I would not describe myself as a person with an easy relationship with my emotions. Iíve even been called ìVulcan.î Never with malice, though. No oneís ever treated me with true malice. I almost wish someone would. I could fight back, then, because Iíve a sharp tongue when the situation requires it. But see, thatís wit. My weapons are words and devastating logic. When called on to fight with anything else, I always lose.
My love of words, oddly, tends to cover up the fact that I donít say much. Itís not that I donít talkóget me going and Iíll cheerfully babble about the most esoteric topics. The lesser known Greek myths. The old English custom of ìlifting day.î What makes Betelgeuse my favorite star (itís the first one I knew by name) and Delta Leonis my second (I just always thought it sounded cool, and besides, itís in my zodiac sign). But while I talk on and on I never say anything likeÖHell. I canít even provide examples. Things people say when expressing their desires or when something is making them uncomfortable or when they feel sheer gratitude for someoneís existence. And I know these are rarely expressed by anyone in so many words. ìHello. I am overcome by your beauty and greatly desire your body this evening.î I mean that I donít even know the code-talk, the language of movement, the subtle non-verbals which for other people seem forceful enough to drive home meaning.
Iím getting beyond the issue at hand. All I wish to say is that the emotional landscape is, for me, closed space. And my problem is that some decisions cannot be reasoned, only intuited.
I wrote my first story before I could write.
It was called "The Magic Cat and Mouse Show." I suppose I named it "Show" because I thought I was writing for television. The plot, as I remember it, featured a talking cat and a talking mouse (this ability was what rendered them "magic") in a classic adversarial relationship. The mouse gets lost in a perilous forest and the cat sets out to find him. At some point, too, the mouse may have saved the cat's life. They are then friends happily ever after.
I drew the whole story when I was three or four, so the cat and mouse were both vague shapes only distinguished by comparing their sizes. The trees in the forest looked like massive lollipops. The action moved forward through dialogue indicated through hatchmarks, the way Woodstock's speech is rendered in Peanuts, since I couldn't write words. A part of each page looked like this:
lllllll llll lllllll lllllll llllllll
I would take the story round to my mom and dad, sisters and brothers, and translate the words fresh for them.
I told my first story before I could talk.
"Magic Cat and Mouse Show" I remember. This one I know only through what I've been told.
I was meeting a cousin for the first time. I would have been around one year old, she one and a half. We'd gotten ourselves a catalog of some sort (in other versions of the story it's a dictionary or encyclopedia), and we spent a mad afternoon flipping through it, pointing things out on each page to each other, "reading" aloud what we found, hysterically giggling. It was all gibberish. Neither one of us could talk.
May I always attempt what is beyond my abilities.
Years back this fella Peter Brook, an amazing playwright, adapted the Hindu scriptures, the Mahabharata, into a play that was shown as a miniseries on television. An extraordinary thing. I havenít seen it in years so I may not remember it right, but towards the end a man dies and finds himself in Paradise. He looks around for the rest of his family, his clan, and heís told ìThey didnít end up here, actually.î So he says, ìWell, wherever theyíre gone, thatís where I want to be, too.î He forsakes Paradise for his family. Thatís a tradeoff that fascinates me.
...or country song, or folk song, or whatever.
Let out your inner Bob Dylan and give us a verse or two of your number one single in your other life, you genius songwriter you.
Confessional poetry is not my subject here, and is not at all so simple a subject that it can be dealt with quickly. Yet a few remarks are called for. Poems of the confessional school--whose "I" voices are the authors' voices and so intended, and whose texts are so often aggrieved and aggressive, frantic and self-involved--seem to me more catharsis than art, more memoir than poem. I turn from them having learned a little about the authors perhaps, but nothing at all about the world beyond personal frenzy, the huge energies it can produce, the darkness it can long for, the anguish and anger that can pour forth from it, like rain. In a hundred years I suspect such poems will be seen as a derivative of therapy, that exercise in which the "I" is encouraged to become, as once indeed in infancy it felt itself to be, the center of the world.
And yet such poems can and often do demonstrate enormous skill, and within their frantic pages human suffering and human courage is plain to see. I think it quite possible that their fabric of rent privacy, of pain and frustration, is one of the elements that played an important role in preparing the climate in which the more recent school of poetry has blossomed, producing poems in which private life, personal experience is used by persons from many ethnic or cultural backgrounds. But, in these cases the stories are told for a clear purpose--to reveal something of a previously ignored part of humanity, to reveal injustice, to inform and thus move, to excite change. In such poems the subject is never the poet only, or the poet's life only; rather the personal experience is presented as part of history, and part of the present--the present that could bend like hot glass, should the human heart at last listen--should the human reader enter the poem and understand, through the experience of the poem, what it has not understood before. The work of art is, as we know, available to all--to the well and to the ill. Paintings by psychotic patients, with their terrible dance upon the canvas, are often enough stunning. But it takes health--and health takes release from the crushing fist of self-concern--for poems to escape their own creator and genesis and belong to the world of shining and useful things.
--Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures
She crossed the largest ocean, abandoning Te Tsung and silk roads, pharaohs and Heliopolis. The Phoenix found herself first in a land of mountains, then in a flat country, and then in the home of rolling hills cut by the widest river sheíd ever seen. She took perch there.
She had a commanding view from a bluff in a straight-limbed hornbeam, on a top branch, surrounded by eagles. The great birds turned spirals above the brown water and staked claim on driftwood. She was enjoying the vigil for a change of season here when a small sound reached her from the other shore. That canít be a gyrfalcon, she thought. Weíre too far south. She heard it again, a cry to pierce the soul. No mistaking it this time. Catapulting herself from the tree, the Phoenix crossed the river fast as a deer leaping a stream
In no time she reached a human city much as many sheíd seen recently, but largerócone-shaped huts with great plumes of smoke pouring from them into the frosty air, large earthworks capped with wooden shelters, all held by a sharp-planked fence. And in the center a basket-weave cage full of noisy, snow-white birds.
The Phoenix saw this as she flew circuits around the city. Then she discovered a small clutch of people, all holding large baskets, standing at a break in the stockade fence. They clustered around a young man passing out pumpkins, butternut squash, and other such winter fare. They touched him like pilgrims seeking blessing. No one turned to look as the great bird spiraled down, coming to earth some yards away.
She gave herself a human form. She was a young woman in a red and gold feathered cloak, and she wore a carved bird mask over her face. When she came close, the young man distributing food raised a hand, and all those gathered around him placed their baskets on their heads and took paths away from the city, chatting and hugging cloaks around themselves. He was alone when she reached him. His face was heavily tattooed, and large bronze globes hung from his ears, but his eyes were brilliant as black diamonds. His eyes made her think of Te Tsung.
ìI have come to train for the winter dance,î she lied.
He moved his head to say ìno,î eyes locked on hers in the carved face. ìI saw you. You fell from the sky.î
ìThen that is what I did.î
ìCan you tell me who you are? I know of a Birdman, but no birdwomen.î
ìIt is all right to ask. I am the daughter of the Sun.î
He said, ìAnd I am the chief of this city. My name is not something I may share.î
He led her into the city. Everywhere there were clusters of huts thatched with prairie grass. There was one woman repairing her hutís entrance. As the chief approached she stopped and threw herself to the ground before him. He, in turn, knelt by her side and cupped his hands on her hair, again like a blessing. The woman rose and touched his hands, then went back to her work.
Once the chief and the Phoenix had gone further, he said, ìIt is little enough for me to do, but it means much to them.î
ìReaching out like that?î
ìYes. My fatheróhe ruled this city as a hard man. No one could look at his face and live.î He stopped, leaned down and pinched a bit of cold earth from the ground, crumbling it in his fingers. Then he continued in the voice of a speech-maker, ìI saw how he was feared, even hated, and everyone worked slow for him. When I became chief, I gave out twice as much food. I learned the faces of all I met. And I told them, when they brought earth to the mounds, the more they brought the more the mounds belonged to them, not to me. Now I rule thousands, and look how the temple touches the sky!î
They were standing in front of it now, and it was magnificentóa great earthwork with a base as wide as the Great Pyramid in the Pharaohís land, terracing upward to a flat plateau, on which stood a large wooden buildingóthe temple.
ìWe were not given mountains on our land,î the chief was saying. ìOne of my ancestors had a visionóthe Birdman told him we were to make our own. No better way to commune with the sky.î
ìSpeaking of birds,î the Phoenix said, turning toward the basket cage next to them on the plaza.
The chief went to the cage and took a large cloth from its side. ìArenít they beautiful?î he said. ìThey came at great cost from the people in the north. See this.î He unfurled the cloth with a snap and let it fall to the ground. It was a heavy cloak, cut in the shape of a bird, almost entirely covered with white feathers. ìIt is to be my wedding cloak. Itís nearly finished. My birds do not part with their feathers easily.î
ìPlease free them,î the Phoenix said softly.
ìWhat? I canít do that.î
ìI can ask you to do it, and then I can command you.î
His words took on a formal tone. ìYou want the cage open? I give the task to you, Sun-daughter. It is not my will that they should be free, so it is not my duty to do.î
ìAll right.î She swept the tips of her fingers over the roof of the cage, but when they touched the wood they were not fingers, they were flames. The gyrfalcons shrieked and beat the sides of the prison with their wings. The fire went out when the Phoenix raised her hand, leaving a sizable gash in the structure. The birds pushed and shoved until they were all through.
The Phoenix flew over the vast checkerboard that was Chíang-an, the capital city. The sky was cloaked in clouds; if any scampering people looked up as they hustled from tea shops and gem dealers, they would have only seen a dark feathered silhouette crossing overhead, making for the palace.
She saw the emperor in his gardens in an open courtyard, his head low, pacing like an elderly tiger. She let herself fall from the sky. When she landed, the eyes in his otherwise inscrutable face were wide. She shook herself, arced her wings until they were arms, a change slipping over until her form was clothed in human skin, scarlet feathers become silk, talons now tiny feet.
The emperor, clearly overcome, bowed low. ìI am at your feet.î
She touched his shoulder. ìRise, Te Tsung.î
ìMy lady Phoenix, this is a most great honor.î
ìPerhaps not as great as you think. I come in private.î
ìI was told to see the Phoenix in an emperorís reign means he has done right for the kingdom?î
ìYes, but no one else has seen me.î
He pondered this. ìSo if I were to tell anyone you have favored me this wayÖî
ìóThey would think you were boasting without cause, yes.î
Te Tsung hung his head even lower. ìThen I am being punished?î
She let out her breath. ìYou are proving my decision right, Te Tsung. I came here today to tell you I am leaving your country. Your descendants and all the emperors after youónone of them will see me again.î
ìYou are leaving?î he asked, dumbfounded.
ìYes. And one of the reasons I am is that you humans think my every move involves you!î She saw his stricken face and softened her tone. ìI cannot be the arbiter anymore, judging good and bad emperors. There is too much potential for abuse. My motheróyour ancestor, the Empress Wu, she warned my motheróshe should have listenedóî
ìMy lady, forgive me,î the emperor interrupted, ìbut your mother visited the Empress Wu? She who dared call herself ëDivine Empress Who Rules the Universeí?î
ìOh, yes. She came to visit one of her festivals. Surely you knew thatóit was a very public appearance; Empress Wu needed all the supportÖî She stopped, feeling sick. ìYou had not been told.î
ìOnly of the Empress Wuís wickedness.î He turned and began to pace again. The Phoenix followed. ìYou are right to leave. We are such an evil race we cannot even let history stay true. I was pondering this when you came, trying to untangle conflicting stories of my ancestors. I wonder whether anyone will remember well of me.î
ìKnow for yourself you have done well,î she told him. ìPublic acclaim I cannot give you, but I will give you that.î
ìIt was wrong of me to want more. That is a great enough gift.î
ìIt will have to be enough. It is the last gift I can give you.î She bowed to him. His face was a mystery again. She raised her arms up, brought them down as wings, and Te Tsung was alone in his garden once more.
This piece is so old, the Quilt-of-the-Month raffle no longer exists.
I grew up swaddled in quilts.
I was born on a Thursday, quilting day at St. Thomas of Aquin, our parish church. By that time, my mother, had been quilting there two years. (She remembers starting in 1973 because that was the year my brother started morning kindergarten, leaving her mornings free.)
I spent nearly every Thursday the first five years of my life in the church basement. During grade school I ate lunch with the quilters. In the summer I learned to stitch with ladies I called Mrs. Korte, Mrs. Hartlieb, or Mrs. Koppe but thought of as Martha, Marge or Charlotte. I also had the important duty of watching the coffee pot and reporting when the coffee was ready.
It's no surprise, then, that I have an interest in keeping the art of quiltmaking alive. It's also no surprise that I am especially interested in helping the quilters at St. Thomas stay active.
I don't mean to imply public demand for quilts has slackened. Quilts are ubiquitous, as they always have been, since someone discovered long long ago how three layers of fabric stitched together are warmer than one. Fewer people use them as dowries, but more people use them as artwork. They are even used to make statements--witness the AIDS Quilt by the Names Project or the wolf-themed quilt done by the Wild Canid Survival Center some years back.
Still, the future of quilting, and the future of the quilting circle, is uncertain. Young quilters more often work alone. Quilting circles are mostly comprised of elderly women. As they become ill or die, not enough young quilters replenish the ranks.
St. Thomas is a microcosm of this trend. Not very long ago, a good day was fifteen women working around two full size quilts. Now my mother says she's lucky if seven women join her. The three I mentioned earlier--Martha, Marge and Charlotte--have all died. Martha was head of the quilters before my mother. Marge was my favorite when I was very young. We shared a game: I would build a tower of blocks, she would shuffle up to it and raise her foot as if to kick the tower down, and then at the last moment she'd "change her mind." I knew that tower never faced a real threat from her. Charlotte I remember not so much from quilting day as by her food surplus. She'd call us as soon as she had come home from working a fish fry; she would have a few gallons of leftover cole slaw to share.
All these women joined the circle for one simple reason: quilting alone is boring. Non-quilters don't realize how repetitive it is to do that one stitch over yards and yards of fabric. They don't realize how long it takes to complete one quilt. One of Martha's favorite stories was of the brother at St. Mary's who asked the circle there, "So how many of those do you finish in a night?" (The quilters at St. Thomas may finish one quilt in two months.)
A quilting circle divides the work that might be too much for one. However, it benefits more people than just its participants. St. Thomas' group certainly benefited me. My mother tells me that a chief reason she brought me along on Thursdays was that a "crabby old lady" lived near us. She wanted me to grow up knowing senior citizens who were cheerful, giving souls.
Today, St. Thomas' circle functions the way it always has: Someone brings in embroidered patches or a patchwork top. My mother marks the top with a pattern to stitch. After the quilt is bordered, stitched and bound, it is raffled through Quilt-of-the-Month ticket sales and proceeds go to the church.
St. Thomas' active quilting circle is a rarity these days. With the shortage of hands, many once-thriving circles in St. Louis have disbanded. Sometimes this brings new blood to St. Thomas--when Nazareth United Church of Christ's circle quit, two members took up quilting here.
I know people who have taken classes in quilting, bought pattern books, bought finished quilts themselves and marvel at their beauty. I suspect that many think there are no quilting circles left, that if they want to quilt they must stitch alone. I advise any who have this thought to stop by St. Thomas of Aquin's church basement some Thursday morning. There'll be coffee waiting for you.
The cat-curse was broken by a sweet, pudgy girl tabby I called Thomasina after a cat in a Disney movie. She strolled into my backyard and showed no compunction about being friends. Walking through the alley across the street one day, I spotted Thomasina in someone elseís yard. Not just anyoneís yardóthe crazy cat ladyís yard. My friends in the neighborhood had warned me about her. But if Thomasina thought she was okayÖ
The crazy cat ladyís name was Netta. I started to visit her often to read Calvin and Hobbes comics to her, help her brush all those cats, and check her charges for fleas and ear mites. She had a house of monstrous proportions. The basement was big enough to stable horses in and the upstairs, never used, nonetheless smelled of cat urine. She spent most of her time in the dimly lit middle room on the first floor. The windows looked out on the brick of the neighboring house and the bulb in the one lamp was maybe giving out 25 watts. I sat on a lumpy yellow upholstered chair while Baby, her shyest cat, played the back-and-forth game, turning figure eights around my legs. Baby would occasionally stretch out her declawed paws on the furniture as if to scratch, which always made Netta giggle: ìOh, look! Sheís doing her nails!î
Nettaís regulars included Baby, Sammy the grey Persian, Thomasina and Sugar. Sugar looked like her mama had been a calico and her daddy a longhair. She had a fluffy Persian tail, all brown and black and gold, and a silksoft shorthaired body, white save for one or two dabs of color to match her tail. Her voice was soft and musical, high-pitched, a soprano to Thomasinaís alto. She was dainty but not prim, like if the prettiest girl in class was also the kindest.
Some mornings in the summer when I was thirteen or fourteen I would sit on my porch steps and watch the sun come up. Some mornings when I did this Sugar would be wandering down the street, sheíd see me and come running to keep me company, singing little trills all the way.
But Netta had a mean neighbor who put rat poison in his backyard. Sugar ate some and died. I found this out through someone else. That day when I went to see Netta she said she was looking for Sugar. ìSheís usually around by now; have you found her anywhere?î I had to look into that childlike old face and say a bad person had killed her beautiful cat.
That night at home I cried harder for Sugar than I had cried for my fatherís death, perhaps because every death contains every other one.
One of the things that I find most distinctive about childhood is that back then I understood the world and today I donít. Back then, cause and effect were so intimately linked that if you were to ask me why somethingóanythingóhappened, I would have an answer for you promptly.
This is true for the Tiger Cold Shoulder Incident, for instance. Before I was five, a frequent visitor to the house was a stray orange tabby I naturally named Tiger. He came by all the time, and we were very friendly. Then I took a trip to New York for the summer with my parents. When I got back to St. Louis, I noticed Tiger wasnít coming around anymore. According to my brothers and sisters, he had shown up at the house once or twice, but after a time gave up looking for me. I found this exceptionally sad. There had been no way for me to let Tiger know I wasnít intentionally ignoring him, so now certainly he held a grudge. For the next few years I noticed the neighborhood cats just didnít seem as friendly as they once had been. Instead of greeting me and running up to get petted, theyíd dart away no matter how gently I approached. Cause and effect: Tiger had felt snubbed, so he turned the hearts of all other cats from me. It was just the way things were, and though I was saddened by this turn of events, it didnít even occur to me that my view might not be accurate.
One of my crushes with the nonexistent is on Westley from The Princess Bride. I'm thinking there should be a revival of swashbuckler movies just so I can see Cary Elwes play with swords more.
(Merton has arrived for a retreat at a Trappist monastery)
At the end of the avenue, in the shadows under the trees, I could make out the lowering arch of the gate, and the words: "Pax Intrantibus."
The driver of the car did not go to the bell rope by the heavy wooden door. Instead he went over and scratched on one of the windows and called, in a low voice:
"Brother! Brother!"
I could hear someone stirring inside.
Presently the key turned in the door. I passed inside. The door closed quietly behind me. I was out of the world.
The effect of that big, moonlit court, the heavy stone building with all those dark and silent windows, was overpowering. I could hardly answer the Brother's whispered questions.
I looked at his clear eyes, his greying, pointed beard.
When I told him I came from St. Bonaventure's, he said drily:
"I was a Franciscan once."
We crossed the court, climbed some steps, entered a high, dark hall. I hesitated on the brink of a polished, slippery floor, while the Brother groped for the light switch. Then, above another heavy door, I saw the words: "God alone."
"Have you come here to stay?" said the Brother.
The question terrified me. It sounded too much like the voice of my own conscience.
"Oh, no!" I said. "Oh, no!" And I heard my whisper echoing around the hall and vanishing up the indefinite, mysterious heights of a dark and empty stair-well above our heads. The place smelled frighteningly clean: old and clean, an ancient house, polished and swept and repainted and repainted over and over, year after year.
"What's the matter? Why can't you stay? Are you married or something?" said the Brother.
"No," I said lamely, "I have a job..."
--Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
An excerpt from a long fantasy story. The narrator, Eshtine, is a tigress who has learned she has the capacity to shapeshift; this is about how she learns the craft of it from her cousin, a tiger named Neekohl. (Key facts you need to know first: Eshtine's fur is black with yellow stripes, unlike the usual tiger coloration of yellow with black stripes. And her eyes change from green to red when she is angry.)
My initial experiments in shifting were not uniformly successful. Neekohl aided me as much as he could, but that didnít take me very faróit was as though I needed to feel a sensation Iíd never felt, or flex a phantom muscle. Neekohl had no words to describe the process I had to undergo. The best he could do was to guide me to the threshold of the experience, to see if some long dormant instinct would awaken in me then.
ìTry this,î he suggested, stretching to lay full length on the ground in front of me so the sunlight glinted in his fur. ìConcentrate on my coat. See if you can make your stripes match mine.î
With his guidance I went through the preliminary steps. I slowed my breathing and listened for my heartbeat. Then I cast from my awareness the sound of my breaths, my heart, my blood pumping past my ears. I patiently ignored the outer noises of birds and wind and tasty morsels scurrying past us into burrows; I willed my tail into stillness so the flies which settled on my skin wouldnít disturb me by buzzing away.
Only one sound remained now, the subtlest sound of all. I had never heard it before but now it seemed all-pervasiveóthe sound of my fur, its constant motion. In every region of me (and in my state of utter attention, I seemed huge as a continent), at every moment, I heard millions of sproutings and sheddings. The noise nearly maddened me. But I focused tighter and discovered something interestingóblack fur and gold fur made different sounds. I could predict which was about to appear above my skin. Armed with this insight, I pulled back from the microcosm. ìNeekohl? What do I do next?î
ìYou hear them?î
ìI did.î
ìThen look at my fur, and tell your fur to be like mine. No, donít screw your face up like that. You tell your legs what to do, you tell your tail what to do; why should this work any different?î
So I plunged back down and told gold fur to grow instead of black and vice versa. They did as they were told. Then I commanded old fur to spill out, and I was a new tigress. When I knew the technique, Neekohl insisted I practice many times in succession. ìGet to the moment,î he explained, ìwhere you no longer mind the mechanics. Get to the moment where youíre only concentrating on telling your fur to act like mine. Let the mechanics act on their own.î
I kept my eyes on him. I concentrated on the ridge of his shoulder, where the muscles below raised skin and fur so high they threw shadows against his body. His stripes were bunched together as though they radiated out from here to the rest of his body, ìAnd then out to touch my skin,î I thought.
But the magic was sharper now than when Iíd started. In my transformation this time I had changed my stripes, but I had also adopted Neekohlís muscle. My teacher blinked twice to see me bulging in the shoulders further than Iíd ever bulged before. ìVery good,î he said finally. ìNow switch back.î
Some time later, I was watching a human youngling from behind a thin lattice wall of thornbushes. The girl never felt my eyes on her, though I concentrated so much of myself into my eyes I thought she would feel a tigressí weight pressed against her. And all she had was the sort of hair I wanted.
ìNo human is perfect, but you can be,î Neekohl had said. He meant I should not model my human form on one female. I should look for the ideal nose on one, the ideal ears on another.
I disliked this business. I found them all ugly. Every face appeared marred by an injury which squashed the noses in; every mane of hair grew grotesquely long and stringy. The femalesí bodies in particular were lumpy in the oddest places, reminiscent of camels. I was falling deeper in love with my sleek, aerodynamic form the more I pondered the alternative, but then I remembered how my body betrayed me. I had to go through with this.
Once I memorized the ravenís wing hair on this girl, my catalogue was complete. I had already chosen a knife edge of a nose from a woman Iíd seen silhouetted against sunset of the night before; chin and cheekbones, mouth and forehead from a bored girl sitting in a linen shop; strong running feet from a dancer (large feet, but I figured Iíd need the support if I was to lift my body so far from the ground). I must have collected in my memory bits and pieces of twenty different women, hoping to shape them together not as bits and pieces but as a total person. Me. Me, only human, not tigress. The prospect threatened to awe me. So that I wouldnít have to think about it for much longer, I worked more quickly and for longer periods of time.
ìDonít do it piecemeal,î Neekohl warned me. ìDonít practice by changing a claw to a finger. Youíll only get used to seeing a human finger on a tigress paw.î
So I couldnít practice the change itself until I had assembled my complete form. I could, however, improve my concentration, listen over and over to the wave of noise from my living fur, count the muscles strung over my bones, memorize the map of my tigress body so that I would not lose it forever once I changed.
And I would change, totally changeóexcept for one thing. I would keep my eyes. They would be shaped to fit a human face, and the black in them would not tighten into slits in the light of the sun, but the fire in them would be the sameógreen or red. Neekohl told me flatly: ìYou could not change them if you tried.î
When the time came, it found Neekohl and I sitting up with our tails coiled around our forepaws, facing each other in an unconsciously identical position. I donít know who imitated whom. We sat on a large sunning rock just inside the jungle. It was daylight, and the crystals in the rock sparkled. Generally, we would have been asleep now, if we werenít scouting human models, but Neekohl insisted I shift during the day, when he could see me better and make sure I had memorized the body parts in the right positions.
ìDonít forget clothes,î he said, and then I began.
I had to plunge deeper now than before. This time I was not just listening in on my fur but to my bones. Once I knew every bone, once I knew how tensed or relaxed each muscle was, I breathed one more long breath and gave the order: ìChange.î
It happened very quickly. I think Neekohl was surprised, though less surprised than I was. The composite human female in my mind acted like an air bubble trapped underwater. Held beneath the surface for so long, it rushed upward with alarming speed the moment I freed it. And then the picture in my mind wasnít of a woman any more. It was of a tigress. The woman thinking about a tigress was sitting in a comical position on a sunning rock, facing a tiger.
When I was a little girl playing in my backyard, seven years old or so, a little boy moved in to the house on the corner, two houses away from me. He was very young, so young that the first day I saw him playing in his backyard, beyond two cyclone fences, he pointed at me and asked "Boy?"
"No," I tried to tell him. "Girl." But "boy" meant for him something different. He was an only child so the world was divided into three categories: Mom, Dad and Boy. I was clearly not tall enough to be in the Mom or Dad camp, so I had to be a Boy like him.
His name was Jeff and he was four years younger than me. He was such a tiny thing that my brother could take a baseball glove, sit Jeff in it, and pick him up with one hand. For reasons only he understands, a friend of my brother's decided my name was Fritz and Jeff's name was Johann, and he hailed us by these names every time he saw us together, which was often. I was over at Jeff's to watch movies, play Voltron, splash in his pool. He came to my house and played with the Tinkertoy set that was as big as we were. I set us the task of being unicorns, fairies, genies, witches and warlocks.
I taught him about the Bubble Door. When you blow soap bubbles, sometimes they'll pop near the ground, and where once there was a bubble you'll see a tiny white shroud, like a bit of cobweb. That's the bubble's soul, I told Jeff. If the bubble floats up, up, until you cannot distinguish it from the blue sky, it has not died at all but gone through a blue sky portal into the bubble idea of heaven. So we would not blow bubbles to pop them, we would blow bubbles and wave our arms or blow gently, trying to waft them upward.
Once Jeff found a plastic jewel in the alley behind our houses. If you looked down at its face, it was all blue sparkles. If you held it to the light, it was golden. Look at it from its side, and you saw it was double layered, yellow above, amber beneath.
I coveted it.
Some time later girls at school brought in pyrite, fool's gold; they let me have a glittery chunk. I knew it was worthless, but Jeff didn't know. I hid the pyrite in the alley and drew up a pirate map, presenting it to him later excitedly, as though it was something I had just found. We searched the alley with great care--particular care was taken on my part to ensure Jeff was the one who first put his hand on the treasure. And he did! In the great excitement of discovery it was easy to convince him that, since we'd both worked on finding the pyrite but there was no way of sharing it, he should have this treasure in exchange for letting me keep the marvelous plastic jewel.
I was proud for years to have devised such an elegant plan for getting what I wanted. It did not occur to me that what I had done was manipulative in any way. That is because child-law is different from the code I try to follow now. Child-law is jungle-ferocious, often arbitrary, designed by the older to be binding on the younger. An older child is happy to do the thinking for the younger child. I must have thought of myself as a benevolent despot.
Another fragment out of the Lanfrey story.
Mathemeticians and quantum physicists are the only scientists left who still believe in magic. The latter believe because their newborn science has grown too weird for the rational constructs of the world; math nuts like me believe because numbers always had the irrationality option. I mean, think about it. What's zero? It's nothing, and there's no such thing, according to science. Nature abhors a vacuum. Zero is that which does not exist. Did you ever try to wrap your mind around that? It hurts to. I've kept all these years a magic formula someone wrote for me after a calculus class which showed weird things happening when you put infinity and zero in an equation together. You can do things with numbers that you can't do with anything in the real world. Numbers are outside that world, you know? Immutable. Three will always be three, whether you've got three apples, three Mack trucks, anything.
This is all part of the real reason I had that 30-60-90 triangle. It was just a clear green plastic angle measurer with a ruler on one side, but to me it was so beautiful. Wonderful things, triangles. No matter how small or big, if I could fit this tool over a questionable triangle I'd know the angles on it. Thirty degrees is always thirty degrees--do you have any idea how reassuring that is in a world in constant flux? I can't express it right in words--you see now why I hate English class so.
Now I wasn't always so abstract-thinking when I had that triangle. Mostly I thought of it like a Light Saber. It had a beveled edge so if I twisted it just so, if I sort of flicked it with my wrist, I could make it look like a streak of light would go skittering off. A flick, and the light loaded at the base would run straight up the hypotenuse to the utter tip, and then flash far beyond, hitting its target with laser accuracy.
There was an earlier Lanfrey story. This is part of a later one. It is a story I will write over and over again, I think.
What was our friendship like? What did we talk about? Well, there was fishing. He was good at it. That surprised me, but he told me his family was farm folk, newly transplanted to the city.
He never took me fishing, but he did speak with authority on the subject when I gave him the chance. I loved hearing him talk. I loved it when he talked about things that interested him--his voice caught fire.
He loved flyfishing, and I did too, when the tackle box emerged from its sacred spot in the closet and we sat in front of it fingering the tiny, feathery creations housed in all its partitions. There were fuzzy things with beads dangling from them, and "Superflies" still in their packages claiming the uncanny ability to leap backward in the water. You could tell they were super because they had tiny plastic propellers on them, like the kind on the more stylish beanies.
In school, Lanfrey's knowledge and appreciation of history amazed me. I like history--really, I like dates, I like finding out how much time elapses between events. That's not really liking history; that's my love of math all over again. But at least, it's math applied to real life this time. Lanfrey's appreciation of history had nothing to do with dates, at least until I came along. He wasn't interested in what separated events. He wanted to know what connected them.
"1066," I said, testing him.
"William the Conqueror. Think about it, Ellen. No one's been able to invade that tiny little island for over 900 years. I wonder, has any outsider ever conquered Russia?"
"I don't think so."
"Strange to think, England's as hard to capture as Russia but for entirely different reasons..."
Discussions like these didn't hold my interest as strongly as demonstrations of flyfishing techniques.
"Let's try another one. 1215."
"Magna Carta. John under a tree, right? Different sort of king-under-the-tree situation than Louis."
"What are you going on about?"
"You know. King Louis IX, St. Louis. Sat under a tree and gave just judgments--the original People's Court. And then there's John dragged to the tree, probably, just so those nobles can get something from him. Something about trees and kings."
I was getting into the game now. "And didn't King George talk to them when he was crazy?"
"Wonder if they ever talked back."
That's how we studied. I helped him with history and got trapped in tangents, he helped me with English and suffered my rantings.
"Why do I gotta delve into the deeper meaning of this bull? Can I just read a story and like it without having to justify? What if it's just a matter of taste?"
"Can't you examine your tastes? There aren't underlying reasons for why you like what you do?
"I've never told you what my favorite book is, have I?" I knew I hadn't.
"No," he answered, but then promptly said "Flatland."
"How did you do that?"
And he giggled, so I fell on him like an attacking tigress. He was still laughing at me as I pounced, but as I took his neck in a mock stranglehold my eyes were locked on his. Then his eyes, his smile softened. I was just a little scared of that so I did not soften my look, but I did let my eyes stray over his hair, the line of his jaw. So perfect. He couldn't know.
The first two Nylons cassettes I owned were an import of their debut and Rockapella, at the time their most recent (this was 1989). I had this slim, Art Deco cassette player, and I used to stick in the debut, play to the end of Side A, then Side B, then stick in Rockapella, play that through, stick the debut back in...
I was thirteen. And I was obsessed. Some things just...catch hold of you sometimes, particularly when you're thirteen.
I can still picture the scene of the first time I heard "Up on the Roof." I remember where I was sitting, what I was looking at, how I misheard the lyrics at first and thought he was saying "Darling, you can't share it all with me"--a brave and different sentiment in a love song. I was disappointed to find it was all just a mistake on my part. Later--later the song dug in deep. They all did. Perhaps it was because I was listening to them 20, maybe 30 times a day. I know every note of them now, the intake of every breath.
It was important not to buy all the albums at once; I wanted always to have another to add to my collection. So it was months before I was back at the record store, flipping back and forth between One Size Fits All and Happy Together. Which to buy? Ultimately I was scared of the first because there was a song on it called "Prince of Darkness." In their mid-period had The Nylons gone through a heavy metal/devil-worshipping phase?
Taking Happy Together home, besides vague newly-bought-album unease (Will it be good? Will I like it? Or will I listen once and realize I spent all that allowance money on trash?), I had a more specific concern. The names following the title track weren't that names of The Nylons I knew. "Gary Bonner/Alan Gordon"--had others been in the group in 1987? Such was my complete ignorance of the music biz--I had no idea these names might belong to the songwriters. So three delights awaited me when I pressed "play" that first time. First, after an anxious few opening notes, I heard Arnold's rumbling bass kick in, and I knew these were "my" Nylons. Second, I knew (and already liked) the song! I heard it all the time on Golden Grahams commercials! And finally--it was a beautiful album all the way through. No waste of money here--this was more like an investment.
My niece ate four raviolis (four pieces of ravioli? Four ravioli, the singular of "ravioli" being "raviolus"?) and announced it was because she is four. I told her "Always eat your age."
I recognize this is actually bad advice. What's some good advice you have received? Or at least memorable advice?
Kriegspiel
Devised as an educational game for military schools in the eighteenth century, Kriegspiel was originally played on a board consisting of a map of the French-Belgian frontier divided into a grid of 3,600 squares. Game pieces advanced and retreated across the board like armies.
The original Kriegspiel spawned many imitations and was ultimately supplanted by a version that became popular among Prussian army officers. This used real military maps in lieu of a game board. In 1824 the chief of the German general staff said of Kriegspiel, "It is not a game at all! It's training for war!"
So began a national obsession that defies belief today. The Prussian high command was so taken with this game that it issued sets to every army regiment. Standing orders compelled every military man to play it. The Kaiser appeared at Kriegspiel tournaments in full military regalia. Inspired by overtly militaristic chess sets then in vogue (pieces were sculpted as German marshals, colonels, privates, etc.), craftsmen produced Kriegspiel pieces of obsessive detail. A pale remnant of these Zinnfiguren ("tin figures") survives today as toy soldiers. Layer after layer of complexity acrreted around the game as its devoted players sought ever greater "realism." The rule book, originally sixty pages, grew thicker with each edition. Contingencies of play that were once decided by chance or an umpire were referred to data tables drawn from actual combat.
Claims that the game was behind Prussia's military victories stimulated interest internationally. Prussia's Kriegspiel dry runs of war with Austria supposedly led to a strategy that proved decisive in the Six Weeks' War of 1866. After that, the Austrian Army took no chances and began playing Kriegspiel. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870)--allegedly another Kriegspiel victory for Prussia--spawned a Kriegspiel craze there.
Kriegspiel came to the United States after the Civil War. One American army officer complained that the game "cannot be readily and intelligently used by anyone who is not a mathematician, and it requires, in order to use it readily, an amount of special instruction, study, and practice about equivalent to that necessary to acquire a speaking knowledge of a foreign language." Nonetheless, it eventually became popular in the Navy and at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1905) was the last credited to a nation's playing of Kriegspiel. It became apparent that strategies honed in the game did not always work in battle. Germany's defeat in World War I was a death knell for the game--except, ironically, in Germany itself, where postwar commanders fought each other with tin replicas of the regiments denied them by the Treaty of Versailles.
Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb, William Poundstone
I believe you have to lay it all on the line when engaged in a creative activity; that the secret of great work is great sacrifice, openness...vulnerability.
Have you ever seen the movie or the play "Jeffrey," about gay men living under the specter of AIDS, where a relationship might constitute a death sentence? There's this incredibly moving scene where a priest talks about God, and he says something like "You know what God is? You're at a party, someone tosses a balloon in the air, and you all have to slap at it or kick it, do whatever it takes to keep it from hitting the ground. That balloon--that's God." I found that an amazing image--God as utter vulnerability. Love certainly is. They say that God is love, so it would seem to follow, wouldn't it?
Climb the stairs--no. First tell about the stairs. They are wide enough for troops to march and the bannister bars spin. The bannisters once formed a conveyor belt. They are child-painted, all stars and spirals.
Take the stairs two at a time, pass the two-story slide, wave at Sam in his Samwiches shop, hug an orange-shirted Know-It-All, leave the clacking spindles of the Shoelace Factory behind.
Third floor. An exhibit hall with hundreds of purses to the left, to the right train tracks. Remember to plug in the "Beatnik Bob's" sign. "Cold Beer," it says, an arrow pointing to your post. "Smoking Allowed."
Fish for keys. Undo the padlock on the door which has a Bleeker St. address and a metal plaque: "Deliveries in Rear." Swing the door open, prop it with the wedge of wood. Inside all is neon and unhealthy light, sickly yellow and red bulbs dimly burning round the concession stand. Flip a switch to illuminate the stand's name: "Shrine of Shameless Hucksterism."
It's all flipping switches at the start. Bend down to reach the one by the metallic fringe, the one that turns on the lamp with a woman's body. Now you can see the art on the walls: movie monster paintings by that local wrestler, Wayne St. Wayne, a poster for a (nonexistent) Bob Dylan appearance here, supposedly sponsored by long-defunct cigarette companies. The switch just flipped also backlights a row of "stained glass" icons of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The next switch isn't in Beatnik Bob's Coffeehouse (which serves no coffee, despite the sign proclaiming the availability of White Castle House Blend), but in the Museum of Mirth, Mystery and Mayhem adjacent. You'd say "outside Beatnik Bob's wall" if Beatnik Bob's had one. As it is, you hop down two steps and you're in the Museum. Pass the lamppost and the ice cream vendor's cart. Here's the switch; light up the wall. The wall says "Odditorium" in Day-Glo. The neon here features arcane religious imagery and lightbulbs in a ring stand for global trouble spots. When they all burn out, a note in chalk says, "Peace will be!"
Down the hall is the switch to make the alien Elvis baby glow green in its casket. Up by the shameless shrine the switch lights up information about the Tiny Trailer of Tragedy. Here Madame Rose the psychic will read palms this afternoon.
Now all the lights are on. Go to the circus for ice to dump in the soda bin. Don't forget to crank open the windows of the coffeehouse so people can wave to passengers on the train.
Around about this time last year I was in the observer program--aka "So You Wanna Be a Nun?"--in a cloistered order affectionately known as the Pink Sisters for their bubblegum-colored habits. This piece is taken from the notes I kept during the experience and is about one of the recreation activities I engaged in while there.
----
Today recreation is Chair Dancing Time, as it is every Tuesday and Thursday. I have a choice--I can go to Chair Dancing or watch a documentary on the end of the Inquisition. Actually what Sister says is "Do you want to go the Inquisition?" which, when put that way, has no appeal. Besides, she's been talking up Chair Dancing so much, I want to find out what the fuss is.
So five of us are in Marian Hall, the basement meeting room, doing aerobics while sitting in plastic chairs. These aerobics are done to the exhortations of a perky videotaped instructor. I've been given paper plates--Perky Instructor has us wave these around, pretending they're cymbals, top hats, paddles, etc. as we kick our legs and flail our arms. At some point I realize, "I'm sitting in a plastic chair hoisting paper plates over my head pretending they're a top hat and doing can-can kicks. Everyone around me is a nun dressed in pink and they're hoisting make-believe top hats over their heads and doing can-can kicks too. And I'm having a great time!"
Maybe you'd disagree, but I think these women are about the coolest I've ever met, because they can dance the can-can in their chairs wearing pink habits and be utterly unselfconscious about it. Some of the exercise class on the videotape are going at it with less enthusiasm than these nuns, and a.) presumably they're being paid to act perky and b.) they don't have to wear habits, which aren't ideal aerobics gear.
So mine is a fabulous evening. Chair dancing is serious exercise, too--I'm well worn out before Compline, night prayer. I'm imagining the Pink Sisters recruitment poster: "They work hard. They pray hard. They play hard."
(see note on part one. In the REM song they're alligators, not snakes, but that's about the only difference.)
The phone rings and it's the doctor's assistant, calling to confirm your appointment. You wish you had more faith in the treatments. You know the team that's working with you has the best reputation. This is little consolation--they botched the job so badly three months ago, the last time they attempted your cure. It didn't help to find out Matthew Stephens hemorrhaged for hours when his doctors tried the same job. You can hear your doctor's voice. "Be calm," he says. Even picturing such a thing makes your knees buckle. You feel about blood the way you feel about snakes.
One of the knights in Orkin armor comes up the stairs. He has one of his hands behind his back. "Now, be calm," he says, and the way he seems to pluck his words from your imagination startles you. "I haven't even shown'em to you yet," he says with a nervous laugh. He brings his hand into view. He's holding four dead snakes. Long black stripes mark the outlines of their bodies, which are checkerboarded brown and yellow. They must have been so graceful in life...You thought you hated snakes, but the sight of their limp bodies nearly crumples you into tears. And you never cry.
You don't cry. You say, "They're very beautiful, aren't they?"
Pest man looks at you like you have a forked tongue. "You don't need this kind of beautiful in your house."
He's like Matthew Stephens. He's surrendered to the contradictions of the world. The exterminators leave, and soon you leave too, wanting to walk and think.
You pass a church. That's something else that'd be nice to believe in. The sign out front says "God's word doesn't change; God's word changes us." You disagree. It seems to you that every generation of believers decide their scriptures are about different things. Not that this is inherently wrong, it's just you'd love to think this, or anything, is a firm and sure foundation. To know this last stability is as tempest-tossed as the rest fills you with disquiet.
Beyond those buildings ahead is a park. You see a bright line extending into the sky in that direction--someone flying a kite, you think. But it's not quite right. You squint at the line. It is no nylon wire fading from sight--it is thick, and maybe there are two of them, each a mirror to the other. The day is overcast. The line or lines disappear into the sky as into the Cloud of Unknowing.
You get past the buildings and into the field of grass and trees. Your mouth gapes at the ladder. Two possibilities occur to you at once. You prefer the first. There's a UFO up there, you think. But nudging at your memory are old Sunday School classes. You can even recall a coloring book your teacher gave you once. The cover showed Jacob dreaming just of this as he lay on a stone pillow. No--his ladder had angels. "Be calm," you say to yourself. You don't know if the voice is the doctor's or the exterminator's or yours.
You stand and blink at the ladder awhile. It is very white. Now, close, you see the opaque material of its form. There are crisscrossing lines throughout. It is a ladder of tiny diamond shapes. You recognize shed snakeskin.
You touch a rung. Then you grab and pull, then you snatch an upper rung with both hands and let your feet dangle off the ground. The ladder holds your weight, attached as it may be to nothing, or a UFO, or heaven. You're climbing before you have admitted your desire to do so to yourself. "I can look over the whole city if I climb high enough," you think. But you woke up this Friday morning wanting to leave.
Science and religion/myth--religion is mythical to you, and from you that's no insult--neither are sufficient. You wish you could join one to the other, go to the UFO and go to heaven, or use science to make yourself a myth. Scientists have made monkeys who can glow in the dark, haven't they? Couldn't they graft snakes in the place of your hair? You must have climbed fairly high now. Your thoughts are going strange, like you're lightheaded. But no--you feel fine.
You are among the tendrils of mist. You remember watching steam rise from your mother's coffee pot, the way it made you think of Chinese dragons. You smile--the first time you've smiled all day, though you don't know that. Here be dragons.
And then? Then you enter the cloud. And then? I don't know what happens next. Only you know. You've climbed out of this story, into your life.
(Note of explanation: this entire story is based on an REM song, also called "Hope," from the fine fine album Up. Thus it's probably unpublishable, unless I get a kind go-ahead from some folks in Athens, Georgia.)
----
You wake up on Friday wanting to leave. You don't know where it is you want to go--doesn't matter, really. The desire is for departure, not destination. It's something to do with the dream you were in just before waking. Maybe it was a nightmare. You frown, disentangling yourself from the bedsheets. It didn't feel like a nightmare at the time, but surely it must have been. You hate snakes. Thinking back on it now drips ice on your back--all those slithering bodies, scales rubbing as pythons and constrictors and vipers met and twined. And you were one of them--you still remember the shuddering, like dry heaves, as you left old skin behind. It was the most realistic dream you have ever had. You can't stop yourself from thinking about it. The fright gives way to fascination. Maybe it wasn't a dream, maybe it was like a spirit vision--but that sounds so New Age-y. You're not into spirit visions.
You go over the day in your head. Exterminators in the morning, doctor's appointment in the afternoon. How could a day off be so busy? You sigh and make yourself presentable to the world just before the exterminators show up. They come in a van with a cutesy cartoon drawing of a roach being banged on the head with a sledgehammer. You wonder why ads for exterminators always feature anthropomorphised cartoon bugs. You decide it's because people can't admit to themselves that they're killing other creatures. In cartoons no one ever dies--you can blast anybody with dynamite and he'll be back in the next scene. So if you think of those pests in your house as cartoon characters, you don't feel so guilty about shooting a poison cloud into their living quarters. No, that's not quite right, you think. Bugs are cartoon characters. You had the exterminator here two months ago and already you need him again. Pests always return in the next scene.
You retreat to your room to listen to some music while the killers stalk your basement. You take out the latest Blue CD just to look at it. You still refuse to play it. The photo of the band on the front cover has Matthew and Anjelle in the middle, with Patrick and Laura flanking them two steps behind. The co-lead singers are cheek to cheek facing the camera. Their right hands are touching like Romeo and Juliet's holy pilgrim's kiss. Their demeanor and their stance are exactly alike, each a mirror to the other, though there is little physical resemblance. Your eyes are drawn only to Matthew's, which are green flecked with gold--at least in this light.
You used to think, if you ever met Matthew Stephens, he would see in you a kindred spirit. You would be recognized. After this CD came out, you didn't want him relating to you. He is on a road you don't want to travel. Is it the money they're starting to make? The magazines that are wanting them on their covers? Matthew's illness? (It's your illness too, but that's a worry for later.) Whatever the cause, Matt's eyes have changed from what they once were. He has surrendered to the world he used to rail against, you think, swallowed whole the contradictions of the rock and roll lifestyle. Maybe he's swimming in drink. How sad would that be?
You're just showing us your mild-mannered alter-ego. Who are you really? What's your name when you're wearing the cape and costume? What kind of radioactive animal/meteorite/food eaten past the expiration date gave you your superpowers? What are your superpowers anyway? Do you have any cool weapons? And who is your arch-nemesis?
Remember, folks: DorkGirl is taken.
There is no knowledge that could supply them with bread as long as they remain free. So, in the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: "Enslave us, but feed us!" And they will finally understand that freedom and the assurance of daily bread for everyone are two incomparable notions that could never co-exist! They will also discover that men can never be free because they are weak, corrupt, worthless, and restless. You promised them heavenly bread but, I repeat, how can that bread compete against earthly bread in dealing with the weak, ungrateful, permanently corrupt human species? And even if hundreds or thousands of men follow You for the sake of heavenly bread, what will happen to the millions who are too weak to forego their earthly bread? Or is it only the thousands of the strong and mighty who are dear to Your heart, while the millions of others, the weak ones, who love You too, weak as they are, and who are as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach, are to serve as material for the strong and the mighty? But we are concerned with the weak too! They are corrupt and undisciplined, but in the end they will be the obedient ones! They will marvel at us and worship us like gods, because, by becoming their masters, we have accepted the burden of freedom that they were too frightened to face, just because we have agreed to rule over them--that is how terrifying freedom will have become to them finally! We shall tell them, though, that we are loyal to You and that we rule over them in Your name. We shall be lying, because we do not intend to allow You to come back.
--The Grand Inquisitor to Jesus, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Little Easy bar has a sign in the window proclaiming it an official Mardi Gras establishment. There is an umlaut above the "a" in "Gras" as though The Little Easy considers Mardi Gras a joint German/French celebration. Perhaps it does; it stands, after all, in the shadow of the Anheuser-Busch brewery.
To reach the Little Easy, I drove past massive brick buildings with tiny wrought-iron balconies on their second story. Every second building was a bar. The interior of the Little Easy is not heavily decorated. There are one or two video arcade games and a jukebox. On the inside wall, which is also brick, is the logo for the bar--a hammock strung between the legs of the Arch. Just below the logo is an amp with "JOHNNY FOX" written across the front in white.
The last time I saw Johnny Fox play was a Fourth of July some years back. He was with a band called Villanova Junction then. They were playing outdoors under a little tent during the airshow. Jets would thunder overhead and drown out the band. The sound system wasn't great, even without the jets. Johnny was having trouble with his guitar. Finally he stood still, stared out at the crowd, muttered something about how much this fool guitar had cost--and then broke it. He simply wrenched the neck backward until the wood splintered where the base of the neck had joined the body. I thought, "Now this is rock and roll." A man came through the crowd selling Villanova Junction t-shirts; I bought one. It was black with an intricate cream-colored design. Dice and beer bottles and other assorted symbols of bad living were all woven in.
Today it's just Johnny and a twelve-string guitar and a harmonica. He plays old Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart tunes for the 9 or so people here. Three of us are at tables, the rest are at the bar. The man at the table next to me praises Johnny and says the songs take him back.
Johnny Fox is well named. He looks wild--shoulder-length dark hair under a bandanna, large brown no-nonsense sunglasses, overalls that may be a little long for him. His voice is raspy, gravelly but somehow sweet, with just a hint of vibrato--an ideal rock and roll voice. He sounds like he's listened to a lot of Janis Joplin records. He doesn't treat his guitar kindly. He doesn't break it this time but he bangs down on the chords like a man who's snapped a lot of strings in his day. When he sings a blues song about praying for mercy at the crossroads, he stomps the rhythm; it shakes the floor and rattles the tables.
Toward the end of another song he takes a small step back from the microphone, which is big, old-fashioned, and set just above him so he has to crane his neck to sing into it. He takes another step, another--all small steps, just like he's shuffling his feet. He sings softer as he goes and attacks his guitar a little less cruelly. When he backs into the corner he stops and smiles. "That's my fade-out."
He plays underneath a big screen showing a WNBA game and commercials for Goedeker's Superstores. He plays here every Friday for Happy Hour and then sometimes will play another bar till late in the evening. He's a musician; it's what he does to make money. And if it requires snarling out jeremiads like "Like a Rolling Stone" on a sweltering July evening--hey, there are worse ways to make money. Only when Johnny sings this song, it has lines like "When you ain't got jack shit, you ain't got jack shit to lose."
Johnny Fox has his schedule (and some audio of original songs) at cornerband.com.
I was driving through my neighborhood a couple of nights before the 4th of July. It was 9 o'clock at night and rockets were going off everywhere--fireworks, firecrackers, fizzing sparks arcing over my car, through clutches of young children. I was thinking that if in this country a war is ever fought between the rich and the poor, the poor will win because they are better armed. But then, perhaps, the war has already been fought, has already been won.
---
This morning when I woke up I took out a book on the "Dark Ages." The first chapter was on a subject dear to me: Boadicea, "Boudicca" really, the queen of a British tribe who led a revolt against Roman rule. While Nero was the emperor, she burned the Roman town of Londinium--London. Her tribe had surrendered to the Romans when the invading army first appeared; her husband had been made a "client king," a puppet ruler. His name was Prasutagus. The Romans had left them to themselves, mostly, but when Prasutagus died, some Romans decided they'd be a bit more, well, "hands-on" and seized the property of the tribe. They beat Boudicca in public and raped her daughters. So Boudicca gathered members of her tribe, the Iceni, and recruited other tribes as well, and they went on a rampage, killing Romans, burning their houses, destroying their towns. Though this revolt was eventually put down, the Romans probably saw it as one more good reason not to expend too much energy in conquering Britain. The Roman historians that recorded it (we don't have any Icenian points of view on the subject) tended to be sympathetic to the Iceni. This is how one historian, Tacitus, said Boudicca addressed her troops in the final battle:
"If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and the causes of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve; as for men, they may live and be slaves."
---
This evening I'm probably going to go to a backyard boxing match where there will be, besides combat, bellydancing and a pig roasted on a spit. Oddly enough, when I've told people of my plans, one of the aspects of this event that bothers them most is the eating of a pig roasted on a spit. They'll eat ham, pork and bacon without moral compunction; they just don't want to see the animal their food comes from. Or, as one friend put it, "It's like me and fish. I only like fish when it's breaded squares."
Personally, I think we'd all be better off if we had to see where our food comes from. I also think we'd be better off if, when we fought wars, all combat had to be done face-to-face. We should have to watch the deaths of who and what we kill.
More years passed. Now she knew the world's secret--there was no single mode of existence, just thousands of these hidden societies, each with their own codephrases, each found only if you knew where to look. When she bought a car she drove out to the country every weekend. She would go to the loneliest place she could find and search for a lake or a pond. She'd hike in the woods, then return to the pond at midnight.
She did this for so long, eventually she forgot why. Then she saw something else that made her think of the past in present in conversation. She was in the audience when a man on stage, an actor for many years, watched his younger self on film. The younger man was walking away from the camera. The actor hailed him--and the man on film turned and waved. She found the dreambook again and read her message to herself. The one she needed to meet could be at the next pond out in the woods. She took the drive that weekend with renewed determination.
Still, three more years passed before she found him. By then, the woods were so scarce--where once she'd parked on a dirt road and hiked through endless stands of oak and maple, there was clearcut land and a billboard: "Future Site of Oakland Woodtrails Estates." She drove to the lonely places anyway, even when it took half a day, sometimes all day, to find them. And then there came a night she crept up to a pond so still and black it swallowed the darkness around it. She heard crickets and owls and soft scamperings in the trees--even a wolf in the distance. Then she heard something like a fish breaking the surface of the water to snatch a fly. The sound repeated, and as her eyes adjusted to the near-total dark she saw a tall shape in the middle of the pond. She crept closer, taking care not to end up in the water. The tall shape moved and the sound repeated--footfalls. Footfalls on the pond. She snapped a twig. The man (she saw what he was now) walked toward her.
For a moment she was very afraid. She was, after all, deep in nowhere, alone with a stranger. But he could do what she wanted more than anything in the world to do. "Will you teach me?" she asked.
In response, he came even closer, holding out a hand. With only a moment's hesitation she took it and walked forward, feeling like a little girl splashing through a puddle. "Don't splash so much," he scolded, and made her hold still while he took small steps away. "Look," he said. His feet glided over the surface like a skater's. He had not let go of her hand. She nodded and followed, gradually getting the feel for it. They walked and walked. He loosened his grip; he let go. By then she didn't need to hold on.
They returned to the shore as the first hint of color crept into the sky. He smoothed the leaves away from a flat rock on the bank. She sat next to him. As the sun came up she said, "There's a park close to where I used to live. In it is a tunnel to another world, but I could never get through."
He turned, met her eyes, and gave a slow nod. "Now you can."
They drove back to the city together, and did not wait for the cover of darkness before they crossed the lake into the other place.
If she stood in just the right place, she could see the tunnel. It was perfectly round, arching as high above as it dug below. Anyone else would have seen a bridge reflected in the waters of the lake, but when she stood just where she stood, she knew it was much more than that. And she would have gladly gone through the tunnel to discover the new world beyond it, but she knew, somehow, in order to do that she would have to walk on water.
She was still young. The world was strange and interesting, with unexpected dramas every hour of every day. She was certain, in such a strange world, that somewhere someone knew how to walk on water and would teach her. But she knew what Alice had gone through in Wonderland. She knew she might both have the key and be the right size, but never at the same time, so she might never get through the door. "It may be years before I find someone who knows how to walk on water," she thought. "By then I might forget this tunnel is here." So she took the fancy blank book her sister had given her as a dream journal and wrote on the first page:
"The park has a tunnel to another world. You'll see it if you stand under the basswood tree. Walk on the lake. This message brought to you by you at ten years old."
Satisfied, she shut the book and gave it a new place of honor on her highest shelf.
Years passed. She read a book about a man who, as a young boy, dreamed of being a pilot. One day he saw a barnstormer's plane come through a cloud and dip his wings to him. Thirty years later, he achieved his dream, he was a pilot who flew a little Cessna from field to field. One day as he broke through a cloud, he saw a little boy standing alone in a yard, and he dipped his wings to him. He knew at once it was his younger self he was saluting and encouraging.
She remembered the tunnel and the message in her dreambook. "This time it's the younger me encouraging the older me," she thought.
It was still possible; she knew it. Someone could walk on water and could teach her how. But more and more she was coming to know how most people saw the world, how there were "laws of physics" and set ideas about the way everything worked, how it was and always would be. Prevailing opinion being what it was, those who could walk on water were keeping very quiet about it, probably for good reason. She imagined them living far in the country or up in the mountains, away from highways and airplane flyways, rising late at night to practice their skill under cover of darkness. There were armies of them, perhaps, all solitary--or maybe they all knew each other, could find others like themselves by a certain word or the way they held their heads.
In grade school the girl's playground was all cement. The cracks in the slabs suggested lakes and rivers to my eyes, but really it was all hard surface. Chain link fence marched rusted and misshapen along one side, stone pillars and iron bars along another. The view out was an alley; beyond it, backyards of the transient poor, all dirt and chained dogs and beer cans and occasional wandering cats.
I was an uppergrader, a 12-year-old assigned to "watch" the first-, second- and third-graders. (Grades 4-7 got to play in the park on the other side of the school). This duty meant any number of things to any number of girls. You could wander blankly around the perimeter, searching for rulebreakers; you could perform first aid on the inevitable scrapes, you could play with the kids. I tended to go for this last option, avoiding first aid administering when possible and playing the clown when I couldn't, most problems being solved by getting the kid to stop crying. I loved to learn the games the 7-9 year olds were playing, and rarely suggested they play any that required learning rules. The rules of their games were inevitably more sophisticated and elegant than anything I could impose.
Nonetheless, there were times I felt they needed the mentoring of someone wise in the world like me. I knew things I could teach them; I had knowledge to pass on to the coming generation.
One day I brought in milkweed pods that I'd gathered the previous evening from the unkempt fence of the abandoned bus lot down the block. I had stuffed a good dozen of them into the pockets of my jacket and uniform skirt. The tufts of white, cotton-soft, with seeds attached that were crammed inside each pod--these, I explained to my charges, were called milkweed wishes. If you saw one floating along, a starburst of fine silk threads weighed down by its round brown seed, you should catch it, make a wish while breaking the seed from it, and let the star part float away.
The air was heavy with milkweed that afternoon as all the young ones caught wishes and made wishes. Afterward I was scolded by a classmate whose wool sweater had been molested by fluff. But at the end of recess one second-grader, a tiny girl with the longest brown braid and the biggest coconut-shell-brown eyes, was spinning in circles and madly opening as many pods as she could before she absolutely had to get in line to go back inside. She had not quite gotten my explanation that these were milkweed wishes--to her they were blessings; she'd spent recess "blessing" whoever she could find. In the final seconds she flung all she had gathered up into the air at once, forming her own Milky Way, and shouted "I bless the whole world!"