off.  Thing is, they hardly talk afterwards.  Thing is, they come out empty.  It’s a good study on isolation – you know, that’s what I thought this was, really – but not on the criminal mind.  When they come out they’re clean.  No recidivism.  Surprisingly no suicides, either.  It’s something I had hoped to study in my senior years, but now… they give me no clue.  Blank slates, really.”  Galbraith felt there was a double language being spoken here, and he could hardly stand it.  In The Wall was guilt.  It seemed beyond what this benevolent society could do, even to its worst.

            Dalia leaned forward, getting up from her chair to place a hand by Galbraith’s.  “I can tell you.  I see them every day.  Hear them, too.  God, do I hear them, until the processing room-panels close.  They’re madmen.  They scream because they cannot understand where they are or who they are.  You can see it in their eyes – like they’ve been banished to another unworkable dimension, set in permanent, screaming frustration.”

            “That’s the fear of The Wall.  It should work.”

            “No, that’s when they’ve been set free.  In The Wall it’s gotta be a thousand times worse.  Incalculably worse.  You tell me – what do they do after they’ve been out, maybe after five or ten years?”

            Galbraith glanced again at the hard brilliance of the crystals, and noticed he was sweating.  It felt something like panic.  “Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  They are taught to take care of themselves – you know, go to the bathroom and so on – but they can’t shine a ride, they can’t work.  Well, maybe useless jobs like pushing brooms.  They rock a lot, back and forth.  A few sing a little, more like chant than song.” 

            “Rehabilitated.”

            “Hey!  In the bad old days they would have been executed or worse!”

            “Or worse.”  Dalia lost her cutting look and fell into the vulnerable posture he had noted before.  “I can’t take it anymore.”

            “Quit.  Come back to the department.  I’ll vouch for you.  You’ve done tough duty.”

            “How can you go back to normal when you know that THIS is going on?”

            Galbraith nodded sympathetically, then remembered why he was here.  “Dalia, why me?  You could have told anyone in authority about this.  I don’t work the politics of this thing.  I’ve had special insights into the ‘after’ conditions, but that’s not my job.  I handle the before.  I try to understand what gets them here in the first place, so more won’t come.  I’m the good guy.”

            “You can’t see it?  The Wall is not a last-ditch effort to house the criminal tide.  It is what makes the criminal tide.”

             Galbraith made a grimace of denial.  “But what people know is only fear and rumor.  Those alone should stop the violence in its tracks.”

            Dalia leaned off of her chair towards Galbraith, gripping the panels as if she were too tired to stand unsupported.  “The punishment is not an exception to the rule, don’t you see?  There are other ways to deal with this, but why The Wall?  I’ll tell you.  It’s the perfect thing for this great society of ours.  It isn’t born out of anything but what we are.  A wall.  We are all frozen into this wall, and that’s what people are doing, trying to break out.  So what do we do?  Put them in a wall where there is absolutely no chance of escape.  It is what we have become and where we are heading.”

            Dalia let her head drop until she was so close he felt he had to comfort her with a small and awkward embrace.  She nestled into his shoulder as he grasped for a reply.  “But we have everything!  Never have we been so free of disease and want and, well, just about any discomfort or social injustice history can tell us.  It’s an almost perfect world!”  He almost bit those words as he realized what he had said.  Perfect world and The Wall?

            “We’ve got nothing but a shell.  Nothing beyond animal comfort.  Nothing to aim for.  Nothing that tells us that we’re more than this, that answers to this.”  Delia touched his jacket where the heart would be, then looked up, tears streaming.  “We are so much more.  We blew it.  We fooled ourselves into believing that this,” she waved her hands around the glittering panels, “was all there was and all we needed.  What arrogant fools we are.”

            Her hands had moved to his shoulders, and then her eyes to his with such need and passion that he had to.  They kissed with a desperate hunger, and without knowing or caring how he got there, they were on the padded floor, cloths disappearing, skin touching skin, breasts offered freely and taken, hips caressed, then joined in the first real frenzy of passion Galbraith had known for years.  He melted into her, feeling the dark ecstasy, then, oddly, only darkness.  And then the greatest terror and suffering he had ever known.  


(Part II)

          He could not tell anyone how long it took before he noticed the screams, low and hoarse like an old and dying combustion engine, nor how long it took to recognize that those screams were his.  It was then that time came back, and with this, as much pain as the first black-out. Not physical pain, but a mental pain so impossible that he would have gladly died if he could have, but he could not.  It was not just that his cell was padded and his arms strapped, but because he had no concept of where or what he was; no concept of space and the movement of time.  He could not have opened a door if he had been pushed into it.  Time was only a new source of pain that was so unendurable that, when he finally discovered his new-found dimensionality, he also found that he could do scarcely more than whimper in absolute surrender.  They had freed his arms then, and begun to talk to him.  He understood time then; there passed another day before he could understand words, another week before he could speak back, first in fits of tears, then finally in a coherence that he had little control of.  It was then that they had thought he was better, or at least sane, and began to talk to him of what had happened.   It was the visit of the NCO, Sergeant Willard, which informed him most.

            “She really had you, didn’t she?  Hope it was worth it.  A month in rehab.  How was it?  Sorry, too early.  How could you, such an educated man and all, fall for it?”  

            Galbraith had no idea what he was talking about.  All he could do was recoil at the solidness of everything, and of how oddly this solid moved.  His voice spoke from somewhere he did not know.  “I have no idea.  What happened?”

            “She suckered you to the Recon Wall and seduced you.  Can’t remember that?  We found dope on her nipples – on her nipples!  We got the picture.  Knocked you out stone cold then sent you into The Wall.  We thought we had lost you, for sure.  Not many come back from The Wall.  Well, as humans that is.  You were only in for two hours, and they say that’s why.”

            “She?” That one word seemed to connect to what might be a self.  There was almost a memory.

            “You know, the tramp who used to work in the department.  Dalia.  We got her, don’t worry.  Found all sorts of docs and crumbs to her pals in some group intending to destroy The Wall.  It was a huge find, really.  They’d gotten past our tracers, the clever bastards, and she led us right to them.”

            “What happened to her?” He could feel a tension in a part of him that felt real.  Uncomfortable, but nothing compared to what he had endured.

            “Her?  In The Wall, with a dozen of her little chums.  It was pretty clear – they were on the verge of mass homicide.  You know how many people are in The Wall?  Well, now she’s joined them.  Karma, my man.”  Willard looked at him with a laugh.  “You’re a hero, you know that? Damn stupid way to be a hero, screwing yourself into The Wall, but the world thanks you.  The story’s been cleaned up a bit, as you might guess.  Before release, we’ll give you the low-down.”  Willard looked at him for a while with his jaded smile, then became serious.  “Too much for you now, I bet.  We’ll be glad to have you back.”  He patted him on his arm – to which Galbraith reacted with alarm – and then walked quickly towards the door.  If Galbraith could have understood, it was more a dash to safety than a casual stroll.

           

            In a few days, Galbraith could understand that and much more; much more than he had ever understood before.  Yes, memories came back, but they were like stories from another life.  The context of the memories was gone, both the feelings of joy and those of remorse.  The same was true for the present.  Nothing said to him, no information or movement, no turn of the head or twitch of the hand, escaped both observation and understanding.  There were, he thought without laughing, no more walls between him and the outside world.  Things, emotions, everything, were no longer hidden in context, and he understood; he understood that the whole arrangement of society, with all of them in a conspiracy of agreement, was an elaborate camouflage of the truth.  This truth was, that they, not a one of them, understood what they were doing and why they were here.  They all knew this, but laughed and cried and yelled and even loved as if they did not.  They could not admit this or their lives would lose all purpose and all joy, everything that made life worthwhile.  Yet they knew.  He could see it in everything they did.  And in this, he discovered the answer he had been searching for for so long. 

            It was so obvious that it took a while to see that this had been his question, his meaning, his work.  He recalled, without passion, what Dalia had said to him before she sent him into The Wall, and he understood immediately why she had done it.  He could not blame her, although he now could not blame anyone for what they did.  It was clear that everyone was mastered either by the big lie, or by fear; or rather, they were all mastered by fear, and most controlled it with the big lie.  Those who did not sought an outlet, any outlet.  For more and more, it was found by expressing their agony through cruelty; it was placated in the suffering of others, and most of all, in their blood; in something so real it drew them, thrilled them, like the most profound heights of sexual passion.  But still, it did not suffice, because the answers to the truth behind the lie still remained, not only unanswered but unaddressed.  And Dalia had seen all of this.  

            For a while, Galbraith was lauded as the hero that he was not, for he had not stopped anything, but rather had only fallen for the oldest trick in the book.  But he knew that people needed a hero, and he knew that the establishment knew this, so he played along, saying little, smiling slightly, ever humble.  With his days in the sun over, he was released for an undisclosed time to continue his recovery, a recovery that the establishment assured everyone that every criminal, once freed from The Wall, went through routinely.  Left unsaid was the hope by the Council that Galbraith would remain on leave permanently.  They did not want to confront the questions that, with time, would come.  Where, for instance, were all these marvelously rehabilitated criminals?  And what, exactly, was The Wall?

            The open-ended leave was fine with Galbraith, for he had something to do that needed open-ended time.  It was a small thing, but it had to be done, and he began his task with careful deliberation.  He had not written anything but summary reports for years, and this, his revelation, had to be nearly perfect, so much so that it could not be misunderstood – not by the individual and certainly not by the State.  For two weeks he worked on this, his call lights closed to all but official inquires that had by this time become routine, until he received a color code on the hologram that was beyond the normal shades allowed.  He suspected who it might be, and only wondered at why they had taken so long.   He waved the lights and made contact, but nothing but color bars emerged.  Whoever was calling was not going to be traced as Dalia had been, for in a hologram, any patch of skin or hair could be analyzed by Central for genetic code. 

            The light bars trembled with the vibrations of the voice.  “Galbraith.  You know who I am?”

            “Who you represent, yes.” 

            “Do you know why Dalia sent you into The Wall?”

            “Yes I do.”      

            There was a pause, as if this answer were unexpected.  “She told you?”

            “She didn’t have to.  I understand.”

            Again, a pause, then a turn to a more critical tone.  “Then you know of our fight for freedom?”

            “Yes.  We are all prisoners of The Wall.  I understand.”

            “And you agree?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “Then – you can gain access. ”  There was a shimmer of color bars, and Galbraith understood this to be a code for further contact, perhaps undetectable by the monitors.

            “That is not necessary.  There is no need of access.”

            “Then you didn’t understand…”

            “I did.  Do you understand why she didn’t blow The Wall herself?”

            There was a tremble of lights, indicating the sender was hovering on breaking contact.  Then the color bars steadied.  “Because she didn’t have time.  Perhaps she felt pity for you as well.  She was weak that way.”

            “She had the time she needed. She understood, as you do not.  Listen: The Wall is not the problem, and destroying it is not the solution.  I have been there and have come to understand it.  The Wall is more than a prison.  It is the projection of our fears.  The condemned are only an unconscious pretext for the Council.  The real wall is…”

            And then the code was broken.  Galbraith understood that, too.  In the world of establishment and counter-establishment, there were mutual social understandings that were fundamental.  Slip from those and you are viewed with suspicion at best, as treasonous or immoral at worst.  Galbraith tapped lightly on the arm of the chair.  It took little thought to understand what was to come, but for all it would entail, he did not call Central.  After staring at the blank space left by the color bars for a few minutes, he picked up his scroller and continued to speak to it again, continuing with what had to be said with the stroke of his fingers as automatically as a guitarist plays familiar chords.

            But Galbraith did not know everything, as he would readily admit, and so he was as surprised as anyone would be when his house lights quivered and his workspace filled almost instantly with frenzied invaders.  He might have had time to reach his Taze, but that did not occur to him, as life to him now seemed to happen as it must.  That they would kidnap him and take him to The Wall he understood in a second, and with that, he quietly succumbed to the neural blocker that was propelled towards him.   A timeless moment later, he  raised his head slowly, allowing for the initial blur to recede before looking around.  It came as no surprise to him that he was in a large bus-sized pod, or that a curved semi-circle of lights atop diamond-like pyramids were shining before him through the smoothly contoured bus window. Beside him, an anxious man of about Galbraith’s age, thirty or so, brushed his rust-red beard nervously until he noticed Galbraith’s movements.  At this, his manner changed instantly.

            “Listen, you cop bastard!  You’re gonna DNA us through the shield in about 15 seconds, got it?  Keep your eyes bright on the screen now…”

            “Lucky timing.”

            “No luck about it.  We know what we’re doing.  Now say cheese.” 

            Galbraith did as he was told, giving his presence to the screen to scope a hole for the pod.  It worked as it should, and within seconds they were on the ground under the bright lights of the Bridge.  

            “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Galbraith said to no one in particular, for now they were hustling behind him as the portal opened.  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said one more time, but it didn’t matter.  As he was pushed from the pod, the gang surged behind him, expertly launching improvised grenades towards The Wall from hand-held projectors.  The Bridge quickly responded with a sweep of blue-phase.  One piece of Wall, one pyramid,  shivered then fell like so much ice, but then one, then another of the gang trembled and fell themselves, at last, even the man holding him.  It was apparent that everyone, every radical in the gang, had been ID’d and fitted for the phase.  The Council, then, had expected this turn of events, so much so that in the end, he was left standing, unharmed.  They had expected him there, as well, or they wouldn’t have used an ID phase.  He would be a hero again, and again for doing absolutely nothing of worth. 

            It was a great consolation when he, as hero, was granted the release of Dahlia from The Wall, under his recognizance – all done with a host of friendly fraternal winks.  He had meant to release his manifesto not more than a month after the invasion of The Wall, but Dahlia required an attention that could not abide another interest.  She had been deemed unreachable by the cognoscenti insiders after so many months in The Wall, but Galbraith knew where she had gone and believed that he could act as a bridge – as a truly positive reconstitution bridge.   After a week, he found that he was right.  After three months, more or less, she appeared to be herself again, although she was no longer what she was.  This Galbraith knew would happen, and it did not disappoint him when his long ministrations were not met with a grateful surge of sexual passion, as others had assumed.  Rather, they were met with something else, something that he had craved more than anything, but had also feared.  After his release and return to human life, his longing had been for a bridge of his own, and his hope had been that Dalia, after months in The Wall, might serve him as that bridge. She would not serve as a bridge back to the human world as he had done for her, but as a bridge to something else – to something he had only known as the Other. 

            She did not disappoint.  He had understood after his own experience that those who had been released from The Wall were not idiots, but beings that existed beyond the normal boundaries of humanity.  They had, for a lack of a better word, become spirits.  Burnt of all effective action and bodily understanding, they had found another substance that had always been a part of them, but had defied the cultural understanding of reality – and therefore, its exploration.  Galbaith had touched that – had come so close to it, in fact, that it was as much with frustration as with pain that he had screamed for so many days after his release.  He could not think of this “Other” in human terms, but he knew of it and craved it none-the-less.  He had also known that somehow he would find that bridge to the Other, and Dahlia could not have been better.  What she helped him find caused him to shelve his manifesto forever, for it was now not necessary.  From her he had understood, and now he could teach others with a presence more tangible than the words of a manifesto.

            As he had written, The Wall had been built unconsciously as a symbol of the problem with their idyllic society.  Just as Dalia had understood even before her containment, he had come to see that the very ideals of perfection that had guided humans towards their utopia had excluded the ability to grow without limit.  In the perfect management of life to fulfill common desires and remove fear, humanity had created for itself an unendurable prison that encircled everyone and every thought.  But, he also learned, nothing is stagnant forever; fear not only repels but fascinates, and eventually draws people as a whole under its shadow.  Under this they had built The Wall; and through this Wall, this manifestation of their abomination, they had produced a new kind of human which would now number in the millions, humans who had once done horrible things, but who now, both he and Dahlia knew, could do astounding things.  All they needed was a bridge back, and now there were two – he and Dalia. 

            No, there would be no manifesto, for none was needed.  It would be written in deeds and works of astounding light.  People would not then need words to understand that life was not given as a machine or a toy, as if by a giant hand from the clouds, but rather as a manifestation of infinite knowledge and power.  It, all of it, was infused with incomparable genius - so much so that even the worst that fear and darkness could create could become the very tool for light, for freedom, for an opening of the cage.  

            So far, if one had to count in time, no one but he and Dalia knew what was to come.  They would release the prisoners one by one, and each would be taken back to him and Dalia.  First they would count in the dozens, and then in the hundreds, each becoming a bridge to the others until there would be millions.  With them a new bridge would be raised for the billions.  And no one, not Dahlia, not anyone, knew how far this could take them, for there was no limit on the incomparable genius that stood beside darkness and light everywhere, even in the impenetrable structure of a crystalline wall.                           

                                

                   

               
Hell House

            Sometimes we don’t know why we do things.  We were living comfortably in a small but well-built house on six acres of land.  I had recently completed my PhD program, dissertation, defense and all, and we had experienced the eye-opening birth of our son not much more than a year before.  I was applying to university jobs like crazy, discouraged but still hopeful, and had had a recent surge of spiritual fervor, causing me to meditate and fast regularly with unexpectedly profound results.  Life was good, overall, but needed no more complications.  Why, then, did I have to look at that house?

            Land.  I had always had a dream of owning lots of land, and this place had twenty six acres of it, large even for the forgotten northeastern quarter of Connecticut, and it, along with a house and an unattached A-frame, were going for $115, 000, an unbelievable deal.  It was true that we had had some trouble with a distant neighbor over dogs, and that the people of our small town were inexplicably mean - as in rude, hostile, jealous, petty and just plain ornery.  But it wasn’t that bad.  We could have bided our time, waited a few years until I got a job or we had more money, and then moved on peacefully.  But no, I had to buy the house. 

            That my wife put up with it is almost as hard to believe.  She worked out of a room at home, and she had long wanted a separate office building so that she could walk from the door at the end of the day and forget about customer woes and departmental intrigue for the night, but that alone would not explain her compliance.  No, not at all, once you saw what that 115,000 dollars, even argued down to $90,000 in the accepted offer, was really going to buy.  It, the whole lot of it, was a mess of epic proportions. 

            The land: most of it was swampland.  Nice swamp, to be sure, and it surrounded the property nearly to the driveway ensuring the type of privacy one only gets in northern Maine or Alaska, but swampland none-the-less.  It was bought in March, and we did not have to wait long for the reality of swampland to affect us directly.  We recall to this day how dusk would bring a buzzing from the swamp that would gradually rise in both volume and location, until it rolled against the house in waves of unrelenting mosquitoes.  Sitting out on the porch on warm evenings was not an option.  True, the few acres of high land beside the house held massive old-growth hemlocks, and beyond the swamp lay thousands of acres of hill and forest, but once the sun began its last descent, or on any cloudy day, all that had to be viewed from behind the windows.

            Ah, yes, the windows.  Leaving Vicki behind in the old house about an hour’s drive away, I began the work of restoration, and I was to start on the windows.  It was such a wreck that it is only because of the last subject that I recall the windows first, where I began my work because the windows leaked.  In some houses, this might not be such a big deal, but here is was the deal – the big, bad deal – of the ages.  Let me take a breath to explain.

            The house had been self-designed by a professional musician who made his living, as far as we knew, from giving piano lessons.  From the workmanship and design of the house, he certainly did not moonlight as a building contractor.  Being, I suppose, artistically hip, he had decided on an “envelope” house, one that would be heated primarily from the sun.  The front of the house, then, had been angled sharply down, making its roof one and the same as the south wall.  From a side view, this roof-wall sloped down to within three feet of the huge front porch, rising like an A-frame to the peak, where the back roof slanted off to the north at a more moderate angle.  And so, being solar, the front half of the house was virtually all glass, made up of a series of three-by-six foot single- pane windows.  And each and every one of them leaked. 

            Being in the extreme north-east hills, there was still a good deal of snow on the ground when we took over the house in mid- March, but I had to set up the ladder and try to rescue what I could of the moldering carpeting inside.  The first day, I caulked all the windows, fingers turning numb in the near- freezing temperatures.  The first night, as I shivered under a pile of old sleeping bags in the unheated interior, frozen dew formed on the windows, melting with the light of day, taking all the caulk with it.  It should be mentioned that, with the rising of the sun, the freezing house also turned into a furnace, because the former owner and designer had neglected to add a significant part to his envelope house – the under-the floor part.  The heat from the window of an envelope house is supposed to be directed beneath the floor, where it will radiate slowly and steadily throughout day and night.  The musician had not only failed to make fans and ducts to direct that flow, but also the cellar into which it would go (I later found out why).  And so, much like Mercury, the house burned and froze with the alternating presence and absence of the sun.  And of course, it still leaked.  

            But that was all right, as there was much more to do until the weather warmed – much more than I had ever imagined in my ignorance.  I must take another breath.  The story, as it was told to us by the realtor and neighbors, goes like this: The musician and his boyfriend had started the project together, but had broken up half way through.  Being of limited means, he had to cut costs, which really didn’t seem to matter, as he did not know how to build.  I know this, because as I went about fixing this and that, I found that not one corner – not one – was square.   Anyway, he completed the house and separate A-frame as well as he could alone, and then found that his income would not pay his debts.  His solution was to move to the two-room A-frame and rent out the main house.  For some reason – probably because of the house’s many deficiencies – the only tenants he could get were several Hispanic young men – either Puerto Rican or Dominican, no one could tell – who worked at menial jobs at the hospital, a half hour away from the house in Putnam (where, coincidentally, our son was born).  Of course, that was not a problem on the face of it.  What was the problem was their addiction to heroin.

            It was not just talk.  They had destroyed the house, using the bathroom door as a target for darts, and had punched several holes through the walls.  It was while fixing one of these holes that I pulled out a set of “works,” a spoon and syringe that, out of sheer luck, I had not grabbed at the wrong end.  And more: when the musician had finally admitted defeat and forfeited the house to the bank, the junkies ripped all of the copper tubing – all of it – from behind the walls, as well as any fixture that could get them a few bucks somewhere.  A neighbor told me, “we saw them driving away in a pick-up truck filled with all these pipes and sinks and toilettes and such.  We called the police, and never heard another thing about it.”

            So this was the house I had stupidly set our fortunes on.  I was an academic and had done almost no construction before.  After sizing up the situation, I got a shot of panic that never quite left for the next two and a half years.  Those were rough times.

            But the deal had gone through, including the disposal of our perfectly good house.  It so happened that an old high school friend had recently lost his house to fire, due to faulty wiring.  Although insurance had paid for much of the rebuilding, the payments for the new construction had put him under, financially.  It did not help that, just after the house was rebuilt, some local toughs had come through their yard and jumped on their car.  When Bill, the friend, and his wife went out to chase them off, they pushed Bill down and punched his wife in the face.  The neighborhood had gone bad, to say the least, and with everything, they were anxious to leave.  We offered our house for a rent-to-buy, and they eagerly accepted.  They were set to move in only a few weeks after we had bought the new place.  Like it or not, we were going to have to live in this leaking house with no plumbing and more problems than I could yet know, in early April, one year old child and all.

            Home Depot to the rescue.  I still love those guys.  I had to drive over an hour, to Norwich, to get to the nearest franchise, but it was well worth it, not only in savings, but in advice.  Advice?  No, really, an education.  It is still hard to believe that the retired plumbers and carpenters and electricians who worked there were willing to spend hours teaching me how to rewire and sweat the pipes and use a plumb line, but they did.   Maybe it was because I was such a rapt student, for I was, with my very bad decision leaving my family on the precipice, but for whatever reason, they taught me enough to fix the downstairs bathroom – pipes and toilet and sink and bathtub and shower and all – by the time we were forced to move in.  Calls to local heating and cooling guys got those other things going, while I put in a woodstove to cut the cost on propane (the house sucked it up at a disturbing rate); and the window guy turned out to be better than his word.  He walled off two thirds of the old window space, put in double pains for the rest, and had curtains placed on those to cut the sun on warm days.  Envelope house, gone; livable house, made. 

            Still, necessary renovations were to continue for the remainder of our occupancy.  There was the upstairs bathroom, the carpeting, a new tile floor, a stove and fridge and laundry, and paneling.  But even that was not enough, for the house had been poorly planned from top to bottom.  The cement floor had not been raised high enough, so that all the outside wall boards were rotten, sometimes into the support beams.  These had to be ripped out and replaced with pressure-treated wood; the pipe to the septic system had been buried too close to the surface (more on that in a minute) and had to be replaced; and ditto that on all of the above for the A-frame, which my wife happily occupied during her work-a-day world.

            Me, I occupied the house for all of my working day, and often night.  Things did not always go right.  For instance, I noticed that after everything, the upstairs shower still leaked into the downstairs living room.  On this, I asked a carpenter who I had hired to do the finer work on some paneling if this, perhaps, were OK – it was, after all, only a tiny leak.  He immediately returned a look of disbelief: you cannot have any leakage of water in a house, ever!  It was one of the great lessons of my life – one cannot argue with nature.  It will do what it will do, and all the pleading and good will in the world will not change it.  The facts of life, after all those years spent arguing and speculating in academia, still remained facts.  Welcome home to the real world.

            In the swamp, nature was quite real in its living creatures as well.  We quickly found out why there had been no basement – the house had been built on a solid slab of rock that only dynamite could displace.  Because of this – because this was a rocky high ground in the middle of a swamp – it had become the basking and breeding grounds for many of the swamp critters.  Every spring, hundreds of baby snapping turtles would crawl across our lawn to the life-giving morass below.  Better still, it was a place beloved by snakes, who had probably sunned there for centuries.  They also knew of any holes in the house, and regularly showed up in certain rooms, sometimes by the dozen – black snakes and milk snakes and corn snakes and garters, and who knew what else.   I would find the holes and patch them up with a shudder.  It was also for this reason that the sewage pipe had been placed so near the surface, causing me to dig for a day with a pick ax and crow bar in the leaking filth to gain an extra six inches.  That, like the patched holes for the snakes, would have to be enough.

            Meanwhile, our poor son had to negotiate the house with his dad’s head nearly always in a wall or under a sink.  I often took off my wedding ring to work, as it caught on things, and Jeff managed to lose it, forever, one day when I was fixing that damned upstairs shower.  I go ring-less to this day, although it has not led to the type of female onslaught that one might expect.  Another time, Jeff got into a drawer in my study, where I had casually placed some medicine for malaria (for former fieldwork) in an envelope and forgotten it.  I found a capsule opened on the floor one bright morning, which led to a stay at the emergency room, where Jeff was forced to eat charcoal.  It turned out that he had only tasted it and turned away from it because of its bitterness, as he had no physical ill effects, but psychologically, we had all been poisoned, me particularly, with guilt.  But the housing project went on.

            And on and on until two and one half years after my careless decision, Vicki got an offer from her company that she couldn’t refuse – move to Wisconsin or start looking for another job.  For reasons that baffle me now, I was extremely upset at this, but there was really no decision to make.  We called the first realtor and he gave us an appraisal that was barely over all our costs, not to mention the thousands of hours I had put into the place.  We declined, and as he left, he said, “That’s all right.  In the end, you’ll come back to me.  They always do.”

            The next realtor assessed a value at 50,000 more, and we leapt.  “It’s a quirky place, but you just need to find the right person.  All this land and privacy is valuable to someone.”  Next morning, a sign was put at the end of the long driveway.   That afternoon, an elderly man – a retired contractor – drove up with his new wife of roughly the same age.  He asked me to tell him honestly all the problems of the place.  I did, and he retorted, “Just what I had figured.”  He had also come to figure that he would make the same changes that I was about to over the next year or two.  The house, or place, really, was a hit.  Two weeks later, we had our sale, at our price.

           

            Up until a few years ago, I would get periodic nightmares about that place.  The panic, the feeling of drowning, of being over my head and about to lose everything, was not pleasant.  Most of that has now been forgotten, except as it is being excavated in this essay, but what has remained to this day is the synchronicity of the all-around transactions, and what they would mean to us.  At the start, there was Bill, ready to take the first house at exactly the right time.  Then, during the long and tortuous building process, there were the right people able to help this idiot in a world where he did not belong.  And at the end, along came the right buyer immediately at the right price.  Here is what this had meant to us in the long run:

            The extra money from the sale of the property allowed us to move into the house we currently own, in a neighborhood where we have found, against any expectations, some of the best friends we have ever known.  The nearby town happened to have a Catholic school, where we put our son and began, again, to attend church.  This has connected us to the surrounding community in a way, again, that had not been expected, and led in some other ways to spiritual growth.  Our friend Bill, on the other hand, had a place to live in during ten years of personally tough economic times, until I finally had to sell the house that he could not afford to buy.  This led him to find another house in which he now lives comfortably.  The sale of the house happened to be just before the real estate bust of 2007-2008, when we were able to get a shockingly high price from people from New York who considered the price shockingly low.  With that money, we were able to pay our mortgage and buy acreage and a cabin Up North, something I had always wanted and something that has helped my writing considerably.

            The consequences of that one decision, then, were enormous – and, in the end, primarily for the better, beyond all odds.  This has set me to wondering – did my intense meditation during that time lead to that decision?  Did something within me, or without, know something that I personally did not? 

            On the other hand, the process was not all positive, as can be seen.  During the fix-up years, I was anxious nearly all the time, with all energy focused on this one big, messy problem.  On top of that, the move to Wisconsin was startlingly traumatic, as I had not made any advances professionally during those fix-up years, leaving me with a feeling of profound alienation that lasted for far, far too long.  All in all, in truth, that time - from fix-it through the Wisconsin move - had been the most trying of my life.

            Among the Chinese, it is said that the wrinkles of old age are honored while the smooth faces of the young are disparaged; wrinkles speak of experience, they say, and from experience comes wisdom.  But perhaps avoidance of experience comes from wisdom that is inborn.  Perhaps “experience” is only another word for stupidity.  Yet this stupid one learned one hell of a lot from the Hell House and it consequences.  I learned not only how to fix things, but how easily I could break inside, and how hard it was to fix this, this machine of mind that had seemed so invincible.   But I learned that in this, too, there were forces that could help, that would help if one hung on through desperate times.  Rapt attention, the expression of honest need, is required, but with that and determination, the disaster will be remedied.

            Somehow, that is, for sometimes the mess we get into is beyond the kind of help we hope for.  But maybe we can always get the help we need.           

            I will never, ever know if the decision to buy that house was the right one in the larger sense, just as I do not know if it has led me to a nobler destiny.  But things have worked out well - very well.  Outside, the maple tree is in full color, pumpkin orange and rusty red.  Inside I write of things greater than ourselves, and in that, I feel them, almost know them.  Even now, it seems that the brilliant colors might burst forth in the fullness of glory to make me forget every regret, every failing, in the grace of an unquestionable truth.  There is no success, no path in the world that would be worth the loss of this, of these small moments.  Perhaps these would have been missed had I not thrown our lives into the unknown through brash ignorance.

            Destiny?  Everything is destiny if it leads one to something beyond, something greater than the self.  Experience IS wisdom, if it is worn to the end.  Here, there should be no regrets or second guessing, for to glimpse the Great is greatness itself, surpassed by nothing.  How one gets there is of little importance.  Each is just another way, if it is allowed to be.                                

                                                                         

Howl

 

            It might have been the need for fresh meat.  Lourdes and I had arrived at the tiny Indian settlement of Chirinos with plenty of rice and powdered milk, and it was easy to trade for fresh fruit which the Yabarana grew year round in the riverine tropics of Venezuela, but meat was a problem.  We had several dozen cans of Deviled Ham, each one weighing six ounces, net, and we would split one each day to top the boiled rice we always had for our afternoon lunch, but that was a far cry from a steak, or even a hamburger. 

            Still, though, I could have asked Freddy, my tucayo, or namesake, to take me to hunt deer out of sheer boredom, for not a lot happens in a small Indian settlement a day’s walk from the nearest town.  It is like a little suburban community without the cars and TV’s or tickets to the Packer’s game.  It is like living as a teenager on summer vacation, without an outside job or a driver’s license in a sparse house without AC.  For the people there, the men fish and the women tend the garden or grate manioc until the noonday heat, when everyone retires to their hammocks for a long spell of sleeping or simply lulling about.   At about 4:00 PM, life stirs again, but not all that much.  And then comes night without lights, and early bed time.  Repeat this the next day, and then the next. 

            So I cannot recall why I made the request, but it was agreed to quickly by teen-aged Freddy and a few younger boys, for I had a shotgun and, better still, shotgun shells that came at a high cost for people who lived outside the market economy.  On the village side of the all-important life-giving river, there were the gardens and then thick brush; on the other side, the great floodplains, which had only small elevated islands of trees because of the annual floods that would cover tens of thousands of acres each rainy season.  In the dry season, the plains were the place for deer.   That was where we would go. 

            Already, at 9:00 AM the next morning, the sun was bearing down as we crossed the river in a dugout canoe and then headed on foot into the great interior.  We walked through the dry grass for an hour or so before coming to one of those forested islands, where Freddy began to stalk.  The boys and I did the same, crouching and moving quietly, and in minutes, Freddy, goofy Freddy who had seemed so useless in the village, pointed towards a sparse copse of tall trees.  Gun Ioaded and cocked, I stood, looked, and saw nothing.  But when I turned to question Freddy, my motion must have made the deer move, for it was then that I saw it, dashing from us towards the plains.  I always felt like an idiot hunting with Indians, because I could never see as they could, but I was quick with the gun and was able to snap off a deer slug.  It seemed to me that I must have hit it, but off it went into the grass, back towards the river.  Freddy never spoke much, and he said nothing then, offering me no clue.  We arrived at the river and the canoe and crossed without issue, me with some disappointment. 

            No one ever said a word to me how it happened, but that afternoon I walked down to the river for a cooling dip, as life was as dull as ever at that hour, and their saw Daniel, a young man old enough to have a family, dressing a deer.  He said nothing to me and I do not know what he had planned originally, but an hour later, he stopped by our little open-sided, leaf-covered shack to drop off a fairly large steak.  Apparently, I had hit the deer, and Freddy had taken Daniel back to track it.  I always suspected that they were trying to hide it from me, but that might be ungenerous – and I still wound up with the steak.   

            Our cooking fire was small, as were the Indian’s, and we had done exactly as they – put three even-sized stones around the side on which to put the cooking pot. I had the advantage of a little grill, and once the coals were set, I placed the steak over the fire.  A few minutes later, I walked a bit away from the hut for something or other, and on turning, caught the furtive movements of a dog.  In less than a second, he had taken the hot steak from the fire and run off towards the center of the village with it.  Shocked and enraged, I ran after, tripping over some string lines Daniel had set on the ground where he had planned to build a new house.  I cursed loudly and then had to admit defeat.  That steak was long gone.

            The Indians thought it hilarious, as we “professors” always tried to maintain a professional cool, and in time I laughed, too, and forgot it.  We had, after all, our canned devil’s ham and everything else we needed, and it had been at least some kind of adventure.  But the dog, that dog, didn’t forget, and in fact reacted to my outburst and anger in a peculiar way: he started to hang around.  In time, we began to feel sorry for him, and then began to give him scraps of food.  As it must have worked since the beginning of the human-dog relationship, soon he became our dog. 

            He had been Daniel’s, but Daniel didn’t mind.  He had gotten the dog from the Colonel, a rich military man from Caracas who now used the Indian land to graze his cattle.  This extra-legal use of land often led to conflict, for as far as the Indians were concerned, they had as much right to those free-roaming cattle as the Colonel, and they were easier to hunt than deer, although far more dangerous.  When the Indians killed a cow, the Colonel would complain to the authorities in town; the Indians would then complain about the Colonel using their land; and then nothing was ever done.  But until the Colonel was arrested for large-scale drug smuggling, he and the Indians maintained a delicate balance with each other: the Colonel would hire them for the difficult work of rounding up wild cattle, while they would happily accept the cash that they otherwise had no way to get.   

            Sometimes the payments would come with something extra – like a dog. 

            Daniel was extremely proud of that dog, because, as he told us, it was of “pura raza,” a genuine hunting hound dog, unlike the mutts that scrambled like frightened coyotes around all the other Indian villages.  However, the mutts were hardy dogs picked by Darwinian cruelties to survive in the hot, bug-infested tropics on next to nothing.  Daniel, on the other hand, had no such violent pedigree, and he had suffered for it.  The dog was extremely thin, like most Indian dogs, but also had a disturbing hack, like an old man with emphysema.  His energy was limited and his usefulness next to nil.  I suppose Daniel simply had stopped feeding him at some point, and was glad to have the business of the dog over and done with.  Now, he was our dog to care for, or not.  We called him Orejon, or Big Ear.

            Soon, time came that our field work seemed stagnant, and we decided to move back up river to the larger village of Majagua.  As it was the dry season and the river was running fast and shallow, we could get no one to take us there in a fishing canoe, so we decided to walk.  We would have to cross the river again and follow its tree line for the ten-mile trek through the savannah, largely uncharted territory for us, and something of a risk.  There were jaguar galore because of the cattle, but it was the cattle that were the problem.  They were long-horned feral beasts whose greatest enemy was Man, and they were shockingly quick, as agile as any wild animal.  An approach within a half mile to any bull would elicit a charge, and there were few places to hide in the open fields.  And, as always, there were the snakes, as feared by the Indians as by us. 

            But we would go – boredom is a strong drive – and after packing our needs, walked with Daniel to the river, where he would paddle us across.  We were followed by our now-faithful dog, Orejon. 

            The small fishing dug-outs, or bongos, are extremely tipsy, and we boarded with care, our gear placed just so in the middle.  Daniel followed behind us and pushed off into the current, and all seemed well until Orejon gathered up what must have been the last of his strength and leapt from the shore, landing unsteadily on our pack.  With the canoe swaying dangerously, Daniel dropped his paddle and grabbed Oregon by the fur, giving one mighty heave that left the dog sprawled sideways on the muddy shore.  With that, Daniel steadied the canoe and dug into the water to get us over its forty or so feet of turbulence.  To our surprise, Orejon followed, keeping his panting head just above the water.  When he arrived on the opposite shore just moments after us, Danial shrugged.  Well how about that?  It was decided that we would allow the dog his choice, and didn’t really mind.  It seemed, somehow, like a sign of good luck, which we thought we might need.

            Daniel returned to the other side as we sorted out our packs, Orejon trembling by our side.  “He looks sick,” Lourdes said, and as she reached into the food catch for a treat, Orejon raised his head and let out the most plaintive, sad howl that I had ever heard, bringing goose bumps to my arms.  Then he lay down and died, just like that.  Cold.  Absolutely, unquestionably dead. 

            Dread ran through us – what could this mean?  Behind us was the river and before us the burning plain.  We asked ourselves if we should turn back, but felt foolish for it.  We were the professors, after all, and did not believe in such nonsense.  Yet we did.  After feeling for a life force in him that was obviously gone, I tossed him into the river because we thought somehow that this would make his death cleaner.  Careful now, alert to dangers we had pushed into the back of our minds, we left the shore and began the march to Majagua, covered by a cloud even as the sun burned hotter in the white-blue sky. 

            No snakes bit us, no jaguars growled close by, and the cattle came no closer than small dots on the horizon, but it proved to be a magical adventure, made more so with the possibilities of disaster that the howl had forced to mind.  We walked through a broad expanse of twenty to thirty-foot-high termite mounds, the earth piled in sloppy peaks like lose excrement.  Stands of stripped and dried trees were scattered throughout, victims of termite foraging, and it seemed as if we were walking through the land of the dead.  Then, on through more burning plains, the distant tepuys always before us, their several-thousand-foot cliffs rising stark and gray towards cloudy, flat tops covered in thick dark-green forests that may never have known a human print.  Magical, dangerous, filled with wonder, the outlandish landscape kept us quiet until we came to the large island of trees that, we thought, marked the territory of Majagua.  On approach, we found some patches of tended plantain, and we knew we were there.  Safe, back into civilization.   Back, then, into boredom.

               Boredom?  How could that be?  Here we were, in the back woods of the Orinoco forests living with Indians, living a life that few could or would ever do, and we felt the pressing need to move on.  Even then, even on this trip without guides in a foreign land, it may have not been all that exciting, except for Orejon.  His spooky last howl, where the very life force seemed to flow from him in one eerie cry, gave us something – fear, superstitious fear, yes - and something else as well: marvel.  His death opened our eyes to what we had become accustomed to, made of it the special thing that it was – the tepuys rising in mist to lost lands, massive thrusts of earth made by tiny insects, gnarled gray trees and grasslands free of noise, free of people, full only of wild and unpredictable things stretching ever beyond.           

            Could it be that fear, fear of pain and death, is what makes us come alive?  Could it be that what we avoid and curse and worry about is our saving grace, our ticket back to wonder and awe? To life itself?  Could it be that our success at denying the undeniable is what sucks us dry, what leaves us bitter or wanting or just plain bored? For the paradox is that we create 
walls to block the mystery, what we can never know, and in doing this deny the very life we wish to live, the very thing we need for life – this mystery, this infinite depth, this frightening depth, that which is our true home.

            Even now, each night it comes, and each day I let it go, this fright, this intimation of mystery.  But I should know better.  In the agonizing howl of death, I saw life, and in fear saw the substance of what it means to live.  It is to live with eyes wide open, with courage, to live without ever wishing that one minute should be anything but what it is.                  

                                        

                       

West, Revisited

 
            This spring I was visited with the urge to move- to travel, to explore, to stretch across the land in its immensity and be overwhelmed – again.  It had been years since I had done so, decades, in fact, so long back that this urge was almost nostalgic, almost a grasping for a past gone, but not quite.  In it still was the old need, like the dying tree that sends out multiple suckers in one last gasp of life to succeed further in life.  I felt that I had to move.

            The call, though, was suppressed for months because of things to do and other plans, and by the time all was clear and the light had turned green, it was late August, and torpor had set in.  Why go?  It was uncomfortable, a hassle, and what else could I possibly see that had not been seen before?  I was certainly not Merriweather Lewis, and no longer young.  Everything, I knew, had taken on a patina of the used, of the tired.  But that is not how life works.  Instead, the impetus of spring had worked its way through the summer into design, and the design into a plan.  It would be done.  I almost groaned on the day that we left.

            After much deliberation, it was decided that we would go west from our home in Wisconsin, heading through the corn fields of Iowa and down through uncelebrated Nebraska, where once men roamed freely on horses and carried lances with feathered banners, and then through Wyoming to the heart destination of the American tourist – Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.  We, my wife and college-aged son and I, would camp when we could and find motels when we couldn’t.  We would expect a crowded arena of sightseers, of jammed camp sites and selfies taken besides bison and antelope.  I nearly groaned again as we started, but gained energy by motion, a motion towards the west, where Europe had invested its dreams for so long that one could not be uninspired, in spite of everything.  It was the direction of possibilities, ever now as then, and the draw was like a vacuum that pulled us into the strong westerlies as we passed Dubuque and watched as slowly, so slowly, the cities separated by greater and greater miles, and the corn and soy ran towards larger horizons.  It did not impress, not this old traveler, but the energy mounted with each exit off the great interstate.  West, west.  We were not there yet, no, for West was not just a direction, but a place, and we would know it when we saw it.  Ten, twenty, one hundred miles, we watched and waited for the West we knew would come.

            Iowa, where the wind blew so steadily that our gas mileage dropped by ten percent, would not be the place.  This we knew.  The corn was too tall, the farms too prosperous, the trees too numerous on hillsides and ravines.  There, yes, the motorcycles roared by on their way to western South Dakota, the true West, but here was only a way-point.  Here was only a gas -up and drink-up of bitter coffee on the way.  It would come, instead, in Nebraska, but where we did not know.  Certainly not in Omaha, its refineries belching smoke amid industrial buildings and hardy trees; and not for more miles than we had imagined, the land still full with wire and field and more trees.  It was almost there at Monument Rock, the tall spiral that had signaled the way to the Western trails for so many pioneers, where signs at the local park headquarters warned “Danger!  Rattlesnakes!,” where so many TV Westerns had taken that one shot of its tall spiral against a red-blazed sky.  Almost there as the towns got dustier, poorer, where horses grazed by old trailer homes, were one could imagine a rodeo cowboy occasionally took off his boots and spurs.  But it was near, and when it came, when it became West, it was suddenly as clear as day, and the old wonder began to rise, the blood expectant for new beginnings and horizons of wonder. 

            It was in western Nebraska, where sky and land and lake fell together in a juxtaposition of possibilities, here in the improbable that we knew that we were in the West.  We had just passed rocky ledges and contoured corn fields, where the farmer’s growth fell into what was nature’s alone, short grass covering miles of rolling hills that could not be counted, hills whose bare backs were etched sharply against a blue-bright sky.  As we topped a greater hill, we saw with shock the water below, the lake that stretched on and on between the hills, impossible in this dryness, a work, no doubt, of thirsty Man.  Blue on blue, green and dull rock, we simply had to take the small road off the larger and follow the crease of hills down to this liquid glimmering, passing here and there a house of wood that seemed so stark and alone – so alien – in these hills, until the lake came up like fallen sky.   We drove until we came to a small marina and campsite, found a dusty spot beneath cottonwoods, and stopped.

            It was quiet here, here where the state park met a private marina and campgrounds that had been intended for so much more noise.   Quiet under the cottonwoods as Jeff, my son, and I walked to the end of the dock to test the water.  We were on a small inlet of the large lake, the water somewhat rusty and warm, and around were a few other jetties of wood that were meant to anchor boats that were not there.  The weather was hot but dry, and the wind that surrounded the trees made it a perfect place, warm yet cool, dry yet dust-free with the lake so close.  We walked along the shore into the nearly empty campground where the few who were there were seemingly up to nothing.  A woman sitting on a fallen tree by the lake noticed us and told us, “there’s a family of turkeys up there,” and we went “up there” to see nothing at all but sand and willows bowed by the gentle breeze.  We turned for the car and saw the turkeys, a family as she had said, stalking the grass by the edge of the brush, as we stepped across the fine sand that held each print in the moving shade. 

            We took our swim then, Jeff and I, in the rusty water, then hurried out as a boat approached the dock.  Jeff said some things about fish and the folks were friendly, but they soon returned to talking of things to come, of small things like Sunday and dinner, and we changed in the small plastic outhouses as it became quiet again beneath the sun and below the spreading cattle-shaved hills that spoke of space, of quiet and space and sudden contrasts of water and dry, of hot and cold, of bright sun cut with deep shade as if by a knife.  Yes, we were in the West.

            Long miles later, we veered off the interstate at the border of Wyoming to make a north-westerly tack towards the Grand Tetons.  The sun dropped straight into our eyes as sparse corn turned to sparse fields, and then to almost nothing at all, or so it seemed in the dimming light.  Hills and cliffs, poor grass, cattle far off with antelope among them, we were in cowboy country where Old Paint died on its way to Montana, the cowboy lonesome, for there was nothing between Cheyenne and Montana, nothing for Man but emptiness and silence.  We asked each other – would we live here, in the high desert?  Would we brave the fierce winds of winter and, worse, the lone-ness?  No, we would not, and our gas was running low.  We could camp in the endless hills, but did not want to, and were glad to see a small town come up, where an independent motel advertised “vacancy.”  It was in decline but still not half-bad, and at dusk was the perfect place out of the sparse hills that were so close. 

            Characters.  There were always characters in the West when I had last travelled, when I had hitched back and forth across the continent as a young man, confused and itching for something I did not know, and there was a character here.  He sat tilted back in a chair before his room out on the sidewalk – a good idea, as the weather could not be finer in the last light – and as I passed him to get ice from the office, he asked me the usual, and then he told his own story.  He had come out west from Minnesota as a young man in the 60’s and had fallen in love with it, moving to Wyoming shortly after with his new wife.  Fifty years later, he was retired and at this motel because of the hidden lake just below these hills, where it had once been desert but now was filled with water and fish. 

            “This is all desert, these hills.  Now, you take this shortcut out at the damn…”  He tried to explain it, then walked me over to his truck for the map.  “Right here.  That’s where you’ll see the farms and the green.  They damned up the river sometimes back and it grows real good.”  He was anxious for me to see the better Wyoming.  We walked back towards the building.  “But you think the bears are only at the parks.  Not anymore.  Why, they’re out there in the desert right now.  You might see one come through the parking lot tonight.” 

            Really?  What could live here but jackrabbits and a few skinny antelope?  He went on.

            “They used to tell the tourists to feed the bears back then.  Then they got to be problem, so they killed off all the black bears.  Then there got to be too many Grizzly.  So they ended hunting in the 70’s, and now the bears are everywhere.   Killed three or four people this summer so far.”

            I mentioned that they should have controlled hunting to bring back respect in the bears, but he declined to answer.  It was, it seems to me now, that he knew that every control measure would end with some problem, from the dams to the bears to the coal mines to the tar sands, to everything.  This was the way of the West.  In its flinty heart, life was so delicate that any change would hurt something to favor something else.  There was no real balance out here, not as long as he had lived, and for a lot longer.  It was nothing to be upset about.  It was the West.

            But this was true, and it did upset me, at least a little.  Forty years before, these hills had been the same, but with one difference; then there had been nothing but the hills; now, the power lines stretched everywhere for infinity.  And railroads – everywhere were coal cars, thousands of them, carrying off some mountain towards the east.  The West had become energy central, giving us cheap gas and oil and electricity, but also strewing the debris of the fevered rush for wealth everywhere; just as it had always been, since Indians fought each other for the rights of land and buffalo.  Too live here, something, many things, had to die.  It is that brittle.

            We made the park the next afternoon and marveled at the Tetons rising from the lake so perfectly, just as in all the pictures we had seen.  The tourists, too, were dense, and most surprisingly, perhaps a half, or at least a quarter, were Chinese.  Diesel fumes ruled the park headquarters as bus after bus dropped the hopefuls here, these pilgrims for wilderness, to snap photos and walk the easy paths hoping, and not hoping, to see a bear.  We took the harder trip the next day, climbing a part of a mountain in rain that soon became driving and cold, and we had an adventure as we shivered in the boat on the ride back to the dock.  Even then, the steep, muddy path that so exhausted us was nearly crowded, with no one alone for long.  The campsite, too, gave us neighbors, even as a bear strolled through looking for some stray Cheetos. 

            And so it was, too, at Yellowstone.  This is not to say that it was not marvelous – the boiling ponds and abundant bison, the great Yellowstone Falls, the mountain vistas were all wonderful, but always there was – us.  We read of the mountain men who had come here in the early 1800’s for beaver, but really for the life, and I wondered, wished, it were still so, wished, maybe foolishly, for I am no longer tough and young, that it held the bounty of freedom and danger that it once had, for why were we here?   For the Chinese if must be quite the place, but for us?  I could sooner lose myself in the Wisconsin North Woods than here, or so it seemed from our short day hikes.  Yes, the sights were marvelous, but it was not – it was not that, that which I cannot quite name.  It was West, but managed West.  Again, a balance had been lost.  Here, it was not about bodily survival, but survival of the very soul of wildness.  Something had been changed, and much of wildness, or so it seemed, had died for this new thing. 

            East, then, over a great high pass in Montana that gave me fear at driving, a memorable thing as we drove through the lingering snow fields at ten thousand feet, and then out into the Montana version of Wyoming, its own high desert, which was rockier but much the same – empty but for the power lines that ran everywhere.  Our next destination was not far – Little Big Horn Park, where Custer had his last stand.  Not far at all, as a matter of fact, for it was within a mile of the interstate, its open fields hedged in by parking lots and the towers and building of a small town and the big road.  Walking through the memorial, the wind was driving and steady, and if one looked in one direction, one could sense the openness where this great battle had taken place, the rolling, treeless green hills that went on to the horizon.  We were walking here to find where my only famous relative had died, Cpt.  Myles Keogh, whose horse “Comanche” had been immortalized and once was known by most school children.  Now, though, almost everyone at the memorial was as old as I or older, the last of a breed who had been raised on cowboy movies and TV shows, and as we found Myles’s death marker at the side of the field, I wondered if anyone would come here in another decade or two – if anyone would know.  Certainly not the Chinese; and maybe only the Crow, who had been allies of the Blue Jackets against their mortal enemies, the Sioux and Cheyenne, and who now owned the land around the park and worked in its buildings. 

            It had that kind of lonely feeling, this place, although it was hardly alone anymore; as if the old loneliness of endless prairie survived even as the endless prairie had died.  Perhaps that was only in us, the old and the native who understood this place.  Or perhaps it was the loneliness of death, of how all things and people that die are forgotten, sooner or later, fading like the mythical shades of the Greeks in Hades.

            Driving east, straight east, we split off the highway for some way into the Wyoming Black Hills, Devil’s Tower our destination.  The Hills were as beautiful as ever, not wild around the park, but verdant with grass and trees that lined a snaking river.  The Tower was, as with the parks, picture perfect, and although it makes us moderns think of a penis broken off at the tip, it seemed also like a hollow point bullet recovered from deep sand, the rifling groves struck into the slug perfectly.  Awesome, and before we got back, the clouds darkened and the lightening sounded, the rain pounding the roof just after we made the car.   Green, beautiful, civilized.  We could settle there, but wouldn’t, for land prices have gone high.  And Wisconsin, too, is green.

            The great dry fields of South Dakota rolled out, cattle on the far vistas, and then the Badlands came, an odd land of dry canyons and hills that seem much larger than they are, for most are little more than a few hundred feet high.  What is memorable here are the striations of different colored minerals exposed in the soft rock, and what is surprising in this dead place is that not long before – in the 1920’s – this land had been given over to farmers.  Disaster came quickly, and they left it to the Park Service and the antelope and cattle and buffalo, the latter seen by us as small specks on grassy patches in the canyon. 

            The Badlands – if you had to designate an area for nuclear destruction, this would be the place, and indeed it was.  Just a few miles from the park was another park, just a station, really, the site of a control room to fire nuclear missiles from a silo ten miles to the west.  We had thought it would ooze dread, but it did not – rather, it instilled nothing from its design, done in the plainest of bureaucratic architecture that did not speak of the potential horrors it could have unleashed.  The control center was closed for refurbishing, as such buildings often are, and we bought books that told the tale of Mutually Assured Destruction in the most frightening – and realistic – ways.  We drove on, hardly looking back. 

            Miles and miles and miles onward, the plains slowly greened until we were back in corn country, where we turned from the highway into a mid-sized town that advertised its “Corn Palace,” the last of its kind.  Surrounded by the cheapest of kitsch shops and fried dough stalls, it stood as a paean to the country bumpkin.  The façade was built of corn husks and dried corn cobs to form an outrageous mosaic, perfect for bumpkin pictures for us sophisticates – for anyone would feel himself a sophisticate before it – to share and laugh at, but inside: well, inside was the town basketball court, where they also held an occasional concert.  Along the walls it described the history of the town, and how the corn palace tradition had begun as a way to brag to the world about the abundance of the corn-growing states.  Now a modern building with good clean bathrooms for free, it was deflating. 

            As was, in a way, the remainder of our trip through Minnesota and western Wisconsin, for we had seen it, lived it all before.  This was and is beautiful in its way, but it does not hold the promise of the West.  It does not promise adventure and awe and grand vistas and wildness.  No, those last miles home are lived in and settled – certainly not the West.

            But neither is the West.  It had gotten smaller somehow, so tamed that its past promise was only to be found in vestiges, in views where one had to look one way and not the other; in small groups of buffalo uninterested in cars, in walks where no sign had yet routed the tourists towards something picture-worthy.  The West, I thought, had been lost to the highways, to the tourists, to the power lines and the box cars, to a development that had swallowed the land to the west of the Mississippi in little more than a hundred years.

            Sad, yes, but a good trip after all, and more to it than first met the eye.  Seeing the West again after so many years, it had indeed seemed smaller, but had it really changed that much?  In some ways, yes, but in most ways, in retrospect, no.  It was, instead, me who had changed, who had gotten older far faster than the modernizing West.  Just as with so many things, from romance to jobs to drinking, to most everything, the excitement, the newness, the glory has faded, not in itself, but in my eyes.  The West was not so much a place as a repository of possibilities, of excitement and dreams.  As I suspect of many who live there, the West is not a dream at all, but a place to live, to struggle, to win or lose, and to die – just like any other place.

            But then again, no, for it is still wonderfully alive with its big sky and its rocky mountains and colored canyons.  No, really, it was age that had dwarfed its possibilities – as it dwarfs all others as well.  We have been born to expect miracles, and to strive for them in this world until a certain age.  We have been born to expect miracles, because we are that, a miracle, but we lose that sense as our power dwindles.  Perhaps it is the dwindling of power that causes us to lose the miraculous, but it doesn’t make a difference in the end.  In the end, we shrivel and things and places and people and our own selves shrivel with us, until we die, no matter where we are. 

            Perhaps, though, age is not to be measured in years but in our loss of the miraculous, and death is only our realization that the time has come to find another miracle.  Whether this one will last forever or dwindle with time as well, I do not know, but we were built for wonder, are made of wonder, and this we will find.  For me, it was once in the West, and now it is in the setting sun, in the western sky, as it dims to release the mystery of night.                 

                          


Dinosaurs 

 
            Fog.  This morning the east field cupped a fog that glowed like primordial soup from the rising sun that could not be seen, and it filled me with an odd, uncomfortable feeling.  It was thick and brackish, with a density that seemed capable of producing anything, any monster or disease, any alien or poison gas, and I wondered at my apprehension, for it was not always so.  It was not always so that such a mysterious mist gave me dark chills.  Rather, I had once been drawn to it as to no other, obsessed with it, and longed for it as though the clear light of day in fact obscured the greater part of existence that could only be known beneath such miasmic weight, for in such mists the most wonderful of things had been spawned and lived.

            Dinosaurs.  I don’t know when they first entered my life, for they were already walking with me before I had learned to read or understand much of anything else. 

            Perhaps it was because of the Peabody Museum on the Yale campus in New Haven, only a few blocks away from my father’s small business.  With any trip we made to the city, I would always beg, implore, maybe hold my breath, so that I would be taken there to see the dioramas of cave men, or the stuffed grizzly rearing on its hind legs ten feet into the air, or the sarcophagi of ancient Egyptian nobles, or – I always saved this for last – the great skeletal remains of the dinosaurs.  Of these last, I knew them all like friends, or, more to the point, like alternate limbs of my own being, from the impossibly long brontosaurus to the fierce tyrannosaurus with his huge teeth and tiny arms.   There was the stegosaurus, too, and the huge Cambrian tortoise, and the pterodactyl that hung from the ceiling from thin wires, and the littler ones, perhaps those now called velociraptors.  There was the wooly mammoth, too, which stood by the entrance to my monsters, for he was of a different era and I knew it, but he was also born from the mist.  Mostly, though, it was about them, my dinosaurs. 

            But it comes to me now that this couldn’t be, for dinosaurs had entered my life even before there was a family business.  Yes, I remember that I had been given a thick book on creatures from different times, an evolutionary run-down of the epics of living DNA, and it had been populated with wonderful pictures that gave full life to my dinosaurs.  There was one I went back to again and again, so often that I can still see in my mind how the pages there had been curled and torn at the edges and smudged all around by dirty child fingers.  It covered two pages and presented one with a vast swamp surrounded by gigantic fern trees, populated with everything from a pink-blue alyosaur (similar to the tyrannosaurus) to a gray-green plesiosaur, its long neck sticking out from the swamp as it paddled with huge flippers in the green water.  It was wonderful.  It was an entire world that would swallow me up so completely that unknown hours were lost while lying on the floor rug before the book. 

            Yet, it could not be that, either, for the interest most certainly had come before the book.  The book was bought for me, instead, because of my interest, which, in the final analysis, seems to have come from the same mysterious mist as the dinosaurs.  Maybe knowledge of them had come from other children, passed down from one boy to another in the living chain of information that only children know, but the interest, from where?  Was it psychological, the enormous semi-mythical beasts fulfilling a child’s need for power and escape?  This may be, but it did not feel that way.  Instead, I recall the wonder rather than the need or desire.  It, they, the dinosaur world, was magic that was, both real but not, with so much lost to the ages.  For whatever reason, this lost world could not have been better made for an imagination like mine.  

            And it followed me everywhere.  When I was four, the open lot next to our house had been hayed to make way for a new construction.   I piled the hay around in a circle to make a large nest that was to serve to cushion my dinosaur eggs.  I would crouch in the middle doing I –don’t-know-what-else, protecting the imaginary eggs like any decent T-Rex would.  If I was walking, the grass would become fern trees, and I would crush through them like the lizard-giant that I was, or I would fly well overhead on my leathery wings.  I would chalk their pictures on the black-top road out front, apart from the girls and their jumping squares.  I don’t know if I had them eating people or themselves, or what, for in my mind now I sense that this did not matter.  Rather, it was their presence that mattered, however that might manifest. 

            It was probably a good thing that I was not yet in school, for I could imagine the hostile shouts of the teacher as I penciled a stegosaurus instead of numbers or letters, or the concerned discussion of the officials with my parents: “He is detached from reality.  His obsession is unhealthy and we really must get professional help.”  As if that would have helped, but this was not the case.  My dinosaur obsession happily occurred at a pre-literate phase, and although it continued for a few years into grade school, it was in a more subdued and respectable form.

            But not when I was four.  As it was then not a thing to be ashamed of, the grown-ups around me all knew of my obsession, and knew that my favor was easy to buy.  Although I used my own few pennies to get plastic dinosaurs from the museum, it was the grown-ups around me who had the better connections, for I would regularly receive wonderful beasts from Dad or Grampa made from colorful plastic with its name – the real name, not “Barney” or the like – raised in letters underneath, letters that I could somehow read.  There would be pamphlets, too, with pictures, and one time, perhaps for my birthday, a set of cardboard dinosaurs that I had to assemble, which I remember doing, but can’t remember the help from others that must have come alone with it.  I loved them, too, but they did not stand up to the rigors of my play as the plastic figures did.  Perhaps they lasted a few months, tattered and pathetic in the final extremes before, at last, they were sorrowfully laid to rest in the garbage like forgotten pets. 

            But there were always more to come, and I can well imagine now the delight the grown-ups had in one-upping the last offerings, until there came the Christmas that cannot be forgotten.  I had no idea to what heights joy could reach until then, and I still look back to the boy I was with envy, because I have seldom been as pleased since.  

            And what I received - the best part of it, that is – was a one-of-a-kind that could not be bought.  My grandparents lived next door, and if Gramma was not cooking, she was painting or forming clay or putting her work into the kiln, an odd oven we were told never to touch.  She had been a stage actress of some note when young, but after marriage dedicated herself to the material arts.  Like most people who do such work, she had been born to it, given a natural ability that makes clods like me sigh with affectionate envy, and as such, she was not limited to one or two forms of expression.  As far as I knew, she could do anything of that sort, and so had many projects going at any time.  It must have been because of this that I did not notice her greatest project ever, which must have been going on before my very eyes, for I was over her house every day.  It was huge, and I had been so blind, but it was the rare sort of blindness that leads to good things.  On Christmas day, I saw it. 

            Children do not faint from surprise as far as I know, and so I was to remain conscious throughout the unveiling.  Perhaps it had been covered in packing paper, perhaps not, but suddenly, there it was, my dinosaur landscape built expertly from paper mache.   Suddenly, I could see nothing else but the brown hills and the swamp beneath, around which stood plastic palms ready to feed.  One of the hills was painted red and orange, an active volcano, drama in the very landscape that would hold the next part of the present – large, beautifully painted dinosaurs ready to fight, to fly, to swim, to browse.  Real, all real, as I knew it was and they were.  All real and wonderful and frightening to all but me, whose hand controlled them all, whose form rose above it all like some god or cyclops, master of the mist, of the giants, of time itself.

            Of dim time.  Perhaps that is where my dinosaurs came from, then; not from their ancient passage, no, but from my own.   Perhaps in the confusion of an adult world that I could not understand, I understood that I had once understood something far deeper, far greater than the giants who now controlled me.  Perhaps I understood that I had come from the mist and was a creature of it, too, from a time long lost but still imprinted in some part like footprints in ancient rock.   Perhaps, then, those dinosaurs and great forests and swamps and volcanos had once been my ken and my place, one of profusion and creation and wild roars and stomping feet, a land of giants and monsters who stalked among the trees with menace and majesty, hardly less than the sky above and scarcely smaller than the heavens themselves.  Yes, memories, not contrivance, memories that could no longer translate into anything known but the dinosaurs themselves and their distant epic that, somehow in a way that could not be said, was once my own.

            Now, the glowing mist behind my house reminds me of sickness, of claustrophobia, of a closing in, and that is what it is, for I am no longer cousin to eternity, no longer kin to the stirring miasma of creation.  Now it reminds me of death, and it is death, death to all I have learned to subdue, death to a world that I have made small and harmless so that this life might thrive.  But we cut our ancestry too quick; we forget what we are and where we come from too soon, and so no longer glory in the furor of creation and re-creation, of struggle and blood and boiling volcanos.  We are no longer a part of it, and we hold it at bay as a horror, as a nightmare, as a bad feeling that something is not right, not right at all right behind our very house, right before our half-closed eyes. 

            Because we have forgotten.  We have forgotten that the hands that move the beasts are our own hands.  We have become the card-board cut-outs that cannot stand up to the play and are thrown away, just so, like something cheap and temporal.  But nothing is thrown away, nothing that matters; instead, we come and go from the mist.  The little boy remembers, and the old man forgets.  Time is ours, and the mist our memories as they become real, and then not real, in a play that is meant only for small children and a god who has nothing to lose because it is all time and everything.                                              

           

Oakdale

 

            My sister was and still is a born actress and lover of theater.  When we, her three younger brothers, were very small, she would direct us in her original plays, which my parents thought were hilarious.  What we thought about them varied with the intensity of her directing, but by the time she was in college and I had just turned fifteen, she had already come to know just about everyone involved in theater in south-central Connecticut.  Most involved high school or college theaters, but there were a few professional theaters in that area then, and she knew people there, too.  Because of this, along with my older brother John, I was to get my first regular job at the Oakdale Summer Theater in the Round in Wallingford, Connecticut.

            Oh, I had worked at other places, including the Mark Twain House in Hartford, where I was humiliated by a group of black girls while weeding the front lawn as they sang (rather well, I remember) “Grazing in the grass is a gas/ baby can you dig it?,” a pop song that I knew all too well from then on.  But Oakdale – this was to be a full-time job which, for some reason having to do with art, allowed under-aged people to work ‘round the clock, if need be.  And in those first few weeks, those needs were nearly ‘round the clock – for that, we quickly learned, is show business.  Grueling, however, it was not, nothing like the grinding, grimy jobs I would get in future years in the piece-work factories that once made Connecticut hum.  Rather, it was theater work, and however demanding it got, it always had a special something, an excitement that discounted tedium that few other jobs had. 

            I loved it.  For our first two or three weeks, we would arrive at 7:00 AM and keep going past dark, sometimes until midnight, learning to set the stage.  The play to come, my brother reminds me, was The Music Man, probably a typical play regarding sets, but Oakdale was a different kind of theater.  It was, for one thing, open at the sides.  The theater floor was a concrete oval, like a round football stadium that rose on its edges and descended into the earth at its center, and over its top was hung a huge canvas top, a veritable circus tent held in place with ropes and stakes.  But because it was not closed, the outside light came in; even at night, it was never truly dark in the theater, and in daytime, the performances were lit almost entirely with natural light.  As it was also “in the round,” there was no such thing as a curtain or back-stage.  There were no hiding places, in other words, for the stage props, or for the set-up people or for the setting up itself.  It was all done in the open, the magic of the theater threatened by the reality of non-actors bussing things on and off stage in plain view.

            Because of these circumstances, we dressed in black, like ninja warriors, during performances.  We also were trained to be lightning fast, made possible by endless drilling until nothing, absolutely nothing could impede our speed or go wrong. 

            And so it was, and so it is that this is not a story about blowing it on opening night or on any other, because we were so highly trained that we couldn’t get it wrong.  Even a monkey so trained couldn’t get it wrong.  Even a fifteen year old, filled more with dreams than technique, couldn’t get it wrong.  Rather, this is a story about the lives of those involved in theater, or at least how I came to know them, and like the theater work itself, there was nothing, ever, dull about them.  Messed up, immoral, chaotic, yes, but never dull.

            The professional set-up guys; unlike us, they traveled with the acting troop, living out of motels on very limited funds just to be near theater.  In a way, they were an educated version of the Carney, living off the land and the people in much the same “I don’t care, I’m moving on” fashion, but they were something more; they lived for theater.  Many were actor wannabees, and all fancied themselves artists in some way.  Back in 1969, that meant wearing bizarre hippie outfits that they had bought at Army- Navy stores in San Francisco (they had all been there), embroidered with peace signs and blazing suns and mystical stars and so on.  It also meant long hair and beards and drugs.  I remember one guy, who fit the above description to a “T,” talking about his terrifying trip on DMT and how flashbacks would appear suddenly, literally turning his world upside down.  Oh, I remember thinking, don’t do DMT!  And yet we all thrilled to the story.  Madness to this crowd was cool, because it was creative and it made them different.  It made them, personality- wise, just like the fragile actors and actresses that they followed. 

            I never had dreams of becoming an actor, perhaps because of my sister’s demands on us for her plays, but probably because an actor is born, not made, and I just wasn’t born that way.   I was also ignorant of any mind-changing chemicals, including alcohol, but I desperately wanted that situation to change, the faster the better.  And while the working crew never approached me with drugs – I would have loved to have bragged to my friends about smoking pot – one guy did offer to get me drunk, for free.

            He represented another troop that not only followed the actors, but backed them up on stage: the dancers.  A crowd that normally kept apart from us stage hands, one of them approached me one evening in the changing tent where costumes and props and dressing rooms and everything else besides the stage and the play were stored or happened.  We were close to going home, and he asked me, “hey, did you ever get drunk?”  No, I replied, but I would like to.  “No problem.  I tell you what – you come with me to my room at the Yale Motor Inn tonight and I’ll let you have all the gin you can drink.  And afterwards, you don’t have to go home drunk.  You can stay with me for the night.  I have a big double bed that will fit both of us comfortably.”

            I wasn’t sure about how Mom would react to staying overnight in a hotel, but I was excited about getting drunk for free, and sought out my older brother for advice. 

            “He said what?,” smirked John, who at seventeen knew something about the world.  “He’s a queer.  You know, he likes guys for sex.  What, are you stupid? Go to bed with him drunk and you’ll wind up with a sore asshole.   Tell the creep to buzz off.” 

            I was shocked and disappointed and grateful for the advice all at the same time.  Ah, the wisdom of the elders! 

            If (most of) the dancers stayed aloof, then the actual actors were on the farthest of clouds, even though they might be five feet away in a dressing room.  I recall, perhaps incorrectly, that we did two plays, one of them The King and I, with Yule Brenner, one of the old folks that even I knew on sight, and the other, The Music Man, that featured similarly notable stars of the era.  One might think that I might have stood around a dressing room to get an autograph or simply revel in the glow of fame, but I was fifteen and not interested in these ancients.  But Oakdale did not just do plays – it did music.  Liberace came annually for years, but I would not have seen or heard him, not a note, unless someone had paid me for the privilege.  But others came, many others including pop stars.  Big-name pop stars.  One of my favorite all-album songs (more of a riff than a song) of the past year had been “In a Godda da Vida” by Iron Butterfly.  This has become a joke for my generation, because in hindsight it was simply awful, but back then it was the cat’s meow.  It had a mysterious title and lyrics that no one could understand, which made it so much more mystical.  It had a piecing electric guitar solo that seemed to display great skill, and best of all, a drum solo that went on forever.  We considered the drummer a first-rate musical genius, and it was primarily because of the drummer that this one-hit wonder band was able to rise to the top of the heap and stay there for many more months than they deserved. 

            The managers knew this, although I had no idea that acts were packaged. I knew only that the rock bands were the illuminati of our day, prophets of such wisdom that they would never need, or condescend to, handlers.  Because of this, what I saw as I worked on set-up the first night of their show had me as alarmed as the rest of the fans. 

            It was at night and the lights were on in the “round.” I stood at an entrance, full of myself for being able to watch the performance without interruption, for there was only one set-up, and I patiently waited out the mediocre songs that made up the reverse side of their one great-selling album.  Finally, it came: bum- bum – badda ba-bum –Bum Bum Bum!, that distinctive bass opening to “In a Godda da Vida” that put all us young teens in a frenzy.  Oh, it was so cool, and I was there, for free!  My friends would die from envy!  On it came, the electric guitar, and then the sepulcher voice of the lead singer, sounding as if his head had just thrust itself from a mossy crypt.  Then finally, the drummer – oh, the ecstasy!  All alone, he pounded out his magical rhythms of glory and skill for five, then ten, then fifteen minutes!  How could he go on? Was the man possessed?  Was he – we could not discount this – a messenger from the Other Side? 

            On and on he went, all of us more rapt than ever, when suddenly the drumming stopped.  We fans knew it was not supposed to stop, not then, for the song was to end as it had begun, with the bass and the electric guitar and then the zombie singer.  What was going on?    Wait, what was that?  Oh - my – God, the drummer had collapsed!  Amid a clash of symbols, he had fallen to the stage floor, his arms and legs akimbo and twitching.  Was that foam coming from his mouth?  What could we do?  Then we heard the sounds of the ambulance – oh – my – and shortly saw, actually saw, the stretcher bearers come in and carry our mad sorcerer away.  Was he going to die?  Would he ever return to us from his voyage to the beyond?  We did not know, but we did know this – that we had just seen a one-of-a-kind show, something that would go down in history.  And unbelievably, we were there! 

            It was odd, then, that I should be told to come in the next night, for how could they do the show without the drummer?  Perplexed and burning with curiosity, I helped set up, and then saw the entire band assemble to do the same show as before, as though nothing had happened.  Wow!  The miracle of modern medicine!  And when the finale came, the drummer went off on the same wild riff, unable, I thought, to dampen his genius for doctor’s orders.  And then, it happened again – before the proper ending, the drummer collapsed on stage, the siren sounded, and the same guys came to tote him away. 

            It was then, as Marlon Brando said as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, that the truth “hit me like a diamond bullet through the forehead.”  It had all been an act.  The entire band thing was an act.  Everything was staged; all the music that was made, all those groovy album covers that were drawn, all the cool clothes and long hair they wore, everything had only been about fame and money.   No prophets, these; they were, instead, punks like me only a little older, with a little more practice on their instruments.  I knew then that I would have to look for my heroes elsewhere.

            Or so I thought until Led Zeppelin came to the Oakdale.  Led Zeppelin was entirely different from the transitional pop bands of the time.  Even then, we knew that their work was classic in its own way, which it was and is.  About half of their stuff was junk, but the other half literally helped form the consciousness of two generations – for better and for worse.  So when they came, I did stand around the dressing rooms, until finally a break came and I was actually able to not only stand before the door guarding the room that guarded the lead singer, Robert Plant, but to walk in to “get something.”  It was shortly before the performance, and he didn’t notice me at all.  As it was, I never even actually saw him straight on.  All I would see was the reflection of his face in the dressing mirror, as Robert’s hands applied gads of make-up to that skinny countenance beneath the great flop of reddish hair.  Make-up!  What kind of man, I thought, applies make-up?  On top of that, those hands were trembling in nervous anxiety, flopping about like those of the effeminate dancers off-stage.  This guy, I thought, this rock-legend, this god of the Aquarian Age, was a poof! 

            I have never since been able to shake that image of him, but that has not shaken my image of his, of Zep’s, music.   A man and a man’s art are often two different things.  As a kid, I had conflated the two, and would most probably have been disappointed with any hero had I known and seen everything about him.  In later years most of us learn that the man, or woman, dies, but the greatest of their deeds live on.  It is no contradiction.  It is the universe’s great grace, that imperfect men might give us works of perfection that are as immortal as the spirit of the people they come from.

            I was not to see this show, though, because I had been given the job of guarding the back gate.  Set up against a hill covered with trees, dozens of young fans had come to hear the music from afar, and many had hopes of slipping over the fence to see the rock gods up close, for free.   It was a lonely and thankless job for a fifteen year old.  The kids, mostly a few years older than I and, by the simple mathematics of age, far cooler, would look me in the eye through the fence and plead.  “Come on, man, who’s gonna notice?  Be cool and let us in!”  Several offered drugs, joints and tabs of acid, which did not move me, but their pleas did as I squirmed and squeaked out, “no!  I’ll get fired!”  Finally, after most had given up, a few kids told me a sob story about a dead grandmother and, gee, couldn’t you just let us in?  What’s it to you?  To this, with a great twisting in the gut, I said yes. 

            They whooped and began to climb over, but before reaching the top, a grown man jumped out from the bushes yelling, “get outta here, you lousy kids!”  They scrambled instantly, leaving me alone with the man, Bernie Siegel, the one and only owner of Oakdale.  I was mortified.

            “We told you what your job was, kid.  I would fire you on the spot if you had taken any of the bribes, but because you didn’t, I’m giving you a break.  Don’t let anyone in!  Got it?”

            Oh, yes sir, I got it, and my “no’s” were now definite and certain.  Phew!  But it has occurred to me in the following years that this man knew what was going to happen by putting a young kid in charge; that this man, the owner of the whole place, had hid in the bushes just for the joy of blowing the whistle and, perhaps, catching someone, me, taking a bribe.   Ah, Bernie, you’ve GOT to be kidding!  Why? Weren’t the young dancing girls enough for you? Wasn’t rubbing elbows with the famous enough?

            Perhaps he had thought he would be the leading light in my moral upbringing.  It seems more likely, though, that for him it was the sheer theatricality of it all; it seems more likely that he, too, was another actor wannabe who set up stories as we had set up stages, so that he could star as the leading man in his own play. 

            This passed as all things do when one is young, and when Labor Day approached, the season for the Summer Theater in the Round passed as well.  But we would not simply walk away with a few nods to the friends we had made before setting off to school, for this was the Theater.  Instead, on our last day the stage manager announced that a great party would be thrown for us all at the motor inn, and after collecting our checks, my brother and I got a ride to the very same place where the dancer was to get me drunk for the first time.   And so it was to be; I would get drunk there for the first time, but in an entirely different, but no less unusual, atmosphere.

            The suite was crammed when we got there, dense with cigarette and pot smoke and so heated by bodies that entering it was like entering the chambers of a smoldering volcano.  Dante-esque, I might have said to myself if I had been so erudite, for soon we were about to witness a few of the circles of hell – or at least what got you there in the first place.  Booze flowed like water, and the host was as eager for me to drink as I was.  The first glass of whiskey went down like molten puke, but the next several were like grandma’s Kool-Aid.  “Go ahead, have another,” the man would laugh, and I would politely say, “don’t mind if I do.”  Oddly, I never felt drunk at all, even after several glasses.  Instead, I seemed to merge with the party, to become one with these older people of great charm and experience.  As far as I was concerned, I had become grown-up, with the only annoyance being that I kept dropping my glass, which not only did not upset the host, but made him laugh uproariously and fill it up again.  The music played, the necking and petting started, and all was so great, so adult, so me!  Some women touched me, kindly I had thought, but I had no other interest besides the party, the atmosphere, and the joy of simple companionship.

            With the whole world in a jumble, some stood and loudly recited lines from Shakespeare or Gilbert and Sullivan or whomever, while others danced, and others mysteriously disappeared into the bedrooms.  It all seemed so normal that I did not even blink when the greatest act of all stole the scene. 

            “Tammy Tassels, Tammy Tassels!” the men shouted, while a thirty-ish woman stood up proudly before an audience that quickly settled on the beds or chairs.  A rowdy tune was made to play, and there, before us all, Tammy magically made her shirt disappear, quickly replaced by two tiny pasties that covered her nipples and trailed long streams of tinsel.  Around she made that tinsel dance, going one way with the sway of her heavy breasts, then another, then in opposing directions that, I had to admit, must have required a great talent.  The men roared, the woman cheered, and at this point, all seemed to roll into one great warm bath of comradery. 

            From there I cannot recall much that happened.  Brother John must have made a phone call at some time, however, because in the midst of all that glory, my mother suddenly was standing in the door.  The crowd laughed, someone yelling out, “farewell, sweet prince!,” while my mother fumed silently until we were seated in the car.  Life seemed so good that it shocked me when the dam broke and sharp words of disapproval were hurled at my brother: “How could you let your brother drink like that?  What type of people are they to let this happen?”  Sitting in the back seat as if invisible, I remained confused.  I didn’t feel anything but fantastic – where, mother, was the love?  Everything had been done in great fun.  Why, I was even my same old self, wasn’t I?  What’s up with you old people anyway?  I believe I remember going to bed still wondering what all the yelling was about.

            The next morning I found out. Spewing liquid from head and tail, I would beg God to kill me – oh yes, please kill me!  The misery was the worst I could recall, even worse than the ‘flu, and it went on all day.  My mother never mentioned the party, never yelled at me for my indiscretion because she knew she didn’t have to.  Whisky took care of that, and although I would drink a great deal in later years, it almost never involved hard liquor, and when it did, I always deeply regretted it.  We were not meant for each other, as the Devil in one of his circles of Hell was kind enough to let me know, early on.  In that was a far greater lesson than old Bernie could ever teach me. 

            Still, Oakdale was not about lessons, no, but it did have something to teach.  Oakdale was about theater and theater people, about an entirely different world from what is commonly known.  It is a world that draws in the rascals, the depressed, the manic, the foolish and the empathic, a world that leads to nowhere else but humanity.  However it might seem, this is no small thing.  Theater really isn’t about money or about fame, or even about venal promiscuity or ribaldry.  It is, instead, about the human temperament lived to its fullest, from the most foolish to the most noble.  It is about the clashing of swords, about a thousand deaths and glorious victory, about lives ruined by affairs and drink, about excessive love and murderous hate.  It is about the lives we would live if we had no fetters, the lives we would lead if we let ourselves move with the tides and tempests, if we allowed ourselves to abide by the earth as it means to live in us.  It is about raw honesty in its cunning, about redemptive grace in its debauchery, about the joy of life lived in terror on the razor’s edge. 

            It is, then, about the reasons we need to keep on living, about the full texture and color that calls to our souls, a call we are afraid to answer, and for good reason.  But the theater and its people are so made as to gather it all up, all the messiness and wonder of our natures, and fling it back at us like so many loaves and fishes while they thrive or perish by the seasons of their passions and the whims of our contempt or applause.   Theater is the cathedral of the natural man, and its people the vagabond parishioners.   They are damned and saved, the masks of gods and demons, every one of them.  Pity them, certainly, but pity more the world without them.                     

             

                                                   



The Checker King

 
            It’s not overly abstract to say that in some ways, we create our own reality.  Oh, I don’t mean that we can find gold at the end of a rainbow if we really believe, but that our minds construct a personal map for us, both geographically and emotionally, which may or may not be shared with others.  My mother, for instance, gave us stories of her neighborhood for years and years, so much so that I held the picture she made of her life and times as if it were an objective fact.  Towards the end of her life, she had me drive her around that sea-side neighborhood, which she claimed had changed very little, and I was astonished: the vast world of wonder that she had painted for us was, for me, only a small neighborhood of shoddy housing on a small beach next to a saline swamp consisting, at best, of one or maybe two hundred acres.  That had been the extent of her daily life.  It did not seem marvelous or dark or anything else but mundane, small and insignificant.

            Since then, I have had to re-evaluate the picture of my own childhood world.  It was bigger than hers by several times, but still, this world, too, probably would seem like nothing to the experienced traveler.  Yes, it had fields and hills and cliffs and swamps, but nothing that would cause the United Nations to declare it a world treasure. 

            Oh, far from it.  We are speaking here not only of the physical outlay, but of the personalities and experiences that truly colored the map.  And just as I could never match the fullness of my mother’s experiential map with its geography, so others might not understand the attitudes that for us made my childhood home what it was, and created from a mundane geography something close to a grandiose mythology.

            Two examples of divergent world views make this clear – and possibly politically upsetting.  One involved the legend of the Checker King, and the other of Warren the Queer.

            I can guess that I might be in trouble all ready, for the word “queer” has been so appropriated by the homosexual community, however that might be, that only those of it are allowed to use the word.  But this piece is done in the interest of how things were for a great many children of my time and town, and how at odds it was with the way we view things now.  That former view, as with many views of children, might be totally wrong or stupid or offensive, but here I offer it as a tiny piece of history that many in my town, I can assure the reader, could corroborate. 

            Warren the Queer: he was known to us children as a pederast who would cruise the school yards before and after school in his big black car, stopping now and then to offer a ride and a treat to some small group of boys.  The police must have known about him, because they were often right behind his car, and I can imagine now that they knew they could do nothing until he did something, which they were not going to allow.  And so he cruised and carried on his fantasy as frustrated, I imagine, as any bull in a barnyard who had been summarily neutered.  As far as I know, he never succeeded in his seduction, which is a good thing, but what is most interesting is the reaction of us boys.

            I had heard of him, and then first saw him (or really, his big black car), while in junior high.  There, the older boys would bring up the subject now and then, just as we did when we became the elders.  In this manner, the story of Warren the Queer became legend, as the portrayal of him and the required big-boy reaction to him became standardized.  While most of us did not know exactly what he wanted from us, we knew that it was disgusting, but in such a manner that it inspired not dread, but ridicule in the finest of adolescent tradition.  “Ha-ha, did you see Warren the Queer go by today?  What a jerk!” one of the big boys would say, and we would sneer along with the instigator and dismiss the man as a fumbling, effeminate nothing.  There was no fear of Warren the Queer.  Instead, he made even the meekest of us feel proud of ourselves, for in an instant we were longer pathetic lumps of sub-humanity.  We might have pimples, been caught red-faced with unwanted erections in class, or had our faces ground into the dirt by a local bully, but by God we were not Warren the Queer. 

            I suppose in a way you might say we loved him.  He was less a man than any of us could ever imagine being, and for that we were grateful.  When the older guys got to sneering about him, we could join in and feel – grown up!  Brave!  Manly!  Even – if just for the moment - normal!  Most of us would not know the facts of his desires, if what was said about him were true, until years later when our minds were ready for the uglier aspects of the human world.  In those later years, a rich guy who lived on the other side of the hill from us in an impressive house was arrested by Vermont police for soliciting sex from a child near his summer home.  It was found after the arrest that he had made several other such entreaties.  He did not fit the prototype of Warren the Queer that we sneering boys had made, and I think his exposure at that time, this of a competent, well respected family man, would have frightened us.  We would have suddenly felt very vulnerable in this world.  But never with that wimp, Warren the Queer.

            Then there was the Checker King.  He was housed in an old folk’s home that had been surprisingly – to me – build on the edge of a rough neighborhood towards the center of town.  The inhabitants were working poor, and many of my school friends came from there.  I would seldom visit them, however because all I would do – would be forced to do – was fight with every cock-of-the-roost on every block. The fights were fair, never causing more than a bloody nose or a split lip, but for me the experience was unpleasant and ultimately boring.  And while most of the boys grew up to be honest working men, and some respected college-educated professionals, not a small number ended up in the Big House, including one who had been a fairly close friend. 

            And so I had questioned the wisdom of those in power to construct an apparently pleasant and expensive retirement home on the edge of this human jungle.   It was not long after that the tale of the Checker King emerged from the ‘hood.

            I never got to see the Checker King, as by this time I was in high school and beyond such things, but my little brother had, as had all his friends from the area.  He was a wizened old man with a chalky voice who would stand hunched-over by the road in front of the convalescent home and invite boys to the back yard to play checkers, saying, as legend has it, “Hello, little boy.  You wanna play checkers?”  Who had been the first to do so is not known by me, but after the first, the game (NOT the game of checkers) was on.  The older junior-high boys would invite the younger boys to take a bike ride in that vicinity, and if the Checker King was out, they would coax them to go along with him.  “Ah, he’s just a crazy old man.  You might get some money or candy if you play along.  What’s a’matter?  Ya chicken?”  And so the ten and eleven and twelve year olds – those of my brother’s age when I heard of it – would go to the back of the Home where there were tables and chairs for the old ones and a small patch of woods. There, he would sometimes get one of the boys to go check something out in the trees, where he would then lift the boy up if he could and try with his mouth to get past the pants for his version of a good time.  Sometimes if the kid was small enough, he would succeed, as was the case with my brother’s pal, Joey. 

            On that occasion, Joey had screamed bloody murder, and that was a known fact, for all the other boys had come at the sound. Then – they had laughed.  To them, it was the funniest thing since the Three Stooges.  Everyone with any link to the boys in the ‘hood heard about it.  And we laughed, too.  For years after, it was not unusual to have someone portray the Checker King and run his creeping hands over someone, saying, “Hey, little boy, you wanna play checkers?”  In fact, now and then - I am almost ashamed to admit - it still happens when I am with friends from home.  And given the way the whole thing played out, Joey did not become a pariah for his unwilling part, but a key participant in the joke.  There was, as far as I know, no loser in the game.

            How could that be?  It is probable that the old man had dementia and was not responsible for his behavior, but still – shouldn’t the boys have been traumatized?  Shouldn’t the older ones responsible have been ashamed, and the others have called the police? 

            Yes, certainly, and that is how I would expect it to play out in most towns today.  But we have been talking of a different social geography here, one that was smack in the middle of every-day America, but one that could not exist now, at least in the smaller towns and cities.  I do not know of the inner life of girls back then, but life for boys, and probably for men, was very different from what has long been portrayed by mainstream America.  The movie Stand by Me comes far closer to it than the goofy sitcom, Leave it to Beaver.

             But just as both of these fictional pieces are only fiction, so were our attitudes then.  We had reduced the truly scary and sick to little side skits, to incompetent pederasts and fumbling old men.  For all our underground bravery, we were still only tilting at windmills, and in so doing, denying that there really was evil around us, evil that we could not laugh off.  We were making a map of our lives, a living geography, where we would endure and thrive in a world that our parents tried to hide from us.  We thought we knew better.  But of the real evil behind the sham, we knew nothing.

            My wife watches a show about serial killers who almost invariably have twisted sexual desires.  One might conclude that they did not want these twisted desires at some point in their lives, but still, they are beyond what society can tolerate and these men – they are almost always men – must be put away for our own good.  How does such evil come to pass?  It has always existed, both here and there and in this time and that.  It is not merely “civilization and its discontent,” as Freud had put it, but a natural phenomenon, as natural as a thunder storm or an earthquake.  Perhaps it is the more realistic nature (and that should be put in quotations) of TV shows now, that parents hover over their children, should a ‘Warren the Queer’ become ‘Vlad the Impaler.’   We adults are terrified for our children, less they end up as faces on a Missing Children episode.  Yet we, too, miss the mark.  For all our worries, the chances are far greater that they will die while we drive them to soccer practice.  

            It is as if we all, from grade school on up, sink rods in the soil of our imaginary landscape from time to time to check the core samples for proof of our own reality.  But we always see more from our imagination than from hard objectivity, for we are born of the earth and sense its endless depth and infinite meaning with alarm.  We check our samples but quickly conjure dragons and then arm ourselves against them, far more ready to do battle with a myth than with what we know we can never know.  In the depths lurk something that sends up evil, pain and death, and we stand like knights with swords raised high, believing we can win when we know that we cannot. 

            Yet the sun shines on the just and the unjust alike.  Grass grows and soft winds blow over glittering waters, and life is good, too.  St. George kills the dragon, the Checker King is just a crazy old man, and a sharp eye will always protect our children.  Things are as they should be, even as the earth turns and everything we once believed is proven false, again and again.    

                                                                    

  

Tequila Sunrise

 

            At the wake for my mother, I met up with an old friend, Bill, who I hadn’t seen in a decade.  His appearance reminded me of an office joke that was passed around from copy machine to copy machine back when I worked at the steel mill in the 1970’s.  It was made up as a “wanted” poster for a cat that went like this: “Looking for pet cat, one eye out, leg missing, torn ear, broken teeth, castrated.  Goes by the name of Lucky.”  Bill had all four of his ‘legs,’ but was missing an eye and had long made unwanted mention of his vasectomy.  He also was on permanent disability, and so, as unemployed, had let his scraggly red-turned- white hair and beard do whatever they wanted, run wild like some tom-cat on the loose.  He had, in fact, the look of an old biker, and it was this that brought up a summer long ago, when I worked at the steel mill and had just bought my first new motorcycle.     

            It was in 1977, a fact I remember only because it followed on the American bicentennial, which I spent in a sordid area of Philadelphia, too drunk to care about the fireworks that were exploding over the Delaware River on the south side of town.  But that is almost beside the point.  Since then, I had put a year into an office job at a prosperous re-roll mill and was now reaping the rewards of my hard labor.  I had an apartment, which I shared, but that was almost like a place of my own.  I also had worked long enough to get a few weeks off, and enough to sock away the money for a new motorcycle, a 500 CC yellow-tanked Suzuki, which I paid for, cash on the barrel head.  It was still getting its break-in miles when I took those two weeks off and, with a few hundred extra bucks, headed up north for Canada, where I had never been.

            I was not new to bikes, my last being a used 350 Yamaha, and so I knew all about vibration fatigue, how the trembling of the bike would make your legs and arms go numb up to the knee and elbow, and about prolonged exposure issues: how the wind would freeze you at 60 degrees or even 70 F, and how on warmer days the moister would be sucked from your body at a debilitating rate.  So I went as prepared as a twenty-two-year-old hot-shot could be: with a bag of extra clothes packed in a saddlebag, including a few changes of underwear and a heavy jacket, a toothbrush and a bottle of water.  I wore a scuffed pair of cowboy boots for protection (and to look cool) a pair of prescription eye-glasses and a pair of jeans, and with that, was ready to take on the Canadian wilderness, like some latter-day trapper in “Olde” Quebec.  There I found that the people could be both friendly or oddly hostile, that they spoke French whether they knew English or not, and that the customs were often risqué enough that at times it seemed they needed another batch of Jesuits to come and save their heathen souls. 

            Of the last, I encountered the first moral scandal just a half hour or so after crossing the Vermont-Quebec border.   It happened, admittedly, from my own decision, which for me had been a mandate.  I had been six hours in the saddle, the heated wind and vibrations having taken their toll, when I spotted a one-story wooden building squatting alone beside the highway amidst a vast acreage of plowed field.  Before it was a marquis sign with letters slightly eschew that promised, in excited short-hand, the great pleasure I would find within from the “totally nude exotic dancers!”  Oh, Canada!  At that time in America, there were no states that allowed total nudity, those generous dancing ladies having to dress in an exactly defined cover of pasties and G-strings, so this was to be the first treasure of my foreign travels.   I parked the bike and walked stiffly into the quaintly-dilapidated building.   

            Inside was as dilapidated as out, a large single room flooded with light and dust, small tables scattered throughout before an equally small dancing platform about two feet high where the “exotic dancers” would do their erotic thing.  I was one of four customers, and was immediately approached by the proprietor for my order, an exotic, green-tinted bottle of Labatt’s.  Moments later, a totally nude girl appeared from behind a dirty cloth drapery and mounted the platform.  I took a drink of the Labatt’s and waited for the raw shock of her presence to settle into pleasing arousal.  From a quick look around, the truck drivers who sat with their single bottles of beer were already aroused, their eyes glinting hard as obsidian as they focused on her, on only her.  There was no chatter or laughing, just an out-pouring of intense, reptilian lust.  I took another long swig as some pop-hit played fuzzily through the overloaded speakers, still waiting for the pang of intense desire that had hypnotized my fellow voyeurs. 

            The wait lasted only as long as the beer.  Yes, I eyed her private areas with a singular intensity, but the shock was never to be fully displaced by the lust.  Her “dancing” on the podium-stage was lethargic and pointless, her expression numbly cynical.  She was far, far from feeling “hot” and obviously held nothing but disdain for all the drooling suckers in the room.  She had the passion of a five dollar hooker working on her 20th guy of the night, a visual plumber unclogging the dirty pipes of men’s pathetic frustrations.  I felt dirtier and cheaper with every glance at her slightly wobbling body and sardonically-curved lips. 

            With a quick gulp to finish the beer, I was out into the sunshine and fresh air, glad to be free.  This was to be part of a great story of adventure to tell my friends, yet it had not worked out as it was supposed to.  We were not supposed to care, only to take what was given (or bought), to be summarized later in the loud and braying voice of youthful male arrogance.  Yet it was the great blue sky and the highway north that held my unwavering interest, not the lowly-paid nude dancer with a cynical smirk.  Who would figure?  Ah, c’est la vie! 

            Montreal: too big for me to comprehend, too expensive to stay, I parked the bike and walked its downtown in wonder and amazement.  It was – so European!  I had been to England in 1972, and much of it seemed like a cleaner London, except – continental, like posters I had seen of French cities.  Of primary importance, I had to get the first oil change on the bike, and was surprised to find that I had great difficulty in understanding directions to a bike shop, for half the people there spoke French and only French.  Finally, I was directed to a large, grease-stained garage just east of the city along the mighty St. Lawrence River.  There, a friendly mechanic about my age took care of business while trying to speak to me in his very simple English: “Yes, I like America.  Go to moon, no?,” this said more with his hands than his mouth, but I appreciated it.  Friendly and foreign, just what I had hoped for.  Once finished, I hit the highway again, heading towards Quebec City, where on-route I hopped to find a place I could afford.

            It came, a few hours later after the sun had set and the twilight was fading.  A very cold wind had come off the river, and I was suffering from that and the drain of the 65 mph speed limit in Canada that seemed frighteningly fast, the US now wedded to the “double nickel” maximum in an attempt to save gas and defang OPEC.  With trembling hands I leaned the bike on its kickstand and stood before a chateau of sorts, a large, Tudor style house of wood beams and plaster that stood alone near the banks of the river, which now gleamed orange in the star-lit cusp of night.  Immediately after the entrance was a desk, behind which stood a pretty, thirty-ish year-old woman who asked for something in French. 

            “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French.” 

            “Then you do not stay,” she said in broken English. 

            “But I’m freezing.  I just want to stay the night.”

            On she went in French, even angrier in tone, until a middle-aged man approached from my side of the desk.  He spoke to her in a soothing voice, and after a few moments, the woman held out her hand, apparently for my driver’s license.  Taking this information, she then held out her hand unmistakably for the required sum.  Meanwhile the man continued to talk, now in a suggestive manner.  “Something something, oui?  Something something else, no?  I could only guess, but as I found my way upstairs to a very nice, even ornate, room, I began to fantasize.  Ah, yes – he was telling her, “why don’t you sleep with this young man, yes?  He is lonely and would be good company for you, no?”  Ridiculous in hindsight, I know, but I began to believe it myself, and waited in bed for the furtive knock at the door.  And waited.  Perhaps it was that sulking nude woman earlier in the day who had ignited the lust, the need, but in whose hostility satisfaction could not be found.  Perhaps I believed this other woman’s mollified anger was to be my consolation, my reward for seeking a higher passion.  But, no, it was not to be.  My reward, such as it was, was only a nice bed away from the cold, rented to me grudgingly by another grudging French Canadian woman.  What was an “Anglo” to do?

            I was summarily spat out the next morning by the woman at the desk, a trace of desire and hope still clinging in my dream-hazed head, before I was on the road towards my most prized destination, Quebec City.   It was not a disappointment.  A small city dressed in French colonial buildings and cobblestones, it sits on the ramparts of a great cliff that overlooks the St Lawrence.  Two hundred years earlier, American revolutionaries had tried to take this city from the English, made a part of the crown after the French and Indian Wars only a decade earlier.  The Americans soon discovered what many other invaders had: that scaling the cliffs of Quebec for a hostile take-over was not an easy thing. 

            But now, for a bike or a car, it was the easiest thing in the world, and the twisting ride up was exhilarating, as was the old city.  I would walk around a bit, look off into the river and the big Island in its midst, get an odd brunch in another dusty, sunlit building that had no nudes and few patrons, and then head out, again for more sights and cheaper lodgings. 

            That night I slept on the ground at a campsite somewhere along the Quebec-New Brunswick boarder, with a newly-purchased six pack and a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold.  The bottle was never opened, but the six-pack was finished, and all went well until morning, when the dew had seeped through the cloth sleeping bag that I had spread on the ground.  Cold and hungry, I set off south for Fredericton at the New Brunswick – Maine border.  There had only been a few young families at the campground – no single young males to drink with, no pretty young women to hope for.  Life on a bike, I was finding, was largely an internal venture, filled with rushing wind and passing landscapes and thoughts, thoughts that became less imaginary and more singular and directed and gray as the hours wore on.

            Pine – old pine, new pine, scrub pine, all was pine after I left the St Lawrence basin to pass through the interior.  It was a relief to come upon Fredericton, even though that town, too, only dealt with pine – pine- filled boxcars, paper plants, saw mills, the log-filled river, the dam that ran the paper mill, and the muddy roads that catered to the logging trucks.   Still, it had people, and a Dunkin’ Donuts.  Never were there fresher donuts or better brew, and the people spoke English and didn’t care about my “papers” or my Anglo status.  Still, it was with surprising relief that I entered Maine, and, with my new-found love of 65 MPH (really, 100 KPH, a little less, but 65 MPH it was for me) I continued to cover the miles, eschewing the scenic route for truck-plagued I-95.  With new-found gusto, I was determined to make Connecticut before sleep demanded another expense at a motel or another night soaked with dew.   

            I did, sometime past ten in the warm embrace of a July night, and there, filled with high spirits, drove directly from the highway to the Brass Rail, then the epicenter of the young adult’s happier hours in my home town.  That was not why I went there, however, although the thought of cold beer was calling irresistibly.  Rather, it was because Bill, the youthful twenty-two year old Bill, with only one eye but with red-red hair, was the bartender.  He would fill my mug to the top, no foam, and listen to my stories, what little they were.  He did just that until closing, and then, just before the doors were locked, I retrieved the bottle of Jose Cuervo from my saddlebags.  With only the dim lights on, the room still smoke-filled from the crowed, we did shots with lemon and salt, and then shots with nothing at all, as unadorned as the girl in Quebec, but with a cleaner bight that led to a  genuine smile.

            It was surprising how quickly the time passed, but as the bottle slipped below the half-way mark, we noted that it was already past 3:00 AM.  One would think that bed would call after those long hours of driving and then drinking, but no.  We had a belief back then that tequila was different from all other liquor in that, as much as it got you drunk, it also perked you up, like today’s blend of Red Bull and vodka.  It was probably only a young-man’s tale, but we believed it, and after the look at the clock, I proposed to Bill a grand ride on the new motorcycle.  He agreed without hesitation, and in minutes we were speeding east out of town, and soon were flying on I -91, a flat ribbon of concrete that rolled out like a limitless parking lot, completely devoid of traffic. 

            “Let’s see what this baby can do!” I yelled through the breeze to Bill, and with what I took for acquiescence, we ramped up a small rise, and then down, hitting the top-end of 105 MPH.   I howled into the compressed air that had become a force of its own, and then spotted the exit for highway 68 to Durham.  I knew immediately what I would do.  Bill, I was sure, would be delighted.

            Without saying a word, I followed the highway east as it dwindled in stature to a small, broken country road, crossed the railroad tracks that carried gravel to New Haven for the looming quarry, and then turned right onto the quarry road itself.  I had only walked this road once, from the top of the cliffs down, because in day-time it was busy with trucks and cranes, and trespass was prohibited, for good reason: every few days, they would crack the face of the cliff with a heavy charge of dynamite.  I had a friend in grade school whose dad was given this job, and he told me that his father had lost his hair after a few months from handling the TNT.  We thought at the time that this was exceptionally cool. 

            But now it was only 4:30 AM and not a soul, or so it seemed, was within sight.  The quarry road was swept with erosion, and at one point took a sharp curve upwards, towards the top of the cliff.  I had to gun it past the dump trucks that sat brooding on their huge, pitted tires, to make it over the ruts and up the steepening incline.  At last, the road simply ended, and I fish-tailed around rocks and holes the last hundred yards to the top following what was left of the old hiking trail.  Finally there, I stopped a yard short of the three-hundred-foot sheer face of brittle-gray trap-rock, and shut off the engine.  Bill and I got off unsteadily and shared a few more slugs of tequila.   The cliff spoke through its exposed nerves of ancient times, of thoughts different from Man’s, and the metal spires of the cranes below poked upwards from the pit like blackened saplings.  The sun had not yet risen, but mid-summer’s dawn had already lightened the sky, lounging in the morning mist with a jovial presence.  Beautiful!

            “This is the life, huh, Bill?”

            “Absolutely,” he replied before holding out his hand for the last or second-to-last shot.

            I suppose I dropped Bill off at his car and went back to the apartment after that, but can’t recall.  But I could recall everything the next day, each glowing moment and every rushing minute, a glorious end to a not-so-glorious vacation.

           

            And so I could remember the best parts still when I talked to Bill of it at my mother’s wake.  As we sipped at our warming cans of beer, I recounted briefly the trip to Quebec, and then spoke with detail of the bar, the tequila, the 105 MPH race, and the pause at the top of the gravel quarry.   Wasn’t that crazy?  Remember?

            “No, I don’t, not a thing.  But I believe you.”  He smoothed his wiry beard with his hand, then patted his paunch.  “Must ‘a been one hell of a night!”

            “You don’t remember?  Ah, I suppose it was the tequila.”  I gave him an out with that, but I still found it incredulous. Didn’t remember that?  How could he forget?

            In the months since then, I have settled on an understanding of this memory lapse.  Bill had not just returned from a lonely and disappointing trip, one that was supposed to make the summer, to make the bleak hours and weeks and months in the factory worthwhile.  He had not just gotten back from a trip that was to emulate Jack Kerouac, but instead had been the emotional equivalent of a young boy abandoned at a boarding school.  Interesting, yes, but cold and flat and often hostile, too: this had been nothing like home.  It was not that I was a neophyte to travel; I had hitched and flown and hiked many miles before that trip, and would cover many more after.  But over the decades that separate that time and this, I have gotten used to the loneliness of the road. I have learned in those years to burrow within and satisfy myself, but then I was young.  Then, I was still convinced that the world was all about and for me, and I had not yet learned that the rest of the world, outside of home, cared absolutely nothing for me. 

            Even now, I find it hard to believe that the world is so large and that we are so small; that our place and our happiness in it are almost like nothing at all.  It has taken nearly half a century to understand, but now I see that the lives that we know have been cupped out by those who care for us, cupped out with hands filled with intent, with a prideful knowing, from nothing but thin air.  It seems, just like the wind that hits when one drives at 105MPH on a motorcycle, that this air is a force all of its own, for all the power it has; but really, it is only what we do with it that gives it strength.  Without intent, it just blows where it may, to leave us behind without a trace.  But passed even lightly with warm hands, it stirs to make us the center of all there is.  From there, it is passed on to others, to family and friends, to pause only when those hands are closed in memorial prayer, as if to clasp one more time the great invisible power that was given us by those who first filled their hands with our tiny, wrinkled forms.         

                              

   


A Little Blister

 

            In the song, “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits, an imagined blue collar worker laughs at the rock star who gets his “money for nothing and his chicks for free,” having suffered no more than a “blister on his little finger” for it.  “I should have learned to play the guitar!  I should have learned to play the drums!,” he chuckles.   Of course, the lyric writer, Mark Knopfler, meant this as a spoof.  We are to understand that it takes a lot of work to make it in the big time.  A little blister, you wish!

            I don’t know about everyone else, but for me, the satire is not convincing.  Playing guitar is what the musician wants to do.  If he has to repeat a stanza over and over again to get it just right, well, that’s the life and it’s way better than installing microwave ovens, carrying them upstairs and ruining your knees as you squat on the floor with a drill or screwdriver.  And the pay – don’t forget the pay!  We understand that it’s a long way to the top, but once there, are you kidding?  These guys with bongos and guitars think they deserve the glitter and the worship?  Aww, come on! 

            Ah, yes, welcome to the world of the creative and the abstract.  As a writer, I know the blue collar attitude well and have little to say in my defense when someone says, “when ya gonna get a real job, Fred?,” which I get at just about every neighborhood party or pot luck in town.  The mark of a real job is, after all, that it not only wears you out, but that you hate it – hate it enough to feel proud of your sacrifice to the gods of commerce.  If you aren’t suffering, it ain’t a job, and grabbing your hair when you can’t think of the right phrase, or plucking at chords that just won’t come out right, won’t qualify.  Where are the horn-hard callouses?  Where, as Pol Pot would often demand, is the dirt under the fingernails?   It does help if you make a lot of money at your art, as if that made the production of it any easier, but we still come off as effete.   And, let’s face it, in many ways we are.  Does having a hit pop tune entitle one to a mansion?  Does having a thriller on the New York Times bestseller list warrant a vacation home in Hawaii?  Or even, as in my case, should typing a few hours on the computer grant me the righteous freedom to wake up late in the morning when I feel like it, even in my ever-so-humble home? 

            No, I can’t convince anyone that “the arts” is a real job, not even myself, but I believe we writers have a better case for respectability than those other guys with blisters – or paint- on their pinkies.  As one author said, to paraphrase, “writing is the only art where there is no pleasure in the doing, only in the done.” This is largely true.  Writing is often painful, a task that we take exactly as a task, not a creative adventure.  No picture materializes before one, no tune lays claim to the appreciative ear.  Instead, all we have are dead black and white symbols that we hope, through some magic of alchemy, will create pictures and music in the mind of the reader.  And we are forever unsure if we have ever done it right. 

            This suffering of the writer came home to me the other night while talking to my son about setting a study schedule at college.  “It’s like sports practice,” I told him; “You’ve got to do it on schedule and you often hate it, but you feel good when it’s done.”

            “Yeah, well,” he said dryly, “you go to practice because if you don’t, they’ll think you’re a pussy.  School work you just hate, all by yourself.”

            And that’s the point.  Young children will naturally draw pictures and love to sing.  To get either right requires long practice, but behind it is a natural desire.  The same can be true for car mechanics, who often start by spending their free time in the garage, or for builders who start with tree forts or little dams and work themselves up.  Few children there are who eagerly pick up a book and beg to learn the symbols and actually enjoy doing so.  Fewer there are who long to write books themselves, once the process becomes known.  In writing a book, one has to hold an abstract narrative in one’s head and continue for months or even years hoping the glue of words is just right enough to convey the story and the meaning, the pictures and the characters.  It’s hard stuff.  It takes years of study to even begin, and, as my son says, nobody likes school work.

            Reading a book on one of the philosopher greats of antiquity, I came across a dialogue that was said to have taken place between student and teacher.  To paraphrase from memory, it went something like this: “Teacher, study gives me great pain.”  To which the teacher replied, “Yes, that is what it is supposed to do.”  And so it was understood.  Learning was not supposed to be pleasant, but a chore of great self-sacrifice. 

            If the teacher and student had known enough of the world’s societies, they would have understood that book learning is concomitant with civilization, for learning among the un-civilized – that is, those of traditional family-based societies – was not a chore at all.  While I was living with unlettered Venezuelan Indians, the ancient form of learning became known very quickly: daughter and son followed what mother and father did, simply by doing.  With boys, that meant hunting small animals with a blowgun, accompanying Dad on a greater hunt, fishing or fixing their own weapons.  For the most part, they did not have to be told to do so.  They did it with and without the parents, and gloried in it.  It was their play, play that would gradually turn into their “work.”  It would become, at the very least, a mild pleasure for the adult, and often a joy.  And it, this way of life, didn’t take any self-denying sacrifice to learn.

            But in school work, we have largely done away with the natural and the pleasurable.  In a stratified society, we must learn to conquer our desires and impulses and sit, painstakingly, to learn.  Competition demands it.  We must have a grasp of certain fundamentals to make it in this world.  Most never come to like learning these fundamentals, and most are glad to be done with it when the required age is reached.  Even now, with the constant pressure to go to college, a majority never complete a degree.  Instead, they find other work that does not demand longer study; instead, they get jobs that give them calloused hands and bad knees, jobs that they come to hate – with pride.  Real work.  Work that they ran to because the study for other kinds of work was more than they could bear. 

            Writing requires exactly that kind of sit-down learning that the people with calloused hands fled from.  To do it well, you’ve got to learn grammar, syntax, rhythm, and extreme, long-term concentration.  You have to sit and read what others have written, for hours and hours a week.  Writing is at the high end of that painful learning curve, as high as most any other profession, and we writers should be looked at with awe.  “Such discipline!  Such skill!  How the heck can they do it?”  The world should break out in applause.  

            Or so it comes to me in another flight of fancy, the type that often afflicts writers.   I can follow the logic of my paragraphs, be amazed by the intelligence and wisdom of the proof, but even I am not convinced.  No, putting a roof on takes a lot more guts and energy than writing a novel.  It’s just that simple.  And besides, there is something in writing that the roofer does not get.  Yes, the man with callouses is proud of his sweat and sacrifice and can point to the actual, useful thing he has created, but he can’t get, by the work itself, the pleasure that many find in the writing.  This pleasure does not come from money.  It does not come from recognition.  Rather, it comes from the writing itself, as incongruous as that sounds, for writing is a dreary business.  But most of us who write know that there is a light in the fog, and it is what pulls us on, social scorn and contempt be damned.  It is the power and glory of ecstasy.

            Ecstasy; it means “getting out of oneself,” and is now associated with drugs and sex more than anything else, but the ancients knew what they were talking about.  Ecstasy was, to them, as much an exploration of an alternative reality as it now is to any Dead Head.  It often, if not always, meant being carried away by the gods, where great meaning beyond the coils of mortal man was nonetheless shown.  It was often feared, and just as often pursued.  And it was most certainly at the foundation of all of our arts, including the telling of myth, history, and tales.  It was not the muse’s fault that the “telling” would one day become “the writing,” precisely where civilization and its discontent entered this particular art.  But the ecstasy remains, behind the pain. 

            Oh, it might take a while to get there.   It might take serial procrastination - eating crackers, making one more cup of tea, strumming a Bee Gee’s song - before even sitting down at the computer.   Then it might take fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour of mechanical, heartless typing before IT comes – the coming that takes away self and a sense of time.  The coming that turns one out of oneself, that delivers a power to write that one does not have, that takes hours out of life that seem like minutes, like a dream; and there you find the words, not perfect yet, but so ordered, so arranged in thought that one knows it came from  somewhere else. 

            And you are astounded.  You have reached ecstasy without drums, DMT, or dancing; you have reached ecstasy by nothing more than sitting before a computer and plodding on, which then somehow, magically, draws on something else – on a smarter you, or something else altogether.  And you declare, “It is Good,” like Jehovah in Genesis, and you sit back, as on the seventh day, to admire, to glow, to bask in the rib that through you has miraculously become a story, a poem, another chapter. 

            The pain of forced concentration, and the reluctance and the procrastination will come again as sure as sunrise, and you will grumble like the roofer with his weekend hangover on Monday morning, but it’s the high, the ecstasy, which carries you on.  The criticism that is spewed over your lifestyle will continue, each solitary walk taken for insight seen as goofing off, every hour on the chair before the glowing screen scorned as if an outing with video games, but once you have hit the high, you will continue.  Every now and then, you will even think of yourself as special, as chosen, before you are hit with a slump that leaves you as dry and useless as a bowery bum, before everyone including the pizza delivery kid proves that he can make more money than you; proves, by that fact, and by the calloused hands or grease on the fingers that he, she, they are working and you are not.  

            And they are right.  We are just junkies, after all, and junkies of all stripes suffer for their high.  The writer junky might need a bit more education and cerebral dedication, but he is working for the high in the end, a high seldom reached by Real work, where joy is measured in weekends apart from work – which one righteously hates.  We are cast-offs, hobos with cleaner cloths, ineffective dreamers, trust-fund babies without the trust.  Working America is right to scoff at us, all and every line of reasoning or excuse in our favor to the contrary. 

            But we’ll take it; and on the off-chance that we strike it rich, we will show our hands to the carpenter and the appliance man and say, “see?  I’ve got callouses too!”  They may be from your new sail boat that you ride with and beneath and above the forces of the gods, the ropes burning your hands as you tack against another gust, but you can show them and pretend.  Because pretending is the thing we do best, in everything but that one thing, that pull into ecstasy that leaves no callouses, that exercises nothing but the soul.  And for a few hours a day or week, that is somehow enough, even as we fall and fail again and again against the world.                           

             



Just the Ticket

            There is a town on the way up north just south of Oshkosh, Rosendale, which is known for only one thing.  It is such an average small Wisconsin town that one would ordinarily whiz through it like any other except for this: its reputation for The Ticket.  Yes, the speeding ticket.   It is known throughout southern Wisconsin for this peril via folk lore passed from word of mouth to everyone who regularly goes to his cabin up north or to the Packer’s games.   As with any other small town, its border comes on quickly, the posted speed dropping from 55 to 30 in an instant, but everyone dutifully follows that command – at least those of us in the know. 

            As it is the last town before the limited access highway to Green Bay, I normally stop at the gas station in the center, the one just before the light, for the bathroom and a cup of coffee, and on the way to the facilities see the range of Wisconsin knick-knacks which always includes cows and cheese and Packers paraphernalia, but here they also have a tee-shirt section with one resounding star among them.  On it is a picture of a police car with its lights on, and below it the phrase, “Rosendale: Just the Ticket.”  You have to laugh, even though getting a ticket is no fun, for the sheer chutzpa of it.  I suppose I’ll continue to laugh at each trip to the bathroom, but as of last week, the humor will be a bit more guarded, for I have now been branded with the letter “S” – speed violation.  And it didn’t happen in Rosendale, but in some other little town where there was no warning whatsoever, no tee-shirts, no cows with Packer’s hats as far as I know, and no word-of-mouth buzz. 

            I think the fateful event happened in Dousman.  My wife and I had taken time off on a beautiful day in August to hike the state forest, and after our several mile effort had decided on a back-road route to the highway just for the hell of it.  We were both in a relaxed mood, and as far as I could care, I would have driven the ten or so miles at a crawl as a tourist, as a man without a destination or a time table.  There, Vicki, see?  There’s a strange barn – still has the old ramp they used for the horses to go into the stables.  And hey! – a field of sheep, two of them black.  They don’t like black sheep because you can’t dye the wool – did you know that?  Oh, and here comes Dousman and – crap, they’ve got construction and a detour around town!  Now what do we do? 

            In a flash, tensions mounted as Vicki quickly began to type in instructions to her GPS.  Is that Hoffman Street?  Which direction are we going?

            Craning my neck around bulldozers and traffic, I looked for the street signs and finally found the one that would take us north to the highway.  Problem solved.  I was going about 35 at this point and saw the police car coming from the opposite direction right about then and was not alarmed.  And yet I knew.  With no idea that I was speeding, with no recollection of a slower speed posting, with housing fading in the rear view mirror, I had no reason to fear anything, but I knew.  It came as no surprise, then, that within seconds we saw the cheerful flash of Christmas lights behind us and I pulled over.  Still, I was mellow.  How about that?  How could I be speeding?

            Moments later we learned that the limit here was 25 (!) and that I was going 14 MPH past that limit, like a teen-aged carouser.  It took all of the 15 minutes we had to sit in the car for me to work up a good fit of anger.  As I fumed, the cop did his cop thing while people passed by with the neck-craning look of antelope who had evaded the lions (this time!).  The ticket was delivered eventually by the too-young cop who could have been a high-school kid as he recited the penalty: $96 bucks and 4 points on the ‘ol license.  He reminded me that 12 points in a year would get my license suspended. By this time I was apoplectic, but before I could demand it, he said, “if you want to go to court, that’s September 26th, 8:00 AM in Oconomowoc.  Too late now to change the ticket.”  And with that, the afternoon was ruined. 

            Why this was so might seem a puzzle, for it was my first ticket in fifteen years in the state and it would probably be my last for another fifteen years. To me, however, it was not so much the ticket as the wrongness of it; to me it was the injustice.  I had not intended to speed and, as said, would have crawled along happily while seeing the sights.  Later I spoke of this to others, and was not very surprised to hear many reply, “Too bad, Fred.  The law’s the law.”  Yes, I replied, but these are our police and our rules.  We do not live in a totalitarian state, and we deserve and demand justice!  This, I said sticking out my jaw, was not justice.

            And then they would roll their eyes.

            Still, I was determined to go to traffic court and kept the ticket stuffed roughly in the side-pocket of the car.  But with each passing week, doubts began to enter.  What others had communicated was probably true, not so much about the law being the law and such, but what was better communicated with the roll of the eyes: you can’t fight city hall.  Get used to it, for Christ’s sake!  Don’t you know any better at your age? 

            I suppose I did, but I could not let it go, and often went to sleep practicing my defense with muted outrage.  Surely a judge would understand that this older gentleman with a clean record could not have meant to speed!  I did not mention this before, but the arresting policeman had also said he stopped me because “too many people were speeding on this road lately.”  Exactly!  They, too, could not see the sign and could not imagine that this side route would have us travel at a paltry 25 MPH! 

            Oh, I had my defense well-practiced.  The only trouble I foresaw was the possibility of nervousness in the delivery, and so I pictured every kind of scenario I could.  This, too, kept me up at night, and as the time drew nearer I began to think that maybe all this fuss and worry wasn’t worth the effort.  It would be an hour’s drive early in the morning for probably nothing at best, and maybe something worse, for I had heard those wiser voices tell me, “You know, once you’re in court, they can do anything they want with that ticket.  Maybe even increase it.  You do know that, don’t you?” 

            Well, maybe I didn’t, but I did then, and as the day approached I almost mailed in the check and the summons with the “guilty” box checked off, but I just couldn’t.  I could not help thinking that I wasn’t guilty in the real sense.  It was a travesty of rules for rule’s sake, not something for public safety.  Surely any magistrate worth his lawyerly salt would certainly see that – or so I argued half-heartedly to myself.  Still, I could barely sleep the night before, and woke up well before the alarm, taught and slightly ill from the lack of sleep.  Too late to back out now, I thought.  It was time to take the measure of the man.  It was time to face the lions. 

            I got lost in Oconomowoc because nothing was labeled in that town, not even the main route through it.  Fortunately I had to make a nerves-induced rest stop at a Duncan Donuts, where I also bought a small coffee and a Boston Cream to show my appreciation.  Thinking I was finally on the right track, it was only as an afterthought that I asked the old guy who had to ask me three times what kind of donut I wanted where the court house was.  “You just passed it,” he said.  “It’s the big tower with the clock in it, right there.”  Du-oh! Without that information I would have been late.  This must be a sign!

            So then, finally, was the courthouse, which immediately swallowed me with its musty jaws.  It was not that it was dirty or filled with heroin addicts or gang-bangers.   It’s yellowed floors shown with waxing, and the old bathroom fixtures sparkled and did not stink.  It’s just that it had this – feel - or better said, a portentous lack of feel, like spacing in a musical score.  It was dead, melancholy, mechanical, humorless.   Police went about with routine regularity, one helpful in pointing out the staircase to the traffic court, another in directing me to the “sign in” registry that would be read by the District Attorney before adjudication, but all was poisonously bland.  And if that odd feel-non-feel did not strike home beforehand, it certainly did in the courtroom.  Its old wood walls and magistrate desk were faced by scratched metal chairs for us miscreants, all resonating with nothing, with a soulless space neither black or gray, but sepia, like a faded photo from a lost and distant past. 

            Of all the scenarios I had pictured, I had never pictured this one.  Settling uncomfortably in one of the chairs, I took out the book I was reading, “The Grace in Dying” by Kathleen Singh, and dug in.  I would not let the bureaucracy rob me of soul, and determined to soldier on as if my fate were not being decided by emotionless ants.  As I opened the book, the author proceeded to tell me things that I did not want to hear but knew were true: that our ego reality was a sham, that on death we had to be cornered by this truth and dragged kicking and screaming into the abyss of the unknown.  Terrified and trembling slightly from the morning’s coffee, l put the book down to recall the words of Richard Rohr on the same subject: our world in space-time is governed by limitation and control, something we eagerly choose even if that control makes our lives miserable. 

            Yes, of course, I thought, anything is better than the void, the black depths of the unknown. 

            With such thoughts arising in such a dead place, I wished I had paid the fine and left it at that, but now that I was signed in, there was no possibility of escape.  The long arm of the law held me, and all I could do was wait for its dominating decree.

            And wait we did.  The court was supposed to open at 8:00, and at this point I shared the spacious but hollow room – almost a hall – with only a handful of other unhappy people.  By the time the judge and DA entered, it was twenty minutes after the hour, and the room had nearly filled.  Good Lord, I thought, I could be here all day!  Why had I not just caved in?  Why must I always be the rebel as if I were someone special, as if I would ever really stand up against this or any other empire?   I would have liked to bury my head in the book, but after the officials sat and sorted through a stack of papers, the judge spoke:

            All rise!

            We did, and then, as if we were in church, we were asked to sit again.   It appeared that we were in for a sermon.

            At first he read the rules, and they were scary.  There would be no exception to these rules, and everyone must be conscious of that.  We would have to stand alone at a podium where the dirty deeds would be read, and then we were to enter a plea – guilty, no contest, or not guilty.  In the case of the latter, he said, a court date would be made for a later date, probably in two months.  You could almost hear the groaning.  If that were the case, we must be polite to the secretaries and the DA, who we were assured were used to abuse, but who did not like it, especially the DA.        Assuming that this last statement was a mild joke, we all looked to the DA.  His face did not betray a joke.  His hard, somewhat antagonistic eyes told us that if we were to contest him we would have a real fight on our hands.  We were all beginning to see how the cards were stacked.

            Then, almost fatherly in his approach, the judge admonished us to not look at policemen as people who preyed on unsuspecting speeders or inadvertent breakers of other traffic laws, but rather as people who saved lives, who took people to the hospital, who protected us from the harsher criminal elements.  Theirs was a tough job, and we should all appreciate it. 

            I swear, in the space of silence that ensued, I could almost hear the uniform thought, “What, in small town Wisconsin? These cops never did anything for me but cause trouble,” but of course no one would ever say that, not now.  We knew well now where the power lay.

            As if reading our thoughts, the judge then picked up a stack of legal writs with his left hand.  “You have shown respect for the law by coming to this court.  These forty people,” he lifted the pile up and down to show the significant weight, “have not paid or showed up.  They will each get a warrant for arrest.  They may be driving to La Crosse to visit a friend or to Green Bay for a Packer’s game, but if an officer gets behind them and punches in their license plate number, they will be arrested and sent back to the county jail in a nice state van, free of charge.”  We all understood what he was saying: you cannot escape the law.  We WILL have respect.

            It was then that I understood the process: the eyes of the law are like the eyes of God; we are all expected to sin, but we will be forgiven if we have respect – and fear.  Every person in court knew that everyone else went over the speed limit or did not come to a total stop at a stop sign or went through a yellow light too late at the last second on occasion, but we who were sitting there had been signaled out by fate, like Job.  It was fair because regardless of the circumstances, we had broken the law.   It was not fair because the others had gotten away with it and we had not.  But we were left to understand that we should have no fear – justice would be merciful for those who recognized the power of that law and respected and feared it.  We also understood that it was just a matter of time before everyone else was caught.  Just as everyone would suffer and die, there would be no exceptions.  Only have respect for the power of the inevitable and ye shall be delivered.

            And delivered we were.  The first two defendants were read their crime, each one for minor speeding, and then asked to plea.  One answered “guilty, and the other “no contest,” and each was given a reduced judgment.  Surprisingly, I was third on the docket, and I stood there with equally surprising ease.  “No contest,” I pleaded, and then was given the DA’s bargain: my crime would be reduced to a mere “driving with faulty speedometer” with only two points against my license.  This would leave me with greater room to sin again, and as I breathed a sigh of relief, I took my checkbook out.  This, it was clear, was the other reason for this court.  The reduction in fine was only $2.40, as that was the absolute minimum, so they would get their full measure of cash regardless.  It was almost with another sigh of relief that I recognized the familiarity of it all:  the State was about control AND money, the deck stacked to make you actually happy to pay the fee.  And by golly, it worked.

            It was with a lightened heart that I left that alien courthouse and town, and on the drive back I got to thinking.  Control with fear – wasn’t that what life in the greater sense was all about?  We all know that modern bureaucratic law is a man-made thing.  Sometimes we feel we can scoff at it as such, but the law makes sure we do not with arrest warrants, fines and prison.  While the law itself may seem ridiculous, the consequences are anything but.  Thus we are made, by fear, to respect the law – and it works.  It does not make us love or honor the law and those who serve it, but it makes us respect it.  Just like the God of the Old Testament, the powers that be may want more, but they will settle for fear.

            Still, even religious traditions are far more about ourselves than about God, for God is unchanging but our “selves,” and even the Christian’s own Bible, are not.  As big as we might think we are, we need order in our world, even demand it, for without that follows chaos.  In chaos, what we know no longer holds and we fall into the big, black pit of endless fear.  Better to fear what we understand than to fear what we can never understand.   With that looming infinity outside us, then, we prefer to create our little personal world and surround it with barriers of fear – fear of death, of insanity, of humiliation, of poverty, and so on – barriers that we often know are  false but maintain for our own protection.  Moving out and back in again from there, we create our families and our government just as they create us, each personality and institution hopefully governed by love and respect, but often enough governed simply by fear, which we hold to our bosom for the power this fear has to distract us from the far greater fear of the abyss. 

            Wise men must wink to themselves as they write of such gods as Vishnu or Jehovah riding their chariots or casting their lightning bolts, for they know that they must speak our language, the language of the human condition.  They know that they must speak of order and control amidst the fear of chaos.  They also know that as we eagerly accept their myths at one point, we will just as eagerly reject them at another as absurd.  It is then that all must change, one myth, one story replacing another.  But still the wise men wink, for behind each story they tell is couched the struggle of our lives, the inevitable drama of our very personal approach to the gates to Hell.  These are the gates of our own fear, and once there, we must slay the demon or dragon that presides over these gates before we can walk through victorious and free.  

            It is a vicious fight to the death, but we must all do it.  We would rather settle for a silly speeding ticket and a momenta tee-shirt; we would rather genuflect before the power of a policeman in his cartoonish garb.  We would rather put up with that and more if we could only avoid that confrontation at the gates, if we could only avoid our struggle with the truth that will bring the death of us before we can find new life. 

            So next time a policeman stops you for speeding, even though it seems a great injustice, show not only your respect, but your love.  He is only ‘you’ doing the service you have commanded.   He is only ‘you’ dressed in a fancy outfit, assuring us that man is the measure, if not of all things, then at least of all things that concern you – for now.  

            As for me, they can have my $94.60 and two points.  They can even have my license as long as they maintain my respect, even if this is done through fear.  It is, after all, this fear, this distraction which keeps me from the really big fear.  It is, this law, like the nurse’s finger waving hypnotically before my eyes.  It is something I watch, fascinated, grateful that it keeps away the vision of the doctor coming from behind with a really, really big needle.  He will come anyway, but in the meantime I can watch, numbed, and believe for a moment that everything will always remain just this way forever, because she, too, is in a uniform and she, too, commands my respect.                               

                          

Benson, Illinois

            Sometimes you can’t choose where you are going to live.  As it happened, we wound up in Wisconsin, not exactly the center of the universe if you’re the go-gettum’ type, but for us it also occasioned another problem: our sets of families live in Connecticut and Mississippi, and neither is on the doorstep of the Cheese State.  Connecticut is so far out that we only travel there once a year by air at great expense, but Mississippi – ah, Mississippi.  It takes exactly thirteen hours to get to my wife’s family from here, just short enough to drive in one day by car, and just long enough to make you hate driving in general and through the never-ending flatlands of Illinois in particular.  For some odd reason it always strikes us that it would be easier if Illinois were divided in two, the lower half being the State of Goshen or something, but we will never get to test that theory.  Instead, we will continue to alternate between driving and flying, between saving money and getting the one hundred yard stare, or spending a bundle to be crammed and hustled and hassled on a plane to save, oh, maybe three hours after everything is considered.  How it works is, when one is done, we want the other, and neither is ever satisfactory.

            My wife Vicki’s parents knew this, and often offered a second alternative – to meet somewhere in the middle, rent a cabin or something, and see the sights of a new location.  This worked well until my father-in-law developed emphysema, in which panic about breathing became the final word and long-distance travel became the enemy, for who wants to stop breathing on a highway between Chattanooga and Nashville? So it happened that, regrettably, we now had to drive the whole distance ourselves, and that is why we set out to do exactly that, smack in the middle of summer on the day before the July Fourth long weekend, no less.  

            This trip was beset with a problem from the start: our ten- year- old Jeep began to leak coolant the day before our departure on one of the hottest weekends of the year, and I had to pressure my long-term mechanic to fix it immediately so we could leave the next morning, using every bit of loyal customer leverage I had.  By late afternoon that very day we were told that we were as good as new, and the following morning we set off before breakfast, planning to combine the first rest stop with the culinary excellence of McSaussage wrapped with McWaffels saturated in a type of McSyrup that had never shook hands with a maple leaf, let alone tasted its sap. 

            This we did on an exit just south of Rockford, Illinois, where the Golden Arches combined with a Shell sign in the middle of a featureless countryside blurred by diesel fumes to give us the irrefutable and invigorating sense that we were on the move American style, and on our way to adventure.  Unfortunately, just after we had wiped the syrup from our chins and shirts and were gassing up for the big haul, my eagle-eyed son spotted a consistent leak dripping suspiciously under the just-fixed water hoses.  Not to worry, I assured everyone, for our mechanic could do no wrong.  It was undoubtedly merely overflow from the newly-filled radiator subjected to the demands of the hot day and the air-conditioning, and with that I stilled the nagging worry that something was still not right with the old bomb. This optimistic assessment seemed to be confirmed as the car hummed away with modern technological precision over the dreary flatlands and rising heat waves of northern, and then central Illinois. 

            I can still recall the feeling of doom the moment everything went terribly wrong.  At precisely the mid-point of our journey, and I mean precisely to within a tenth of a mile, smoke began to billow out from beneath the hood, accompanied by the stench of burning oil.  We were exactly at the exit ramp into the town of “Benson,” but it was so bad that I was not sure we would make it to the garage that we could see just beyond the stop sign, which we then had to idle behind as traffic slowly passed before us while the smoke rose and the idiot light flashed madly.  Finally we were able to pull out and curve right into the gas station, which unfortunately was only a gas station, not a garage.  Fortunately, we belonged to AAA, and soon we had a real garage guy looking under the hood, tow truck idling by our side.

            “Your water pump is shot.  What happened is, without coolant, your engine block overheated and warped the head.  You need to replace that water pump and grind down the head so the gaskets fit tight.”

            “So,” said I, “when can your garage do that?”

            “A week or so, maybe.  We got the Fourth of July weekend, and then we’re backed up to the end of this week.  Maybe a week from this Monday.”

            Oh, crap.  “Ah, you know any other garage we can go to?”

            “You can try (such and such), but I bet he’s busy, too.  Busy time of year, ya know.” 

            We consulted quickly under the pressure of time, and then asked this: “Could you tow us to a decent hotel around here?”

            “Just have the two, on the other side of the overpass.”

            “Anyone got a pool?”

            “That would be the Holiday Inn.  At least they used to.”

            The plan, also quickly conceived, was to check in at the hotel and then go to the other garage.  We were assured that we could drive the car ‘as is’ for a few miles without melting the engine, and so we drove to the hotel – finding that the pool had long been filled in – checked in anyway, and then drove to the other garage.  In so doing, we got an inkling of what Benson was all about – a Midwest version of the Appalachia coal belt, poverty and all.

            After passing several wrong streets while nervously watching the smoke coming from the hood, we finally found the garage, a grimy building in between other soot-besotted buildings, and as busy as an anthill.  Why this was so was never answered, but I passed through the cars lined up for service and into the office.  There were several other guys in greasy jeans and Carhartt overalls waiting before me, one guy angrily demanding past pay for work done before he was fired, but soon I was asked my business, and just as soon told, “Not until the week after next.  Things get real busy around Fourth of July.” 

            “Yeah, but…,” but before I could finish my futile plea, the guy asking for past pay said, “bring the car around to my place.  I can fix it.”  His tone was defiant, somehow snubbing the man behind the counter, and I stalled to assess the situation.

            “You got a garage around here or something?” I was looking him over and saw a tall, thin and angry man with a scar on his lip, probably from hair lip surgery by his slight lisp, who certainly looked grease-stained enough to be a mechanic.   Just as certainly, he had already assessed me: middle-aged white collar guy from up north in shorts and short sleeves with clean fingernails and no knowledge of cars, stuck on his way to vacation.  The acronym for that, I believe, would be: S-U-C-K-E-R.    

            “Nope, but I got my tools.  Follow me down to my house and I’ll look her over.”

            Down to his house? With family in tow?  Angry or not, though, the guy struck me as genuine and, after all, the only hope we had of getting back to Wisconsin – forget Mississippi - before vacation was over.  In a few minutes, I was firing up the wheezing Jeep, and the three of us, wife, son and I, were off again to see the sights of Benson, Illinois.

            There will never be postcards made of Benson, but we did pass a park with ancient oaks that promised somewhere to hike the following day, as well as a row of great Victorian mansions that spoke of the days of the coal barons and mining towns.  As we turned down a one-way street, we saw that the coal-town era still resonated, for on the far side over a strip of marsh and weeds, we saw and heard a long train of boxcars filled with coal, the rumbling of its wheels probably no different from the steam engines that hauled the same cargo a century before.  And it was on this one-way street with the tracks across a bed of weeds that our leader stopped, pulling into a short gravel driveway by a double-wide trailer.  He stepped out and so did we, to be immediately met by the man’s very pregnant wife.

            “This is Cathy,“ said our man “Frank” after explaining to her what this was all about.  “She’s due any day now, so if I have to stop work on your car, you’ll know why.”  Cathy smiled wearily, her loose dress wilting around her like pumpkin leaves in the intense heat while her two little ones hung shyly behind. 

            That said, we followed his lead over to the garage, which was filled from top to bottom and front to back with tools.  As he rolled out a massive metal tool cabinet, he explained his situation: “I didn't exactly get fired from that place.  It was more like an agreement.  They’re a bunch of crooks.” His angry snarl returned, “and I wouldn't play their game.  I’m a Christian and I don’t believe in cheating people.”

            We let that information sink in.  I’ve been cheated pretty equally by Christians and non-Christians alike, and found it suspicious that he was telegraphing his integrity.  I also wondered at his next line of conversation: “I see you’re from Wisconsin,” this said with an enthusiastic grin.  “I learned mechanics there up in Janesville.  I really liked it.  Good people, not like around here,” his grin dropping momentarily back into a scowl, and then changing to a wistful frown.  “I really want to go back.  When we get enough money, that’s what I hope to do.”

            “Good for you,” I said, looking around at the double-wide and the two and nearly three kids and the grimy railroad tracks and his rusted van.   “I hope it works out for you.” 

            Oh, and for us.  First, we had to leave our car with him, we walking the mile or so back to the hotel for the sole sake of having something to do; then we had to give him money to have the head ground at a local shop of a friend (one of the few, I supposed).  And then he had to work and take things apart and so on while we sat helplessly, car-lessly in the hotel. 

            I did ask for a timetable, and he said, “Sometime next week.  It depends on when we can get the water pump shipped here.  What with the holiday, we can’t do that until next Tuesday.”

We digested this information later in the single room of our pool-less hotel in a run-down coal town that was apparently filled with crooks.  What to do?  Vicki and I could read, but our son, about ten at the time, could hardly be expected to enjoy himself inside the single room or outside in a grimy town sweltering under record heat and humidity. 

            Much to the courage of my father-in-law, the solution was offered: they would drive up to Benson, where we would get a better hotel with a pool in another town and have a car to drive around and explore, just like in old times.  And so it happened; the in-laws arrived three days after our breakdown on a sweltering and closed-for-business holiday Monday, my father-in-law’s machinery for breathing traveling besides him wherever we went - which very quickly was to a better hotel with a pool.  Things were almost all right.

            Except for that damn Jeep.  By phone, we learned on the day after the stars and stripes gave everyone an excuse to drink beer in the afternoon that the needed water pump could not be shipped from St Louis until the end of the week, to arrive on the following week, except if one of us was willing to drive up there to the auto-parts store and get it himself.  Needless to say, I was willing, and on Wednesday I was seated in my in-laws’ grandparent van on the unlovely 2 hour drive to St Louis.  By an act of God, I found the parts store right away, in a section of town that should require concealed carry permits, and was able to steal away with the precious item back to Benson before the son dipped low enough to permit the temperature to drop below ninety degrees.   

            Now it was up to our “shade tree” mechanic, with whom we had no formal contract or identification or anything.  My ailing father-in-law was quiet about his condition, but was obviously desperate to get back to the safety and familiarity of his home facilities, and we were warned again about the immanent date of the delivery of Frank’s next child.  It was a nail-biter, and we had no clear sign as to whether fate was smiling on us or snapping us away with thumb and index finger.  Yes, we had gotten a maybe-mechanic out of sheer luck, but we had also broken down in a town that was equally far from a home base, that had no garage openings, no recreational attractions, and that was swimming in an unmovable torpor of heat and steam.  

            Oddly, I do not remember if Frank’s wife delivered at the hospital during those days, but probably not.  By Thursday at noon, Frank called to tell us all was set to go.  All we needed to do was pick ‘er up.  Astounded, Vicki drove us down in the van, and I stepped out, checkbook nervously in hand.  Now was the moment of truth for both of us: he could charge anything he wanted, and I could pass a bogus out-of-state check right back at him.  I stood before the car, which indeed was under a shade tree by the chest of tools, while Frank calmly voiced the bill: something like three hundred dollars, about half of what we had expected.  “Take it around the block first, to make sure you like the fix.”  Again, it appeared to me cynically that I could just drive off and not return.  We had nothing but a verbal understanding, after all, but Frank was not nervous about this or anything else.  He was right, of course, but how could he know?  Or was he that naïve, so naïve that he could not even work at a garage under the normal conditions of over-repair that so many have? 

            I returned to the trailer, car running fine, and wrote out the three hundred dollar personal check.  We shook hands, wished each other well, and drove off – we to the north, the in-laws to the south, our unplanned adventure not ending all that badly.

            Nine years later, I still think of Benson.  We have passed it several times since on our way to Mississippi, many trips in the old Jeep that continues to hum along to this day, the engine a lot better off than the twenty-year-old rusting body, and I wonder about coincidence.  Why did the mechanics not replace the water pump before we left?  How was it that the car flamed on just at the exit just at the spot exactly half-way between our house and the destination?  What luck was it that the fired mechanic was in the shop at the same time I was inquiring for help?  And then, what luck was it that he was good at his job and honest and that my in-laws had the gumption or duty or whatever to come so that I could use their car for St Louis? 

            I have also wondered at how the incident affected the mechanic: did his re-connection with Wisconsin put him on a different course?  Was our three hundred or so dollars just what he needed for that month’s’ rent?  Was he just as surprised as I was that everything went smoothly without a lawful contract?  Did it, in other words, change his life?

            It is within these two broad categories that I think of the incident.  On the one hand, it seems that fate or God or whatever we wish to call it has a wry sense of humor.  The pieces of our adventure fit together too perfectly to be happenstance, like the development of the eye in biological evolution without the millions of years to do so. How such precise humor can come from the blue I don’t know, but lions play and wolves cavort, and even snakes bask, each lost to fun or innocence at least for a moment.  The world, inscrutably, is filled with terrible things and inevitable, eventual suffering and death, and yet it is capricious as well: it supports equally the philosophy of the hooded priest and the nonsense of the bell-jingling fool.  Where ultimate reality is in all this contorts the mind like a pretzel, the horrors of genocide balanced with the great good luck of millions of Americans doing fun and foolish things on the Fourth of July – and getting away with it, scot free.  That may not be fair and it may be maddening, but it is so.

            On the other hand, Benson reminds me that my role in the play of fate is not always that of leading man.  Our drama there was a mere inconvenience; we were only losing vacation days and suffering nothing more than boredom and losing some extra money that we could then afford.  Frank, on the other hand, was at a serious cross-roads.  It might have been just for him and his family that the home mechanics screwed up just enough for us to land in that shop in Benson at 2 PM on a Friday afternoon exactly when he had gone in to argue for his desperately needed back pay.  For us the episode was a fool’s errand, but for him it might have been the turning point, an act of grace that worked to steer him to a better, or at least more fitting, future. 

            Maybe, then, that’s what much of life’s foolishness is: one’s bit part supporting another’s epiphany. Maybe the silly things we do are not so silly to someone else.   But then again, anyone with children and all of us who have been children already know this.  How many times has the good nature of a parent taken away the dark fear of a kid?  How many times has a seeming foolishness led to the development of joy and love in a life?  And how many times has that then led to something better still: a sense that there is purpose, a purpose that is not only essential but at times simply fun?

            Benson, oh Benson.  I am hopeful that I played my part well, but next time I’d prefer off- Broadway or Pittsburgh of even Peoria, but I wouldn’t bet on it; I can still hear the tinkling of the bell on my fool’s cap from time to time, and if it lands me in Benson again, well, so be it.  Life is not all light or shadows.  Sometimes, no matter the scene, it requires the Joker.   

   



Carousel (from Dream Weaver, chapter 6)

The rising colors on the horizon soothed out whatever bumps remained from the last ride, and the warm country breeze smelled of pollen, of life reaching its potential and its greatest joy. It took some moments before I stuck out my hook again, and it didn’t really matter to me if anything was caught. Zen. Of course, a ride came instantly, a ride that, despite my arguments with The Engineer, and despite the weirdness of the gay situation, proved to be the real shift of gears, the real quantum leap in the hitching cycle that led to a series of events that I could never, ever have predicted.

It started out typically enough. An old car, this one with a suggestion of fins, the last of that era, beat and dusty and midnight blue, veered widely onto the shoulder. The brakes, obviously, needed some repair. The back door popped open before I got there, letting out the typical cloud of smoke and pounding rhythms from the eight-track. Inside was the typical crew—a couple of guys and a girl, joint lit, eyes bloodshot, long, greasy hair all around—and they gave me the typical, “Hey, man, where ya goin’?” and so on. In fact, everything was typical except that it went on for far too long.

This ride took me to Minnesota, hours into the night, with nonstop weed, good, strong stuff, on and on. For some reason, I couldn’t refuse. Something about this group of Minnesotans demanded that they, and all around them, remain blitzed on cannabis for all their waking hours. Of course, I can recall little from the ride, only that southern Minnesota looked like South Dakota except tamer, with more well-painted farmhouses with their inviting porches, and healthier-looking trees in the front yard. The rest was the same gently rolling farmland, with the wheat gradually changing to more corn and soy, until darkness wrapped it all into one inky ocean with only the dim light from our smoky little submarine left to distinguish it from the void. Oh, God, did I get high, too wasted to function in the waking world.

Sometime around nine, we entered one of those dusty little Midwest towns, towns that sprung up like clumps of weeds amidst the corn and wheat around the grain silo, towns that began and ended with such abruptness that they could have been canned in a jar, and came to a stop. I’m not even sure that anyone said anything, but it was obvious that is was my time to swim on my own, and out I stepped at one of the two crossroads in town, the pavement and turn-of-the-century brick three-story buildings glowing from the ghostlike eeriness of streetlamp florescence. Oh, jeez, I managed to think, what’ll I do? We were a few miles off the major highway and nothing promised to come my way before breakfast. Camping in the street was not an option, and I was so wasted, so tired. After about fifteen minutes, I faced reality and prepared to walk two or so miles out of town to some clump of cottonwoods somewhere, when around the corner weaved the same old near-black car. “Come on in and let’s get high,” they yelled, and they took me back to an apartment one block away on the third floor, up in perhaps the highest human habitation between there and Mankato. With the TV tube glowing in the background, we smoked some bongs.

Then, oddly, now past ten at night, they asked me to leave, for no other reason than that it was bedtime for the potheads who felt they needed some rest before they hit the bong again for another trying day. Me, I struggled, blown away, down the stairs with my duffel and walked to the glowing crossroads again. A meanness had slipped into the high by now, and fear and menace had begun to ooze from the town like quivering music in a Twilight Zone episode. A signal from the blackness warned me to head out immediately, but a quick look over my shoulder showed that it was too late. A sheriff’s car was approaching over the crossroads just passed. It was clear that he had stalked me and was now going to make me pay for all the dope I’d smoked, although there was none on me. Would he force me to betray the bums who had kicked me out into the street? Not that I cared that much for them, leaving me in the lurch as they did, but the reward for ratting on them would probably be no better than a reduced sentence. I stopped and began to posture myself, affecting a look of hurt innocence for the coming horror, when another car on the main road swerved and stopped, nearly on my foot. Behind the wheel under the one great streetlight in town sat one great woman, a huge mama with one flabby elbow crooked on the open window.

“Come on, jump in,” she told me, and I did, squeezing next to two kids in the back just as the sheriff pulled up alongside.

“You know this guy, Deana?” he said casually, lazily pointing his thumb toward the darkened backseat. I slid down a little farther into the upholstery.

“It’s OK, Bill, we’ll take care of ‘em.”

“OK, then, just watch your drinking.” Then, to my relief, he left. That was it, saved again from justice, and justice it would have been. No one this side of Jamaica was currently more stoned than I.

The situation in the car was quickly clarified. The large woman, about forty years of age, was the mother of the two girls in the back, about eight and twelve, as well as mama to the big blond guy in the front next to her, age eighteen (she told this unasked, for some reason). He had just gotten off from work with the traveling carnival, and his mother was giving him a ride back home. But first, they said, they would like to stop at the local tavern for a few. Would I care to join them?

 I told the woman that it would be my pleasure, but that I had no money. She told me that this would not be a problem. Thus, it appeared that the Lord had answered my prayers, bringing me an Earth mother with free booze to help soften my landing from this deep, black high. Still, even blessings were often tied with strings.

The big blond guy, I’ll call him Butch, was talking loudly about unimportant stuff, giving me the impression that he was somewhat thought-challenged and in a perpetual state of fighting readiness. One thing he made clear, though, was that he thought it would be a very good idea if I were to join the carnival work crew. Apparently, they were short and needed recruits. He was so insistent that I began to suspect that a finder’s fee was involved, but this would not prove to be the case at all. In fact, the reason behind this insistence to join the carnival would never emerge. It has occurred to me since that this whole strange episode was meant to give me a peek at where my new universe was headed, into a carnival of mindless, stupid intoxication and...well, let the story speak for itself, a true story that only becomes weirder with each detail recalled.

We turned at the other crossroads in town and idled into a packed parking lot before a large old farmhouse that had been converted into a saloon. We walked up some creaking wooden steps and swung open an old screen door onto a world that was so perfect, in its way, that it could have been a movie set. Scores of rugged blue-collar types and farmers sat or stood or played pool with their drinks while others danced on the old wood floor before a country-rock band, everyone sheathed in smoke and halo-ed by blue show lights and a mist of sweat and beer vapor. It was dark enough to hide the uncoordinated roll of drunken eyeballs but light enough to perceive, in the noise and heat, if the stranger you were yelling to was a male or female. Boom-chica-boom-chica, everyone was engulfed in the grand two-step that seemed to push the beer or whiskey down their throats, boom-chica, making it disappear at an accelerating rate until, by golly, they had the beat and the heat and the night was their glory. I picked up the groove before we even sat down, all of us crowding in close at a round table that seemed to have been reserved for us near the middle of the action, where we had to bunch up tighter and tighter to avoid the stumbles and spills of the milling revelers.

My hosts ordered pitchers and shots, the latter waved off until hours later and miles away, when the spell of the liquor spirits became so powerful that they forced me to succumb to their vileness and do all manner of foolish things. Still, I guzzled the beer and would have sucked up what was spilled on my shirt and lap by passersby if possible, as thirsty as I was from the relentless sun of the Badlands and the prairies and the desiccating effect of the reefer smoke. In short time I got to feeling pretty darned good, even comfortable and at-home, and was eying the cowgirls, trying to decipher the inexact code that made the availability of a woman known, when the assault began.

At first, they came one at a time, one tough looking character after another who would bump into the table, say hello to Butch and Deana, then press me to join the carnival. I would decline, citing my need to get home back East on urgent business, so sorry, which would lead to several minutes of persuasive dialogue and posturing and then to retreat. The entire world within and without was becoming more intoxicated and less rational by the moment, and it began to seem as if each person there was attached to this carnival, all wanting me to join. It was as if I had died, and the “carnival” was heaven, or more probably hell, and this test would determine my eternal destiny. Time and again another character would lunge to the table and attempt to bend me to his will, to his world, to join that carnival, to join his fate. I did not like the look of that fate in the hard, drunken faces of these carnies, and I became more resistant to each entreaty just as they became more forceful. After a while, it took on the feel of a battle for freedom, a fight for the God-given right to follow a better karmic path.

The carnies, defeated one by one, now began lurching to our table from their dark enclaves by the twos and threes, offering less argument and more threat. You will join the carnival—the “or else” was not said, but held in the tone and by the show of increasing numbers. I pretended that it was all still a casual thing of whim and choice and continued to say “No, thank you, more pressing responsibilities call.” In fact, this was not true and I was ripe, at that moment, to become a lifelong carny, running the stuffed-animal scam and latching small-town kids into rusting Ferris wheel seats, and they could smell it. Like evangelicals or demons from hell, they were going to join me to their numbers, to share in their pleasures and miseries and overall alienation from the dominant tribe. At one point, I felt a softening in myself, arising from the weak spot where my spiritual virtues had long been overtaxed and weakened. As is the cosmic law, my perdition would have been my own damn fault.

            I drank more and, with the background of a great long day of reefer in my skull, became somewhat incoherent and more docile. In fact, I stopped saying no and started saying, “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” stepping on the edge of the slippery slope that would lead to a life of tattoos and hard drinking and runaway teenage girls and periodic stints in the local hoosegow for all those excesses. There would be the bad teeth and the dabbling, ever more desperately, in stolen goods and forged documents, a fate that was becoming so close that the predators could sense the wavering of my will even through the heavy dark smoke of the bar. That’s when they sent in the alpha wolf for the kill.

            I don’t know how I could have missed him before, but now he came looming from the corners like a vast shadow projected on the wall. When he stood a few feet from my chair, his corporality could no longer be denied, and it seemed that defeat was certain before such a huge and overwhelming presence. He was, and this is the truth, the spitting image of a great Lakota warrior. He had long, straight, coarse black hair tied in the back with a strip of cloth; a sunburned reddish-brown complexion; a great nose knobbed at one point as if broken in a fight; and a cutoff T-shirt that exposed huge scarred, hairless arms knotted with the kind of taught muscles made not from sissy barbells at a gym but from hard work. His frayed leather vest lay open, exposing a massive chest and a fatless waist cinched with a bead-worked belt with a brass rodeo buckle. He wore big boots too, dusty, worn cowboy boots, working boots spattered with sweat and blood and beer and whisky. He strode to our table in those big boots, towering at least six and a half feet into the thick air above me, and then bent down until his crooked, half-drunk smile came within a few inches of my face. I did my best to maintain a calm and contained façade. He leaned his left hand on the back of my chair, making me sit upright to avoid touching his curled thumb, then nailed me with a wicked look from his black eyes, the look of a hunter who now had his elusive game at bay.

            “I tell you what, traveler; you guess the name of the president on a $20 bill, you can go your own way. You don’t, you join the carnival.”

            “I don’t know if I…”

            “It’s a deal, then. What do you guess?”

            There was no room out now. Back in 1974, a $20 bill was worth a good deal, and at my age and with my occupations, student and bum, precious few had come before me. I simply didn’t know the answer.

            There is a funny thing about the spirits in drink, though. As destructive as they can be when given too much power, they also have their own genius and usefulness. Before I could concede defeat, a drunk “self,” confident and fearless, rose from my defeated form and quickly answered the question.

            “Ah-hah!” said my helpful spirit, “You can’t trick me. That’s no president on the $20 bill. That man was secretary of state!” I said it with such finality that, wrong as the statement was, no one there, regardless of the high regard some may have had for the study of history, doubted me. Instead, I found that the statement had gained me an instant respect. The Indian became almost deferential.

“Oh, you college boys!” he boomed, laughing, not angry in the slightest for his failure, for he, it would seem to all, had known the answer too, and so was as clever as I. “Can’t fool you fellas! OK, a beer for my friend here!”

            And I was magically free of the carnival, delivered from a way of life by a single spark from the spirits who had proven against reason that they could get you out of a jam as easily as they could get you into one. Perhaps they had been influenced by higher powers. Who knows?

We drank more until Butch became almost uncontrollably hostile, his mother and a few friends saving him time and again from starting a fight until it got to be too much. Momma mentioned that it was time to go and asked if I would like to stay the night with them. In my mind, there was doubt: my choices were either to stay in a house with a bed and breakfast in the morning or sleep under a bush along the highway. I thanked Deana and accepted the offer. A more sober “me” would have guessed that Demon Rum had more tricks up his sleeve, but I was nearly as wasted as Butch and about equal to Deana, although she had popped shots at twice the rate of my beers. You have to admire, or at least stand in awe of a woman like that.

            And she was sensible too. She realized, probably from a few experiences with the sheriff, that she was too drunk to drive, as were all of us adults, and so had her twelve-year-old daughter do the honor. A blanket that was kept in the car, maybe for that purpose, was doubled over several times until it formed a raised seat that enabled the girl to see clearly over the dashboard, and away we went. She was not a good driver, but her momma helped talk her through it, getting her past the intersections and around the dark curves. As she drove farther into the moonless night, I grew more and more concerned about finding my way back to the highway the next day. Just as I was reaching the point of panic, we pulled into a tiny community of old village houses with sagging porches and huge poplars in the back yards. The little girl cranked the wheel to turn into the driveway, but she was not quite up to the effort (most cars then did not have power steering), and we veered off the gravel and crumbling blacktop into some dissolute-looking bushes that seemed to be begging for a final bullet to end their misery. The girl parked the car right there, relieved. She knew from experience that things would be set right in the morning.

            Momma rose from the car laboriously but steadily, apparently in control, while the little girls dashed into the house. Butch fell into the driveway, cursed, and started swinging at dark air until he saw me. His rolling eyes focused momentarily like an angry bull’s and he lunged toward me, getting only a few feet before he fell. He lay in the gravel mumbling and drooling until Momma got me to help drag him through the screen door onto the old cracked linoleum floor of the kitchen. He sat up briefly and cried out “Papa, Papa!” before he fell again, plunk! for the last time from his own volition. We hauled him to the darkened living room and Momma covered him right where we dropped him, his head sounding like a bass drum when it hit the old wood planks. I saw a couch in the gloom, felt tiredness run through me, and asked if she might have a blanket for me too.

            “No, sir, I thought we might sit at the table and have a few more drinks. I could use a little company on a Saturday night.” It hadn’t occurred to me that it was Saturday. That explained the crowd at the bar. I had lost track of the days, simply because their names had become irrelevant, forgetting that they made all the difference in the world to the rest of America.

            More drinking, on the other hand, didn’t sound too wise. I was at that wonderful age where drinking all night could be fun, but the long rides and the pot and the new situations had made me too tired, too tired and drained. I begged to be relieved, but she insisted and I relented. Adventures are made, as Pinocchio knows, from following the will of others.

             There is a picture in my mind of us then, seated under a fluorescent light at a shrilly bright and wobbly Formica table on matching chairs with torn plastic seat covers and rusty, bent, one piece hollowed steel chrome legs, the kind that often seemed to give way on nights just like this. We would drink through our drunkenness and enter the bizarre clarity that all heavy drinkers know. It’s a process called “drinking yourself sober,” and it can be done with other things too, like pot, where you become so influenced by the drug that you enter into its pure logic, devoid of the shell of sober thought. You remember everything, see everything, but look back on yourself later with astonishment and a little fear at the odd creature you had unknowingly become.

            Deana brought out the whisky and the glasses. She had no beer, and I just gave in, caved to her momentum, resigned to let the chips fall where they may. The light got sharper. Talks of work and people turned into talks of destiny, of God, then, yes, of flying saucers, aliens waiting on the lip of our dimension to shift us to a higher consciousness. She spoke of the strange lights she had seen out on the prairie, of the alien presence that was ghost-like but palpable like a fog on a dark night. Then she asked:

“Do you believe in spirits?”

            “Yes, yes,” I said, and mentioned something about concurrent worlds, of different states of consciousness. “You see, the spirits are here...”

            “Even the spirits of the dead?”

“Yes, even them, all here at this very time and place. Time, you see, is just a measure of our awareness. It makes reality seem like a room in strobe light, where we see disjointed pictures, each separate from the other, but, really, it is all one solid connecting flow. The dead are over here,” I moved my hands away from the table, “and we are here, in the same room, but we can only see right here. Now, if we had perfect awareness we would see everything in the room. The room is our “epic” or “age,” and we would be able to see all the past and future that would concern us, as well as everyone who ever lived in this age. The Hindus claim that ages run in four-hundred-thousand-year cycles. That’s a hell of a lot.” I swished my whiskey around in the glass, reflected happily on my surprising depth and clarity, and then dropped the glass onto the floor. The soft rotting plywood underneath made a nice cushion and the glass did not break. Deana picked it up, refilled it and joined in the talk with heated enthusiasm.

            “You know, I’ve always thought that! I knew we were soul mates!” She gave me a look of affection that surprised even my drunken self. Then her head dropped and she wheezed out a soggy cry.

             “Oh, my Willy! I can feel him here with us!” She lifted her head for another belt of whiskey, and then fixed me with moist eyes set in a heaving frame of drunken morbidity. She broke off her look suddenly, lowered her chin into the two concentric layers of fat beneath it, and smothered a belch with her fist.

            “‘Scuse me. My poor Willy, my children’s father. If you turned on the light in the living room you’d see some of the smoke damage left. We was out swimming at the lake when it happened. He was sittin’ right in that room smoking a cigarette when he fell asleep in his big recliner chair. Oh, I shoulda’ been here! If we’d just come back an hour earlier, I’d have my Willy now!” She lowered her head again into her fleshy cowl and cried real, running tears. In such situations, my awkwardness is always greater than my sympathy, but I tried to say some comforting words.

            “Now, you were just doing what you were doing. No one could know. It’s all in God’s hands.” At the mention of hands, she reached hers across the table and put them around my left arm, on which I had been steadying my weaving head. She looked at me again with blunt sincerity.

            “When we came home, there was still smoke coming out the door. The volunteers had already dragged my husband outside and had him laid out on the stretcher. He looked like he was just sleeping, but he was stone dead. They said his cigarette lit the chair on fire, and the smoke in the room killed him. It weren’t the fire, but the smoke. He looked perfect. I couldn’t believe smoke could kill my Willy. He’d been drinking that morning, and I guess that’s why he didn’t wake up.

            “He didn’t have no insurance, but it’s good we own the house. I get some disability for my back, and some money from the government for the kids, but Butch’s work at the carnival is all we got for pay. The girls’ got school coming up and I don’t know what we’ll do.” She kept her hands on my arm, loosening one just long enough to take a drink. I could feel sex in the air now, but it had a domesticated and leashed feel to it, something that was odd and unwelcome. I liked women a little plump, but not humongous, and a woman of forty was much too old. But Demon Rum was running the show. I put my other hand on one of hers.

            “But he never died, really. He’s right here, as comfortable as can be, probably reaching out to help in whatever way he can. He’s probably looking out for your little girls, making sure they do just fine, even without money. I bet you’ll do all right. I feel like you’re in God’s hands.” I had turned away briefly, for affect, and now was coming back with a look of paternalistic concern when the dam broke in her eyes. She leaned farther across the table, grabbing more and more of me until she was off her seat, circling the table until she was close against me, forcing me out of my chair with her great weight until I was standing, fully embraced and overrun by her passion.

            “Oh, I knew you were my soul mate, I knew it the moment I saw you!” She kept pressing against me, pushing me from the kitchen into a dark hall where we bumped and skidded along the wall until we fell into an open door. She twirled me once so that I would land on top, and then dropped us onto an unseen bed.

            In a split second, the heavy panting was broken by high-pitched screams and a squirming thrash of legs. The girls had been asleep in their momma’s bed and had been terrified by the sudden collapse of the world upon them. They scrambled from the room squealing with panic. I was shocked almost to sobriety by the event and lost any interest in sex that may have arisen from sheer momentum, but Momma didn’t miss a beat of her heaving passion. It had been so long, so lonely…

            She flopped around in bed with surprising agility, kicking off her pants as she pulled off mine, all while keeping her sweating body pressed to me, now a mere prisoner of her passion, a bird caught in the eye of a hurricane. It would have been more expedient to please her, to appease my young male ego and get some sleep, but this flight just wasn’t going to leave the ground. I suggested a few things she might do, and she replied, in a deep voice husky with sex but disapproving, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” and that was it. I probably would just have passed out anyway, no matter what. Still, had my passion met hers, I most certainly would have felt even worse the next morning, hung by the noose of obligation after the fact.

            There having been no “fact,” the morning left me with only the obligation to assemble my world and priorities while lying in a strange bed in a strange town in a strange state in a strange everything. Even my pants were strange, somehow clinging to my butt while giving me ludicrous room in front, which briefly brought me to a panic, until I figured out that Deana had recollected some propriety and had dressed me before the girls might return (Fat chance. They will probably not go near a bed with a man in it again until years of therapy and the mercy of God have relieved them of their trauma.), putting them on as a woman’s pants once were, with the zipper in the back.

            I was alone but could hear the voices out in the kitchen, where my duffel bag was. If it had been possible, I would have snuck out of there, caring for my raging hangover in the private misery such a state deserves, but my things had to be reclaimed, as simple as they were. I re-did my jeans and stumbled down the shadowy hall toward the voice of Butch, who sounded to be in a worse mood than the night before. My appearance in the sloping, stained room of cracked linoleum and greasy walls, red-eyed and ratty and wasted, was greeted with all the dignity it deserved.

            First, the girls looked through me as if I were a bad dream, merely a dim projection of a hallucination that would hopefully disappear with the day. As for Butch, my appearance made his face turn from angry red to apoplectic purple as he curled fists in preparation for the action he was cheated of the night before. Here before him, after all, was a man who had woken up in his mother’s bed. Only Momma seemed glad to see me, giving me a smile as if there had been a “fact.” She asked me what I wanted for breakfast.

            “Just a glass of orange juice, please. My stomach couldn’t handle any food, after last night.” She gave me a puzzled look, not putting heavy whiskey drinking and an upset stomach together. She was a real pro.

She got back on track. “But you’ll be pretty hungry if you don’t eat now. We’re going to the lake for the day. Gonna be a hot one.” I looked reflexively out the window and saw the blue sky and heat waves rising even at this time, just before noon. The sweat was already pouring from me too, greasy alcohol sweat that would accentuate the joyless journey of detoxification that would dog me until blessed sleep came at the end of a long, long day. Alcohol is instant karma, divine justice served in this lifetime, at once. A lesson of, and look into the divine plan that is so clear that even the most callous alcoholic could see it if he thought a minute. Which he does his best not to.

I snapped back from the window view, suddenly understanding my situation with a rising panic. Momma expected me to stay with them, and not only for the day. I saw her set my plate, saw the look that said, yes, God has sent me another man. Oh, Jesus. And there was Butch, going on with his ceaseless griping and anger, directed, I realized, not at me, but at the frightening world. It came clear in an instant: he needed a daddy to help him grow up, to teach him to stand on his own two feet, and whup him into shape if necessary. Yes, there I was, Deana’s man, substitute dad hardly older than her eldest, invited to bed and breakfast and all the demands of a hard-workin’ husband.

“Oh, no, thank you, no, I’ve really gotta get going. Thank you all for the ride and all, but it’s time to head out. Have ta’ get home to my folks. Yeah, they need my help,” I lied, knowing that we would all be far better off without Deana’s dream arrangement. In the pause that followed, pictures of the night before flashed in my mind. There was the big Indian standing over me, saying, “Now, what president’s on the face of a twenty?” This had brought the picture of the grim life of a carny before me, with adolescent runaways and other lowly, forbidden pleasures as my only reward, but this new possibility was even worse: just fat ol’ Momma and angry Butch and two little girls in need of therapy.

I edged over to my duffel and then slowly shuffled past Butch, who did not yet realize that daddy was going, then slid past Momma, who was beginning to understand, then tip-toed over to the flaking screen door. “But you…” Momma began to sputter, but before she could finish, I made it free, out the door and off the porch and onto the driveway that led to the little road that led to the county road that led to the highway. I looked back, once, just in case, and saw Butch’s face behind the screen, still angry, glaring at me now for my ingratitude, seeing me now as a bum who had been treated to whiskey and sex and now was running away without paying for it. I quickened my step to a near run until gaining the county road. A direction was taken from the position of the sun, and my web-like ESP was set to catch a ride going east as fast as possible. Then came their car.

It was them, all piled into that crappy little compact, coming right up to the T in the road just a few yards from me. I froze, thumb still out, as they took a right and drove past, giving not a look, a grin, or a frown. They had closed me out, shunned me for my unforgivable rudeness. I had not followed the carny code of getting entangled in messy and impossible circumstances because, hell, what else was there to do? but instead had done what anyone with a sense for self-preservation would have. I had, in their minds, scorned fate, the will of their god.

Surprisingly, the shunning hurt. To me, we had shared a time in space, a little adventure, and at least should be modest friends.

There was little time to pout, for I was still on that different wheel, the intersecting dimension that had trapped me the day before, and got a ride within minutes. And, oh, when that door opened, it was as if hell, or at least limbo, had changed to heaven. She asked me to sit in the front next to her, a soft and strong voice floating up like the scent of her sweet and light perfume. She was a year or two older than me, with long, floating blond hair, blue eyes, and a creamy soft complexion. Her blouse was only partially buttoned, opened to breasts covered lightly, provocatively, by a flowered bikini top. She smiled at me with perfect white teeth, her poise at ease, displaying not a trace of fear or dread from my disheveled appearance, and asked, “Where ya going?”

“East, Wisconsin,” I said, choking, suddenly numb to any clever or endearing phrases that might float into consciousness. The hangover accentuated the natural clumsiness that plagued me when situated next to a beautiful and welcoming woman. I didn’t dare to even look at her long for fear she would see my panting, servile need.

“Oh, too bad. I’m turning up here about two miles, to go to the lake. You have to keep going straight, you know, to find the highway.” It seemed she moved her thighs, so slightly, just enough to let me know that I was welcome to change my plans and come along for the ride. She would see how long a ride that would be. For a moment I could hear her think, “Would you like to give it a try?”

Obviously, I would have liked to but didn’t and kicked myself for some time for my cringing self-consciousness. But if the challenge had been taken, if there really had been one, I probably wouldn’t be writing now. I’d be at work at a branch of the federal agricultural service, extension college degree on the wall, spreading the word about Monsanto’s new gene-spliced soybean hybrids, helping to fill out farmers’ bankruptcy papers and get extensions on government loans, working hard to put the last of the kids through college or trade school. My plump wife, still beautiful in her way, her hair streaked with gray, would be off at the secretarial job she was so excited to get after twenty years at home. We would be thinking of the extra cash that would bring in, of how we could at last get a piece of land up in the north woods, out of farm country, and own a clean and quiet and shady place for retirement. Or maybe I’d be thinking of my eldest daughter and how I hoped she wouldn’t marry that dopey guy who talked like a car salesman. Maybe I’d be dreaming now and then about being free, free of family and obligations, free to wander the globe and rediscover the spark that had been lost so long ago.

Maybe, on the other hand, I would have run into Butch, who would have blown a gasket after seeing me with another woman at the lake just hours after his momma had let me into her bed, and there would be no book or daughter or camp house, none of the above, and even “carny” life would have been an improvement over this one so brutally cut short. Anything, god knows, is possible.

In a few minutes my beauty, my other future, the golden-haired wonder who may have offered herself, dropped me off at her turn, smiling to the last. I watched the car until it disappeared under the earth’s curve, cursing my bumbling cowardice, then took a deep breath and looked around. In the vast flatness, soybeans floated on the heat like scum on a pond, stretching to infinity to the east, to the north, to the south. I twirled around the cardinal points, giving myself a greater headache, and then stopped at the sight to the west. How could it be missed? A black-purple cloud had been spilt on that corner of the sky like ink on a blotter and was growing, pushing upward with a frenzied urgency until it somehow cast an eerie shadow across the land without even blocking the sun. Then it changed in seconds from an astounding thundercloud to something like a volcanic spume, a dense cloud of smoke that shot up from a single point on earth. Then the point began to turn.

Oh, Jesus, it was a tornado, come for me from the Land of Oz! How could I have been so blind? Some magic had been done, some mind-space had been crossed that had rent the normal dimensional fabric, spewing oddness and angels until now, at last, the cleansing tornado had come to suck up its own and pull it all back into the other world. It was obvious, as it spiraled my way, that I had been tagged as one of its own.

I wasn’t going without a fight. At first, it seemed that only a fringe of prairie grass grudgingly allowed to sprout by the side of the road would provide a slim grasp, but then a drainage pipe just fifty or so yards away came to view. I ran as quickly as possible to its protection, duffel slapping my leg at every other footfall, and crawled into its stifled air and through the green, slimy trickle of water at its bottom curve, donning a gopher’s sense of gratitude and smugness after settling in. The hole made me feel snug and safe, the rest of the world be damned. The truth is that the tornado probably would have sucked me out of the pipe like lint up a vacuum cleaner had it come close, but I felt safe, and that was what counted then. After several long minutes of breathing the shallow breath of hidden prey, there came a lightening of the world and a normal sense of breeze through the tunnel. I emerged as if from sleep, blinking in the sun, just in time to see the last puff of clouds disappear as if by a magician’s wand. Whoosh!

And, just like that, my world shifted back into place with a nearly audible pop, like an injured shoulder slipping back into its socket. No, it was not that everything was all right. There was still an underlying fear lying deep within myself as well as a desperate sense of aimlessness, two of the forces that had sent me to the highway. But I had somehow slipped through a knot of possibilities, escaped a series of twists in the course of life that would have led to unexpected consequences, to realities that would have been cursed or praised, or both. But it was over for now. I decided, on the moment, to skip past Wisconsin and head directly home. There lay some tatters of my old world there that might be mended.