Reverend Henley was not impressed by the angels.
"Very impressive," he said flatly. "Lovely. I don't know what the hell is going on, but whoever you are you're making a travesty of the Church and all the saints."
Gabriel smiled. "Your concern is noted. As of old, we bring you a message from our Lord." The light of his presence flickered over the twelve faces in the conference room, giving each expression its own spotlight. Wonder, confusion, curiosity... disgust.
"What is it?" Henley's voice came out strained. He was standing now, his heavy hands on the back of the folding chair. The others were silent.
Gabriel inclined his golden head. "It pains me to be the bearer of this news, good men. But the Lord never has a thought which is not holy, or does a thing which has not purpose. I bring sad tidings. The gates to Heaven have been closed."
The silence was electric. The angels were the only ones moving. Gabriel lifted his head and crossed his arms in their flowing sleeves. The others, the androgynous pair flanking him, looked inscrutably at each other. Every time they breathed, the light in the room shifted a little.
"Who are you?"
"I regret your lack of faith, you who stand at the head of this priesthood. Do you think me an illusion? Are men grown so distant from God that they cannot recognize divinity when it stands in front of them? I ask you, could an illusion do this?"
The Reverend gasped. Gabriel lifted an eyebrow. Young Reverend Plotnik stood up, clearing his throat, and took Reverend Henley by the arm. He urged the older man back into his seat, watched his face for a moment, then turned to the angels.
"What have you done to him?"
"Faith, good men. I know not what else to tell you. I am the message-bearer, that is all."
Plotnik felt a tickle stirring around his heart, and a pricking under his eyelids. He squinted through the glare surrounding Gabriel's face. When he spoke again, his voice was thin.
"The gates of Heaven have been closed?"
Gabriel nodded his head.
"Why? What is our sin?"
Gabriel glanced at the twin to his right, then leveled his blue gaze once again on Plotnik's narrow face. "Your sins are many, as every man knows. But it was not for sin that this was done. It was for necessity." In the corner of the room, by the folding table set with pitchers of water, Reverend Brown had slid to his knees, his eyes closed. "Heaven is full."
Plotnik's tingling heart skipped a beat. "Heaven is full?" Behind him, Reverend Holloway had stood and slipped out the door, closing it silently. Plotnik could hear his pulse pounding in his ears. His eyes were beginning to hurt.
"It cannot hold a single soul more. I am but the messenger." Gabriel's light seemed to dim for a half second. "None, not even I, may question the plans of the divine Lord."
"This doesn't make any sense..."
"It is not for us to question. If it is fit, I will come again." And then they went. There was a wildness in the air and a burst of light, and the eleven remaining priests were left blinking in the sudden dimness of the yellowy overhead flourescent lights.
Reverend Henley got up and went over to the water table.
Plotnik followed him with his eyes. "Do we believe this?" he whispered.
Henley was swallowing a glass of water. His throat worked noisily. When he was finished, he set the cup on the wet tablecloth. He turned to his colleagues. "I believe..."
As he trailed off, Brown pulled himself to his feet, and the door clicked open again to let Holloway back in. The trim senior took his seat as smoothly as usual, but his silence piled on top of the weight already in the room.
Finally Henley shrugged. "I believe something happened. I believe..." he glanced where Gabriel had appeared five minutes before. "...something happened that man cannot explain."
"What did you feel, Father?" asked Plotnik.
"I believe this incident deserves further investigation." Henley turned his head, and they all followed, to Brown's folding chair and past that, where the camera on its tripod stood, little red LED aglare. It was still there. It was still on.
"Faith--" began Brown. That was as far as he got. The little room suddenly seemed tiny. In another moment, all the men except Plotnik were on their feet. Jeff Plotnik had sat down again. He'd opened his notebook, but his eyes were closed.
Somewhere in New Jersey, Martin Sachs was tuning his guitar, with no one to hear but an oversized Chihuahua trailing its leash through the parking lot. The evening came down softly around the white Honda and he was singing.
When I'ma done with the wind and rain
Jesus carry me home
When I'ma done with this iron chain
Jesus carry me home
When the heat o' the day can't burn no more
Jesus carry me home
And the cold o' the night can't chill the core
Jesus carry me home
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus carry me home
I'm poor and a drunk, and I never had luck,
But Jesus will carry me home.
He leaned back into the beat-up vehicle to reach for his bottle of cabernet, and sat for a while. Then the stars came out up above. It was a night like any other.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Beans and Men
Today I read that Plato thought you could find men's souls inside beans. This statement was accompanied by no explanation. I don't know whether it's true, but I was immediately intrigued. What kind of beans? Pinto beans? Garbanzo beans? Did the soul enter the bean upon the bean's creation, or was it added afterward? What happens when you cook and eat the bean?
What if our souls really did end up in beans? I imagine my death at 80, my soul lifting away and flitting to the grocery store where it inserts itself into a dried black bean in a package of black beans high up on a shelf. There it will stay until we're purchased. Perhaps I share the bag with the souls of truck drivers and Chinese immigrants. Will I be conscious? What is a soul, anyway? What is it like inside a bean? Perhaps it's like being a genie in a bottle. Perhaps I am only distantly aware of a confining presence about me, the fiber of the bean, and of time passing. Then I am purchased and sit on a new shelf for months, dimly aware. Then I'm dropped into a pot of water.
Will I drift up to heaven when my bean confinement softens? Perhaps I will become soft as well, the toughened edges of my soul weakening and disintegrating in the heat. Then I will be eaten.
The others will be eaten too. Whole mouthfuls of souls being chewed and swallowed, sliding pulpily to the stomach. There we will be digested.
On further looking into this beans thing, well, the idea was more popular than we might have suspected. I quote this site:
"Considerable credit for an aversion to beans may be given to Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher who lived towards the end of the 6th century BC. It was Pythagoras, before both Socrates and Plato (who documented Socrates’ pedagogy,) who taught that knowledge should never be written down as it may only truly evolve through the oral tradition."
Though I didn't find any evidence that it was Plato who thought the thing about the souls, apparently someone did. Perhaps Pliny. No mention of the specifics, though. Our elders weren't very taken with quantification, were they? But I shouldn't be too hard on them. We haven't yet developed the equipment to detect when a soul is about. Unless you accept that you can detect a soul by exactingly monitoring the weight of the body in question. Or, presumably, the weight of a bean.
What if our souls really did end up in beans? I imagine my death at 80, my soul lifting away and flitting to the grocery store where it inserts itself into a dried black bean in a package of black beans high up on a shelf. There it will stay until we're purchased. Perhaps I share the bag with the souls of truck drivers and Chinese immigrants. Will I be conscious? What is a soul, anyway? What is it like inside a bean? Perhaps it's like being a genie in a bottle. Perhaps I am only distantly aware of a confining presence about me, the fiber of the bean, and of time passing. Then I am purchased and sit on a new shelf for months, dimly aware. Then I'm dropped into a pot of water.
Will I drift up to heaven when my bean confinement softens? Perhaps I will become soft as well, the toughened edges of my soul weakening and disintegrating in the heat. Then I will be eaten.
The others will be eaten too. Whole mouthfuls of souls being chewed and swallowed, sliding pulpily to the stomach. There we will be digested.
On further looking into this beans thing, well, the idea was more popular than we might have suspected. I quote this site:
"Considerable credit for an aversion to beans may be given to Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher who lived towards the end of the 6th century BC. It was Pythagoras, before both Socrates and Plato (who documented Socrates’ pedagogy,) who taught that knowledge should never be written down as it may only truly evolve through the oral tradition."
Though I didn't find any evidence that it was Plato who thought the thing about the souls, apparently someone did. Perhaps Pliny. No mention of the specifics, though. Our elders weren't very taken with quantification, were they? But I shouldn't be too hard on them. We haven't yet developed the equipment to detect when a soul is about. Unless you accept that you can detect a soul by exactingly monitoring the weight of the body in question. Or, presumably, the weight of a bean.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Martin and the New Flock
Martin Sachs, on the face of it, wasn't the likeliest choice to lead the movement. This was due in large part to the fact that he had no designs on leadership whatsoever.
"I thought it was funny," he told Hannah Young of the Times. "But I wasn't going to stop them. People want to follow me around, they can follow me around. It's a free country."
But it was just that outlook that the Times extolled. And in successive newspapers and magazines across the country, Martin Sachs was nailed with such glowing terms as "patriotic visionary," "ambassador of grace" and "postmodern messiah."
"Well, what I really wanted was to be a folk singer," said Martin, speaking of the ambition he'd had at eighteen. "I didn't feel I would be one until I'd lived a certain amount, wrote a certain number of songs, found some resonance with regular folks." The Times reported that Martin Sachs's greatest goal in life was "authenticity." When asked by Young whether he thought he'd managed to achieve that, Martin replied, "To some degree."
But to whatever degree his other goals had been achieved, by the summer of 2031 there was no doubt about one of them; his songs had gone above and beyond in resonating with his audience. On the dusty night of June 17th, Martin could be found with his feet on the asphalt of a Hoboken parking lot and his narrow butt enthroned in the passenger's seat of his white 2008 Honda Civic. The duct-tape-wrapped Fender guitar he'd picked out of twelve at a pawnshop when he first hit the road was angled into the passenger compartment, and Martin was hunched over it as usual, his brown face invisible in the shadow cast by the door of the vehicle.
And spread out in amphitheater style around him was an arc of ninety to a hundred other cars, all makes and models, dusty, rusty and gleaming-new. Some also had their doors open. Some were empty, their owners now seated on the asphalt in front of Martin. One of Martin's faithful, a fat white man from North Carolina named Jackson, careened into the parking lot in a dented Ford and met the commencement of the night's music session with a throaty "Hallelujah!" The young couple in the Lexus... who weren't regulars, at least not yet... glanced at each other and grinned.
This was the new flock, and Martin was the new shepherd. This was the man Reverend Henley called "the false prophet," the artist the Village Voice decreed was "significant, but not necessarily good" and the subject Hannah Young ultimately concluded was a "just another fortysomething American male, caught in the right place at the wrong time."
Who was Martin Sachs? If religion is the opiate of the masses, then Martin was the methadone. And in those years, when God and all the saints above turned their backs on mankind, no sermon could heal the agony of the withdrawl... but some of the new shepherds could alleviate it, a little. Martin was one.
"I thought it was funny," he told Hannah Young of the Times. "But I wasn't going to stop them. People want to follow me around, they can follow me around. It's a free country."
But it was just that outlook that the Times extolled. And in successive newspapers and magazines across the country, Martin Sachs was nailed with such glowing terms as "patriotic visionary," "ambassador of grace" and "postmodern messiah."
"Well, what I really wanted was to be a folk singer," said Martin, speaking of the ambition he'd had at eighteen. "I didn't feel I would be one until I'd lived a certain amount, wrote a certain number of songs, found some resonance with regular folks." The Times reported that Martin Sachs's greatest goal in life was "authenticity." When asked by Young whether he thought he'd managed to achieve that, Martin replied, "To some degree."
But to whatever degree his other goals had been achieved, by the summer of 2031 there was no doubt about one of them; his songs had gone above and beyond in resonating with his audience. On the dusty night of June 17th, Martin could be found with his feet on the asphalt of a Hoboken parking lot and his narrow butt enthroned in the passenger's seat of his white 2008 Honda Civic. The duct-tape-wrapped Fender guitar he'd picked out of twelve at a pawnshop when he first hit the road was angled into the passenger compartment, and Martin was hunched over it as usual, his brown face invisible in the shadow cast by the door of the vehicle.
And spread out in amphitheater style around him was an arc of ninety to a hundred other cars, all makes and models, dusty, rusty and gleaming-new. Some also had their doors open. Some were empty, their owners now seated on the asphalt in front of Martin. One of Martin's faithful, a fat white man from North Carolina named Jackson, careened into the parking lot in a dented Ford and met the commencement of the night's music session with a throaty "Hallelujah!" The young couple in the Lexus... who weren't regulars, at least not yet... glanced at each other and grinned.
This was the new flock, and Martin was the new shepherd. This was the man Reverend Henley called "the false prophet," the artist the Village Voice decreed was "significant, but not necessarily good" and the subject Hannah Young ultimately concluded was a "just another fortysomething American male, caught in the right place at the wrong time."
Who was Martin Sachs? If religion is the opiate of the masses, then Martin was the methadone. And in those years, when God and all the saints above turned their backs on mankind, no sermon could heal the agony of the withdrawl... but some of the new shepherds could alleviate it, a little. Martin was one.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Kendlin and the Cascade
He woke up next to a waterfall. It was the fifth day. He woke as if nothing had happened, no knot of doom in his stomach, and sat up and looked at the waterfall. The spray was making the rocks wet for ten feet in either direction. By the light it was already nine o'clock. All he could hear was the pounding of the water.
Dimly and slowly now he remembered urgency. He didn't want it to be so. Some part of his brain was very loud in insisting that it wanted none of this to be true, nothing except the waterfall, its normalcy, its wetness, the sense of eternity in the endless cascade. His body hurt as he rolled up and looked around. The spot where he'd lain was hollowed out in the grass and damp. The bag he'd made out of a bedsheet was translucent with wet. The candlesticks showed their form in the thin cotton, jumbled with his knife and the little leather bag. His boots were still on his feet. His coat was still on his body. Sweat stained his shirt beneath his arms and his hair was limp and wet.
He stared hard at the ground, trying to remember whether he was looking for something else. Then he remembered the urgency again. Where was his mind? Why had he slept next to a waterfall? All he could hear was the pounding. If they'd caught up to him in the night, nothing would have woken him. And yet he almost felt as if he'd had a full night's sleep. He almost felt as if he'd dreamed. Why did he wake up, after all? Was he simply rested? Something was tickling at his ear. He stared at the ground harder, until he convinced himself he heard the dog. He was still too stunned by sleep to feel the jolt of fear he'd felt the first time he heard that sound. Now his body was creaking; he stiffly pulled the sack onto his shoulder; now he was jumping heavily into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, stumbling over the slick rocks; the icy water making his muscles jerk, getting in his boots and icing his blistered feet. He felt drunk.
He stared at the muddy bank opposite him. He stared down the thinning, rocky stream. He held for a moment, the thick confusion and indecision holding the door on his thoughts closed for another two seconds, three seconds. There was a great pain creeping up his ankles from the cold of the water. Finally he turned around and lurched at the white wall of water, letting the shock of it all over his body take his attention away from the whole world. That he liked. Then he was in it and thrusting up against rock, and he was in pain. He was waking up.
Why, why was he here? How could the last week be real? When the hunters came into view, he barely had the interest to watch them. Nothing they could do to him could be worse than what he already felt. That was what he thought. His head banged back against rock, the cold sheets of meltwater drove knives into all his skin, and he rocked a little in complete absorption.
There's nothing left. There is no pain worse than this. There is no place other than this. There is no loss other than this. This is all my life. This will be my life. Why? Where are you? Where did you go? What is there left but this?
Outside, the spotted dog was half-jumping through the pool, sniffing over the water. It sniffed at the falls. Kendlin nearly jerked out a hand to grab its collar, pull it under with him... see if he could wring its neck with all the force of everything inside him... but he didn't care. On the fifth day, he didn't care. The dog glanced at the huntsmen, who peered at the cascade. The eternal roar turned everything into theater for the eyes only. One of the hunters, the rangy one, reached in a hand and felt about the rock by Kendlin's side. His fingers were long and fine-boned, white in the odd light. He withdrew his hand and shook it, grimacing. Then he jerked the dog and they were off downstream. The dog half-loped, half-jumped, distracted.
All over was agony, cold and hot-cold. The water coursed down Kendlin and he held it in, didn't scream, didn't cry. This was his. This was all there was of the world now. His mind contracted in a savage painful cramp, the way his muscles were squeezing themselves tight under the freeze of the falls: Why? Why? How could this happen? My love, my love... how could you leave me? Where did you go?
He lasted another two minutes before he became weak, and stumbled out, enervated as though he'd cried for days. He shook like a leaf in spring. Once he sobbed aloud, a wet sound, and then spat into the cold pool. He stumbled up the muddy bank, shivering, hating, bitter on a hundred counts, angry that he didn't even care what prints he left. Angry that he had to go somewhere, that it had to be somewhere other than back. He wanted the falls. He wanted the tears, to be alone with his misery, to have that moment for a whole year and five years. And then in another step he only wanted her back again, and so he stopped and sank to his knees.
The tears reminded his cheeks of heat, and they reminded him of humanity, of the last time he held her. His heart was hot again and the sorrow washed every part of him. He was all by himself. He was Kendlin alone.
That was the fifth day.
Dimly and slowly now he remembered urgency. He didn't want it to be so. Some part of his brain was very loud in insisting that it wanted none of this to be true, nothing except the waterfall, its normalcy, its wetness, the sense of eternity in the endless cascade. His body hurt as he rolled up and looked around. The spot where he'd lain was hollowed out in the grass and damp. The bag he'd made out of a bedsheet was translucent with wet. The candlesticks showed their form in the thin cotton, jumbled with his knife and the little leather bag. His boots were still on his feet. His coat was still on his body. Sweat stained his shirt beneath his arms and his hair was limp and wet.
He stared hard at the ground, trying to remember whether he was looking for something else. Then he remembered the urgency again. Where was his mind? Why had he slept next to a waterfall? All he could hear was the pounding. If they'd caught up to him in the night, nothing would have woken him. And yet he almost felt as if he'd had a full night's sleep. He almost felt as if he'd dreamed. Why did he wake up, after all? Was he simply rested? Something was tickling at his ear. He stared at the ground harder, until he convinced himself he heard the dog. He was still too stunned by sleep to feel the jolt of fear he'd felt the first time he heard that sound. Now his body was creaking; he stiffly pulled the sack onto his shoulder; now he was jumping heavily into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, stumbling over the slick rocks; the icy water making his muscles jerk, getting in his boots and icing his blistered feet. He felt drunk.
He stared at the muddy bank opposite him. He stared down the thinning, rocky stream. He held for a moment, the thick confusion and indecision holding the door on his thoughts closed for another two seconds, three seconds. There was a great pain creeping up his ankles from the cold of the water. Finally he turned around and lurched at the white wall of water, letting the shock of it all over his body take his attention away from the whole world. That he liked. Then he was in it and thrusting up against rock, and he was in pain. He was waking up.
Why, why was he here? How could the last week be real? When the hunters came into view, he barely had the interest to watch them. Nothing they could do to him could be worse than what he already felt. That was what he thought. His head banged back against rock, the cold sheets of meltwater drove knives into all his skin, and he rocked a little in complete absorption.
There's nothing left. There is no pain worse than this. There is no place other than this. There is no loss other than this. This is all my life. This will be my life. Why? Where are you? Where did you go? What is there left but this?
Outside, the spotted dog was half-jumping through the pool, sniffing over the water. It sniffed at the falls. Kendlin nearly jerked out a hand to grab its collar, pull it under with him... see if he could wring its neck with all the force of everything inside him... but he didn't care. On the fifth day, he didn't care. The dog glanced at the huntsmen, who peered at the cascade. The eternal roar turned everything into theater for the eyes only. One of the hunters, the rangy one, reached in a hand and felt about the rock by Kendlin's side. His fingers were long and fine-boned, white in the odd light. He withdrew his hand and shook it, grimacing. Then he jerked the dog and they were off downstream. The dog half-loped, half-jumped, distracted.
All over was agony, cold and hot-cold. The water coursed down Kendlin and he held it in, didn't scream, didn't cry. This was his. This was all there was of the world now. His mind contracted in a savage painful cramp, the way his muscles were squeezing themselves tight under the freeze of the falls: Why? Why? How could this happen? My love, my love... how could you leave me? Where did you go?
He lasted another two minutes before he became weak, and stumbled out, enervated as though he'd cried for days. He shook like a leaf in spring. Once he sobbed aloud, a wet sound, and then spat into the cold pool. He stumbled up the muddy bank, shivering, hating, bitter on a hundred counts, angry that he didn't even care what prints he left. Angry that he had to go somewhere, that it had to be somewhere other than back. He wanted the falls. He wanted the tears, to be alone with his misery, to have that moment for a whole year and five years. And then in another step he only wanted her back again, and so he stopped and sank to his knees.
The tears reminded his cheeks of heat, and they reminded him of humanity, of the last time he held her. His heart was hot again and the sorrow washed every part of him. He was all by himself. He was Kendlin alone.
That was the fifth day.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Mahele and the Muddy Dystopia
The fire had become so dim that the fireflies surrounding them could be seen, winking green in the trees. There was a coolness on their backs and their calves that was only barely balanced by the heat lingering on their chests and their shins. There were no stars. The clouds hung low, rumbling with hot impotent thunder. There was no rain.
This was when the young ones asked Mahele to tell his story. The old ones protested.
"Mahele's stories are nonsense. You should not be filling your minds with these thoughts. The stories we must listen to are the stories of the past. No man can know the future. To pretend to know the future is an insult to the gods."
But their protests were feeble, made quiet by the corn alcohol and the late hour. They had to be made, for the sake of protesting. But none of the elders had the will anymore to let the hard edge come into his voice. Soon they would go to bed.
"Do you want to hear the story?" asked Mahele. He grinned, the winding tattoos turning his face ugly in the firelight. He was a tall snaking stork of a man, all knobby throat and elbows. His voice was quiet and rough.
"Yes, tell it, before the fire dies," said the young boys.
"It is two hundred and two hundred and two hundred years from today," Mahele said. "On this day, the turtle-men come from within the lake. Only on this day. They have slumbered in the lake for many lives of men. But this day they are awakened. On this day there are bad deeds in the world."
The air crackled with snaps of insects seeking each other in the dark. The clouds crowded heavily above. The children were silent.
"In the hundreds of years, man has changed. This is much time. Your grandchildren's grandchildren will be dust in the earth. No man that walks in this time so far from now will remember you. This is much time for evil to occur. In this time, men have forgotten their gods. They have forgotten the seasons. They plant the corn in the winter, and it rises in the spring with three ears on a stalk and hair that falls to the ground as if it is weeping. They slaughter the buffalo in the spring, and dry the meat for summer, but leave the hides and bones and the hides and bones get up and walk. The land has become flat where it was in hills and has grown hills where it was flat. The lakes have become black and thick like pitch.
"This is when the turtle-men come. They are slow and thick, and drag themselves over the ground like a turtle, the sun drying the caked mud on their backs. They speak a language that is the sound a man makes when his lungs are wet with death and he coughs. Our people of this future time do not know how to greet the turtle-men. They try to trade. They offer the turtle-men the three-eared corn, but the turtle-men tear down the corn plants and gnaw at the roots. They offer the turtle-men the dry and salted summer meat, but the turtle-men crawl into the camps of our people and gnaw upon the legs and arms of the old ones instead. Finally they offer the turtle-men the youngest children of the village, and the turtle-men take them back to the lake. But the turtle-men return.
"At last it is the last night of our people. The children have been given. The old have grown older and died. One elder is left who is planting the three-eared corn. It is autumn. He plants for hope, but he will sow none. Through the rustling of the orange leaves the turtle-men come, silent and slow, their backs thick and caked, and when the elder has no more strength and lies down, they are the last thing he sees. So comes the end of our people."
A wind set the branches high above them to lifting and sighing. The elders of the tribe had gone to their tents. Only Mahele and the young ones were left.
"Then what?" said one.
Mahele shrugged. The story was over. "I don't know," he said.
"Will this really happen to us?"
Mahele grinned again. They could barely see his face at all. The light of the fire had retired to red outlines among the charcoal. "What do you think?"
This was when the young ones asked Mahele to tell his story. The old ones protested.
"Mahele's stories are nonsense. You should not be filling your minds with these thoughts. The stories we must listen to are the stories of the past. No man can know the future. To pretend to know the future is an insult to the gods."
But their protests were feeble, made quiet by the corn alcohol and the late hour. They had to be made, for the sake of protesting. But none of the elders had the will anymore to let the hard edge come into his voice. Soon they would go to bed.
"Do you want to hear the story?" asked Mahele. He grinned, the winding tattoos turning his face ugly in the firelight. He was a tall snaking stork of a man, all knobby throat and elbows. His voice was quiet and rough.
"Yes, tell it, before the fire dies," said the young boys.
"It is two hundred and two hundred and two hundred years from today," Mahele said. "On this day, the turtle-men come from within the lake. Only on this day. They have slumbered in the lake for many lives of men. But this day they are awakened. On this day there are bad deeds in the world."
The air crackled with snaps of insects seeking each other in the dark. The clouds crowded heavily above. The children were silent.
"In the hundreds of years, man has changed. This is much time. Your grandchildren's grandchildren will be dust in the earth. No man that walks in this time so far from now will remember you. This is much time for evil to occur. In this time, men have forgotten their gods. They have forgotten the seasons. They plant the corn in the winter, and it rises in the spring with three ears on a stalk and hair that falls to the ground as if it is weeping. They slaughter the buffalo in the spring, and dry the meat for summer, but leave the hides and bones and the hides and bones get up and walk. The land has become flat where it was in hills and has grown hills where it was flat. The lakes have become black and thick like pitch.
"This is when the turtle-men come. They are slow and thick, and drag themselves over the ground like a turtle, the sun drying the caked mud on their backs. They speak a language that is the sound a man makes when his lungs are wet with death and he coughs. Our people of this future time do not know how to greet the turtle-men. They try to trade. They offer the turtle-men the three-eared corn, but the turtle-men tear down the corn plants and gnaw at the roots. They offer the turtle-men the dry and salted summer meat, but the turtle-men crawl into the camps of our people and gnaw upon the legs and arms of the old ones instead. Finally they offer the turtle-men the youngest children of the village, and the turtle-men take them back to the lake. But the turtle-men return.
"At last it is the last night of our people. The children have been given. The old have grown older and died. One elder is left who is planting the three-eared corn. It is autumn. He plants for hope, but he will sow none. Through the rustling of the orange leaves the turtle-men come, silent and slow, their backs thick and caked, and when the elder has no more strength and lies down, they are the last thing he sees. So comes the end of our people."
A wind set the branches high above them to lifting and sighing. The elders of the tribe had gone to their tents. Only Mahele and the young ones were left.
"Then what?" said one.
Mahele shrugged. The story was over. "I don't know," he said.
"Will this really happen to us?"
Mahele grinned again. They could barely see his face at all. The light of the fire had retired to red outlines among the charcoal. "What do you think?"
Paleomythology
As a geek, I am drawn to science fiction and fantasy. No, wait. As someone who's drawn to science fiction and fantasy, I am a geek. Well. There's no doubt that it's usually a certain type of person who's drawn to those genres over others. Yet I resist the genrefication of sci-fi (or SF, to the SF faithful) and fantasy. I think they're types of literature essential to how we wrestle with the basic questions of life and the universe, where we came from and where we're going, and what it means to be human. In fact in some ways, books like 1984 and the Lord of the Rings have become more firmly enmeshed into our idea of ourselves as a species and a culture than all the great books devoted to a realistic portrayal of our world. It's the indefinable power of myth.
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were obsessed with the nature of myth and thought a great deal of its power. In fact, I believe they... Lewis at least... held myth to be higher and more important than truth. I have no particular romantic notions about myth. But I do believe it has its own place of importance, separate from the place of a good story or allegory or regular old noble literature. There's something in us that wants to believe in good and evil, in the seductive drama of archetypes, in things having meaning beyond what we can see.
But back to the geeks. I've been pondering the nature of geekhood. Specifically, what did computer geeks do before there were computers? Lock themselves in towers and invent, I suppose. Looms and millworks and things. What about before there were looms and millworks? What about before mathematics and written language? Did the chronically technical and analytic and dreamy exist? What did we do? Was there science fiction before there was science?
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were obsessed with the nature of myth and thought a great deal of its power. In fact, I believe they... Lewis at least... held myth to be higher and more important than truth. I have no particular romantic notions about myth. But I do believe it has its own place of importance, separate from the place of a good story or allegory or regular old noble literature. There's something in us that wants to believe in good and evil, in the seductive drama of archetypes, in things having meaning beyond what we can see.
But back to the geeks. I've been pondering the nature of geekhood. Specifically, what did computer geeks do before there were computers? Lock themselves in towers and invent, I suppose. Looms and millworks and things. What about before there were looms and millworks? What about before mathematics and written language? Did the chronically technical and analytic and dreamy exist? What did we do? Was there science fiction before there was science?
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Walking <= Preaching
St. Francis of Assisi said: "It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."
My vocational fantasy involves my taking on the role of a latter-day Carl Sagan, using writing to bring the awe and wonder of science to the masses, with a strong conservation message thrown in. I'm a long way from realizing this fantasy. I don't have a solid background in science and my writing could stand some improvement. I am not sure I'm well suited to bring awe and wonder to anyone. I am good at bringing long, theoretical diatribes to the masses, but there's plenty of that in the world already.
It's difficult sometimes to look at how far I am from meeting my life's goals. And I am goal-oriented. I pay lip service to respecting the journey but I only have eyes for the destination. I suspect I'll always have some difficulty stopping to smell the roses. Yet St. Francis's quote reminds me that the journey and the destination are, at heart, the same... or if they aren't, they should be.
I give speeches and tours at the Mystic Aquarium. There's a lot I like about the job, but I've always tended to look at it as a stepping stone. Something I'm doing for now until I can do what I really want to do. It wasn't until I stumbled on that quote that I realized how much of what I wanted to do... that is, preaching about conservation... was something I was already getting paid to do. Yet I don't tend to terribly value it or take advantage of it. I have a lot of complaints. It's hard to give a good speech to a mixed crowd of adults and children. It's hard when you don't have a captive audience. It's hard when people have come to be entertained and not to learn. It's hard to be extemporaneous when my strength is writing. What arises from my day of speeches is like a jumble of rocks compared with what could be sculpted with time and paper and a self-selecting audience who actively wanted to learn about the matter at hand.
It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching. Why is it no use? St. Francis would have to answer that, but I'll give it my best student's guess. In the end, it's not logic or rhetoric that moves people, but passion and enthusiasm, awe and wonder. And love. If the sermon is something to be commuted to, something we take a long drive to while our mind wanders, does it differ much from "just a job"? Likewise if I let my attention wander on what I see as a long commute to a writing career and happiness, am I just commuting to work? And will my writing be no more than work?
I am good at bringing long, theoretical diatribes to the masses (thus the blog). I'm not always so good at finding practical applications for theory. I am not going to go in to work tomorrow and find the job suddenly fulfilling. All my old complaints will go on. But perhaps it is a thing that can be viewed as both 100% journey and destination, rather than say... 50% journey, 0% destination as I tend to view it now. As if it's only half-helping me get to somewhere I haven't even begun to approach.
Well, eschewing idealism for practicality, maybe I'll just aim to see it as, say, 75% journey, 10% destination. Mostly helping me to get somewhere that is already a little bit realized.
Maybe that makes it 10% more than just a job. Wouldn't that be nice?
My vocational fantasy involves my taking on the role of a latter-day Carl Sagan, using writing to bring the awe and wonder of science to the masses, with a strong conservation message thrown in. I'm a long way from realizing this fantasy. I don't have a solid background in science and my writing could stand some improvement. I am not sure I'm well suited to bring awe and wonder to anyone. I am good at bringing long, theoretical diatribes to the masses, but there's plenty of that in the world already.
It's difficult sometimes to look at how far I am from meeting my life's goals. And I am goal-oriented. I pay lip service to respecting the journey but I only have eyes for the destination. I suspect I'll always have some difficulty stopping to smell the roses. Yet St. Francis's quote reminds me that the journey and the destination are, at heart, the same... or if they aren't, they should be.
I give speeches and tours at the Mystic Aquarium. There's a lot I like about the job, but I've always tended to look at it as a stepping stone. Something I'm doing for now until I can do what I really want to do. It wasn't until I stumbled on that quote that I realized how much of what I wanted to do... that is, preaching about conservation... was something I was already getting paid to do. Yet I don't tend to terribly value it or take advantage of it. I have a lot of complaints. It's hard to give a good speech to a mixed crowd of adults and children. It's hard when you don't have a captive audience. It's hard when people have come to be entertained and not to learn. It's hard to be extemporaneous when my strength is writing. What arises from my day of speeches is like a jumble of rocks compared with what could be sculpted with time and paper and a self-selecting audience who actively wanted to learn about the matter at hand.
It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching. Why is it no use? St. Francis would have to answer that, but I'll give it my best student's guess. In the end, it's not logic or rhetoric that moves people, but passion and enthusiasm, awe and wonder. And love. If the sermon is something to be commuted to, something we take a long drive to while our mind wanders, does it differ much from "just a job"? Likewise if I let my attention wander on what I see as a long commute to a writing career and happiness, am I just commuting to work? And will my writing be no more than work?
I am good at bringing long, theoretical diatribes to the masses (thus the blog). I'm not always so good at finding practical applications for theory. I am not going to go in to work tomorrow and find the job suddenly fulfilling. All my old complaints will go on. But perhaps it is a thing that can be viewed as both 100% journey and destination, rather than say... 50% journey, 0% destination as I tend to view it now. As if it's only half-helping me get to somewhere I haven't even begun to approach.
Well, eschewing idealism for practicality, maybe I'll just aim to see it as, say, 75% journey, 10% destination. Mostly helping me to get somewhere that is already a little bit realized.
Maybe that makes it 10% more than just a job. Wouldn't that be nice?
Monday, May 16, 2005
The Paving of America
The light coming through the pines was orange. Chris thought it was a five o'clock light, even though it was summer now; now it was eight o'clock. But six months ago it would have been a five o'clock light, bringing on the sharp evening of January. Despite the summer softness of the air it might as well have been five o'clock. Time to come home, time for supper. Time to begin the gathering-in.
But it was July and the evening kept stretching, like Eliot's patient on a table. The trees seemed in a constant exhale, breathing skin-temperature air at her as the hovercar whooshed past. She turned her head and her hair dragged over her face, painting over the view: hundreds of dandelions bobbing back up, righting themselves after the brushing thrum of the passing car bowed them under. The whip of air under the car seemed wild, but once it passed, everything unfolded and sat back up as if untouched. She lay down in the seat, her head on the armrest. The car followed the relays buried beneath the dandelions. The sun followed the car. Here and there its warm fingers touched a chunk of old asphalt, some crumbling piece of the empire that had been pulled low by the flowers. They were just chunks. They were grown upon. They fit in.
She was thinking about Jeremy. Jeremy in Portland, Jeremy at a business meeting, Jeremy making strained conversation over drinks with his boss. Jeremy Jeremy. So far away. When he came back he'd be tired. He'd want to wait until later. He'd want it to go on as it was. He'd want supper and a drink. He'd want to be alone. Chris wanted things badly to work; she knew it. She knew it'd go on until she felt worse, and worse, and then. But she couldn't leave him this summer. Not while she was still thinking about him every day. Not when all she really wanted was to have him in the seat next to her, her feet in his lap. He'd sat here only once with her, on an evening like this, but it had been enough.
She let herself fall asleep thinking about that. The car whooshed on, its fans serious, quiet. The sunlight began to touch only the tops of trees. The car was taking her home to her quiet apartment. It was the gathering-in. The patient on the table was yawning and sitting back up. The sun that warmed Portland in the West was setting on New England. For twenty miles behind her the dandelions bobbed up and stood, golden to the last.
But it was July and the evening kept stretching, like Eliot's patient on a table. The trees seemed in a constant exhale, breathing skin-temperature air at her as the hovercar whooshed past. She turned her head and her hair dragged over her face, painting over the view: hundreds of dandelions bobbing back up, righting themselves after the brushing thrum of the passing car bowed them under. The whip of air under the car seemed wild, but once it passed, everything unfolded and sat back up as if untouched. She lay down in the seat, her head on the armrest. The car followed the relays buried beneath the dandelions. The sun followed the car. Here and there its warm fingers touched a chunk of old asphalt, some crumbling piece of the empire that had been pulled low by the flowers. They were just chunks. They were grown upon. They fit in.
She was thinking about Jeremy. Jeremy in Portland, Jeremy at a business meeting, Jeremy making strained conversation over drinks with his boss. Jeremy Jeremy. So far away. When he came back he'd be tired. He'd want to wait until later. He'd want it to go on as it was. He'd want supper and a drink. He'd want to be alone. Chris wanted things badly to work; she knew it. She knew it'd go on until she felt worse, and worse, and then. But she couldn't leave him this summer. Not while she was still thinking about him every day. Not when all she really wanted was to have him in the seat next to her, her feet in his lap. He'd sat here only once with her, on an evening like this, but it had been enough.
She let herself fall asleep thinking about that. The car whooshed on, its fans serious, quiet. The sunlight began to touch only the tops of trees. The car was taking her home to her quiet apartment. It was the gathering-in. The patient on the table was yawning and sitting back up. The sun that warmed Portland in the West was setting on New England. For twenty miles behind her the dandelions bobbed up and stood, golden to the last.
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