I've been looking over old notebooks. I have a lot of notebooks. I hoped there was useful information in them, like diary entries about previous New Year's Eves. I apparently haven't written that sort of thing down very often. I write down dreams, I scribble numbers to help balance check registers, I take down a phrase that catches my ear and I plan article ideas. It doesn't actually make for illuminating reading. Notebook writing is not pretty--it is life half-digested.
So I can't check my memory against a memoir from the time, but I want to talk about New Year's Eve a few years ago. I'm guessing it was either the crossover from 1997 to '98 or '98 to '99. I remember I felt I was in a fairly good place in my life, glad for all that had happened to me and confident about the future. St. Louis' celebration of First Night, an alcohol-free family-oriented party, was in the convention center downtown. I believe I was working at it (I did so several years), assisting in the booth set up by Taproots School for the Arts. I helped kids make little accordion books with colorful covers and ribbons holding them together. All my fellow volunteers and I spent our evening in assembly-line work, cutting ribbons, hunting for glue sticks, reciting our "this is how it's done" spiel to 3000 children every hour. (I may be exaggerating.)
At a break in the book-making I wandered the convention center. Artisty things were happening all over. There was a drumming group that attracted a large crowd in the main hall. A woman dressed as the Snow Queen frosted glittery confetti wishes on eager small ones. I remember Bill Christman's Guilt-O-Rama wasn't up that year and I was disappointed. It was an artist's take on the Catholic ritual of Confession; you went through it, confronted your dark side in various ways (most of which involved neon), and when you emerged out the other end you got your hand stamped: "Forgiven." It was great.
There were performances going on in various rooms, singing groups, jazz bands, probably a little theater. Much of it was loud and raucous especially with all the children running everywhere. And then to counter this there was a Peace Labyrinth. A large room had dim lights and signs requesting silence and on the floor, marked with masking tape, was a design copied from the floor of Chartres Cathedral. (You can see it here.) Again there was a connection to Taproots--the fellow who makes these labyrinths uses the school as a work space to construct canvas ones, and I've assisted putting down the masking tape for a few of these meditation tools over the years. This particular labyrinth, if walked at a leisurely pace, would take about a half-hour to complete--meaning, walking to the center and back out again. On my break from the bookmaking I wandered into the labyrinth.
The discipline of it is quite unusual. The path, after all, is just masking tape. If you walked in a straight line across the design, you'd get to the center in less than thirty seconds. Instead you make yourself stay in the lines as you fill in a full circle--sometimes walking half the perimeter, sometimes taking 180-degree turns every few steps. You get tantalizingly close to the center only to find yourself drawn back out again, and then as soon as you think you'll never get inside, a final turn gets you in.
At First Night there were thousands walking the labyrinth over the course of the evening, all at different paces--teenage boys racing each other, older women pausing contemplatively at every step. A costumed character was in there with me as I was pacing the spirals. He had a long white beard and a sash proclaiming the year swiftly leaving us. (The New Year's Baby was nowhere to be seen.) I quickly decided what I had to do. How often does one get a chance to do this? I caught up to him and shook the old year's hand. "Thank you," I said. "I really enjoyed it."
My friend was fully behind me now, motionless save for the half-pants that kept his frame trembling. The tiger approached steadily but slowly. I thought I could hear every scrape as his claws brushed the ground. The noise, and Kahnís uncharacteristic reactions, froze my blood. The tigerís eyes glittered like the sunsetís last clouds, but they were not trained on me. I could have been invisible. Kahn had closed his eyes. I wondered if the tigerís stare battered against him.
Three paces awayÖtwoÖone. My arms were at my side. As the tiger reached me he pushed his face into my right hand and licked it with a rough tongue. So he did know I was there after all. ìYou had better go,î he said to me in a voice smooth as dark honey. His tone somehow embraced friendly advice and monstrous threat. I heard the implication clearlyóhe wished to spare me the coming horror.
I backed away, not very far, the tiger so large in my mind it did not even occur to me to run for help. He crowded all thought away. Kahn was obviously in the same stateóhe could do nothing to spare himself. Despite the warning, I had to watch.
Even though my full attention was trained on the scene, I did not see how it was done. Kahn had been paralyzed by fear. It seemed as though the tiger who caused the paralysis could also undo it, and undo it so completely that the kingís body was his to manipulate. Within a few short momentsóand seemingly under the gentlest of pressuresóthe lion was on his side on the ground, sprawled full-length, with the tiger hovering over him like a malicious spirit. (Seeing them together, I was struck with an incongruous thoughtóhow extravagantly beautiful the tiger was with his gold coat splattered with black. Kahn was so plain in comparison.)
What happened next would have looked tender to anyone just happening to pass by. The tiger began to groom Kahn like a mother cat grooms her kitten, touching his red tongue first to the lionís neck and shoulders then working his way down his back. Just like a mother cat he held the object of his devotion steady with a paw draped casually across Kahnís body. The illusion of gentle attention vanished when I realized this paw was pressed against Kahnís throat. My friend was gasping for breath.
ìSee how you are mine,î the tiger was saying between licks. ìHow strong I am, and how helpless you are.î His voice was still deep and rich, luxurious like his coat. Was it that voice that was trapping Kahn? You could be buried in it and not even notice the daylight was gone.
He smoothed the fur on Kahnís chest. ìThe purity of power fascinates me. Nothing else is so simpleówhen one is strong, another is weak. And just when you think you are above control, someone topples you down. How does it feel?î He nipped at the tangles in the lionís mane. ìI almost believe you looked forward to my coming. Maybe you wanted to let go.î He wet the paw that was not blocking Kahnís windpipe and washed his face. ìPity. This would be more fun for me if you were unwilling.
ìShe who took on the unicorn queen was my cousin, you know. She wanted to do what I am doing, but she failed. She became the weak one. It broke my heart. ëEshtine,í I told her, ëlet me demonstrate regicide. Watch your Neekohl achieve what you could not or would not. I will subdue even the High King.íî He stopped his rubbing and raised his eyes to Kahnís. The lionís eyes were making a mute appeal; his pathos tore a knife through me. The tiger chuckled. ìWhat little effort it would take. I could just stop the air from getting drawn into your body, or I could run my claws over you and portion out your skin. Perhaps instead of halting your breath I should suck it out, as they say cats do to infants.î
Kahn made a tiny mewling sound.
Neekohl shook his massive head slowly, narrowing his eyes. ìWhatever will humiliate you most. I must punish you for not even fighting.î He paused, turning away as if considering. ìI have it! I will do none of these things. I will do nothing at all for the moment. But I will come back, and until I do you will be imagining theÖpossibilities.î He play-bit Kahn on the scruff of the neck as if all of this had been a game. Then he released Kahn and bounded off into the woods, tail waving.
My king continued to lie on the ground, lacking either the strength or the motivation to stand. I walked to him slowly. I didnít want to know what heíd do if I startled him now that Neekohlís spell was broken. ìYou summoned no guards to give chase?î he asked. I bowed my head, humiliated I had not helped. Kahn took a deep breath and sighed it out shakily. ìIt would not have done any good,î he said. ìHe is a shapeshifter. We could not have told them what to look for.î
ìNo more walks from now on, I suppose,î I said. ìIt is too dangerous now.î
ìHe wonít be back. His kind expends no more effort than is necessary. If he thinks I will be terrified in his absence, he will decide he never has to return. He has left his ghost to haunt me.î
He rose to his feet at last. I lay my hand on his back and we went away from the woods and toward the castle. If you would have seen the way we moved you would have thought we were just learning to walk.
We were out walking, he and I. It was a leisurely day and a leisurely walk. The setting sun rubbed gold on the top half of every tree while grey settled on all that was below. It was still light enough for us. Kahn moved quietly by my side, the trembling of the earth beneath him marking his passing more than any sound. He matched his pace to mine, as friends do. I wondered if it was an effort for him to keep his steps slow and his strides the length of a womanís. I let my hand rest on his back right where the mane gave way to desert-yellow fur. He purred softly in response. He had the spirit of a cub in the body of a lion. ìKahn the Kitten,î I thought to myself. He could let himself be young around me. We could go out walking together and not worry about the roles we had to play in the rest of our lives, how incongruous our friendship would be by anyone elseís standards. And so we did go walking any chance we could.
Kahn could feel young with me; I could feel safe with him. Some women like to walk with a ferocious dog as their personal protection. That canít match the sense of security you get with a lion as your traveling companion. Those teeth, those claws, that massive bulkójust one of his paws could cover my entire face. Not that I ever asked him to do that. I would never go for the testing of limits; I never placed my head in his mouth just to see if he would clamp his jaws down. The trust we had in each other was not for show. It had a natural pulse and rhythm as basic as the heartbeat under my fingers, under his fur. He was my friend.
He was also my king, but politics was another thing we would not allow to bar our way. I knew it was important for him to have some time where he wouldnít have to think about matters of state. It was a rule from the beginning that I was not even to address him as ìYour Majestyî during these strolls about the castle grounds lest his mind be drawn back to the dozensóno, hundredsóof niggling concerns awaiting his return.
It was a paradox, because this whole pastime had been started by royal command. My function in the castle was of the civil service typeómy encounters with Kahn stemmed from the necessity of obtaining his go-ahead to issue various decrees. And then once when I had tracked him to the council tree (he was difficult to find when he sensed some dull duty awaited him) he turned to me and said ìHere is my decree. You are to walk the grounds with me this evening. You will do so as a fellow traveler, not as a subject. You are to call me Kahn as we walk. When we have finished, you may think of me as monarch again.î
He explained to me later that he knew he needed to step away from himself briefly, and further he knew he could not do it alone. His whole life was about being alone. As king, by definition he was the only one of his kind in that whole castle. I said ìAnd you sensed I was alone too, a human woman bureaucrat in a world ruled by a different species of creature altogether?î He laughed and said no, I was just who was nearest to him when the idea came to his head that he had to go.
Our walks followed no scheduleówe were both too unpredictably busy for thatóbut we made sure they were frequent. Those who passed quickly learned Kahn was not taking this opportunity to hear the concerns of his people or bless them with his attention. He was there to pad the ground with his heavy lion footsteps and see the last light glance off the treetops.
This evening we were walking with my hand on his back and the grey of twilight snugly wrapped around us both. As I was marveling at the extraordinary vestiges of color on the branches high above us, I felt a tremor run through Kahnís skin. He stopped walking and every muscle stiffened. In a voice even lower than his purr he asked ìDo you think he sees me?î
I shifted my attention to follow Kahnís gaze. Some distance ahead (close enough to see clearly, far enough away that we might not have been noticed yet) stood a tiger. But why would Kahn be afraid of a tiger, so afraid he was actually quaking? There was a rumor making the rounds that a tigress had staged an unsuccessful attack on the unicorn ruler of a smaller kingdom in the south of Kahnís domain. Even at this distance, though, I could tell this was a tiger, not a tigress, and so could Kahn, judging by his words.
ìWhatís wrong?î I whispered.
Kahn shook his head. ìMy spiesÖî He was backing up as he spoke as if he meant to hide behind me. It was the only place to go; he could not have tucked himself out of sight among these trees. We were also too far from the castle walls to make a dash for itóas if a self-respecting king could stoop to that. ìMy spies warned me. He wants to prove it can be done.î
ìProve what? To whom?î I asked. ìWhat havenít you told me?î
Kahnís reply was a sick, choked moan. The tiger had seen us.
All
All there is
Is crunching snow
And green grass knifepointing through white
And cold
Cold seeping through coat
Crunching snow
Up a grassy hill
Hands in pockets
Mind still--
Not frozen, numb,
Just quiet:
Senses thrown open,
And lungs breathing winter day.
Once winter meant
Splitting in two:
My feet on the ordinary streets
My mind in an imagined Arctic.
Today all I want
Is this hill
And this snow
And these cold breaths.
Once when I was in grade school, playing out in the park, I discovered a dead sparrow at the base of the basswood tree. "Don't touch it," a girl in my class warned. "You'll get AIDS."
That was the beginning, when the word was just starting to work its way through the country. A few years later came the first deaths of anyone we might have heard of. And then Marc Connors of The Nylons, my first musical obsession, died. I could not establish right away that AIDS had been involved. The first reports of his death said it was from natural causes. He was 41 years old.
I was 15. Shortly thereafter I was a sort-of activist, watching "And the Band Played On" to learn the disease's history, participating in AIDS walks. Much of my motivation came from the desire to write about Marc--if I was to do his biography, I wanted to understand a little of what he went through. His death had actually poisoned my compassion. I wore a silver bracelet to signify I was on vigil for a cure, but a part of me hoped a cure would not come, at least not soon. It was unbearable to posit a world where, if Marc had just hung on a few years longer, he could have gotten a vaccine and lived the rest of his life in peace.
I was looking to alleviate my own suffering, then, my ignorance of and my isolation from AIDS, when I volunteered for Food Outreach. This is an organization that prepares and delivers meals for those with HIV/AIDS. The theory is simple--when you're sick, you don't want to eat, or you don't have the energy to make something for yourself, and this illness may have isolated you from casserole-toting friends. Proper eating, meanwhile, and the knowledge someone cares enough to cook your meals for you, is therapeutic. It helps keep people alive.
So for the sake of the dead I hung out with the living. Several of my fellow volunteers were HIV positive, and over the course of my time there I met many others living with HIV/AIDS. Some were picking up their own meals; I delivered meals to several others. I absorbed from the experience a kind of battlefield toughness. Dark things were involved, and these darknesses were sometimes no fault of the people affected and sometimes a little more within their control. One of my "clients," for example, was the poorest woman I have ever met. She lived in an apartment that looked like it was made of cardboard. Cockroaches wandered the kitchen. One week when I came to Food Outreach my boss told me I didn't have to deliver to her. Faulty wiring had burned her home down; she was at a shelter now. Next time the news was she'd been assaulted at the shelter--she had a black eye, was all cuts and bruises, had even gotten something broken, an arm or wrist--I don't remember.
At this report I stood gaping at my boss, unable to take it in. How could someone have nothing--no health, no money, no home--and then get beat up on top of it? What kind of world was this?
Then there were other tragedies. Food Outreach would distribute cases of Ensure, the nutritional supplement. But the organization had to start limiting this because Ensure had street value--people were selling it for drugs. For drugs! You could get bitter reaching out a hand to help someone only to have it slapped. I saw bitterness, cynicism, despair, but I also saw people show up week after week to pack food and take it where it was needed. It took something that didn't look like heroic virtue because the evil being fought was so petty, the bureaucratic kind of evil of daily life. But what it took was summed up by a sign outside Doorways, a residence for people who are HIV-positive. The sign says "Courage in the face of fear." Courage was required of both the helpers and the helped.
I quit volunteering at Food Outreach after I finished the book. By then, too, AIDS had changed. There were drugs that were making the viral load go down to almost nothing, allowing many to return to the picture of health after being up close and personal with death. There is still no cure, and many can't afford the drugs that make the difference, but the plague years and their all-pervasive mood of hopelessness have passed.
Just as all started to stabilize here, word filtered through that Africa was exploding. I started seeing reports in the newspaper and in magazines about villages with a funeral every week, about cities where a third of the young adults carried the virus. Again, it all seems so hopeless. Prevention efforts are stymied in several directions. I read one article about a clinic worker asking a young man if he had engaged in any homosexual activity. Of course not, the man said. He had done some playing around with his friends, though. Other reports said in conservative Muslim countries you couldn't even use the word "sex" when you tried to teach sex education. And if a woman asked a man to use a condom, she risked getting thrown out of the house.
Not only prevention, but treatment options are limited. The drugs that have turned American lives around are monstrously expensive. Why even bother getting tested if you know you can't afford treatment?
It looked as if everything possible was being done, but that there was nothing to be done. Millions of people would die, just as they had from bubonic plague in the Middle Ages, with just as little opportunity by anyone to prevent if from happening.
But that wasn't true.
A couple of weeks ago, thanks to my post-Nylons musical obsession, I was watching the webcast of a World AIDS Day event in Lincoln, Nebraska. Ironically it was presented on the very stage where I once saw The Nylons perform, the Lied Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Nebraska campus. I was watching becasue Bono was going to be there. For the last several years he has been noisy about Africa's ills and the responsibility of the rest of the world to help where it can. The drugs are out there, he keeps insisting. They make people better. "People are dying for the stupidest of reasons--money."
All this I'd heard before. Bono's been beating this particular drum in every possible venue, including U2 concerts. (Once he reported on stage that the head of a US AIDS organization said it was useless to send drugs to Africa; Africans don't own watches, they wouldn't take the drugs right. Bono shook his head in disbelief at the crowd. "Should we all just send him wristwatches?") But this time, he didn't speak for long. He turned over the mike to a woman named Agnes Nyamayarwo. She was from Uganda, travelling to the US for the first time.
In perfectly clear, musically accented English, she told the story of her husband's AIDS diagnosis, how they sold all they could for the drugs to keep him alive, how when he died she had ten children to raise. How her eldest cracked from the fear and his friends' abuse and ran away. "I searched for him a long time. I do not know if he is alive or dead." How she learned she had HIV. How her youngest got sick and died when he was six and a half years old. Agnes paused then, her voice breaking for the first time through the litany of tragedy. "I live with the guilt that I did not give my child all the best, as I should have. I gave him death."
I at least was watching on my computer. I could have walked away. I wondered about everyone in that auditorium in Lincoln, Nebraska, those who'd snatched up tickets for this free lecture in a record-setting 17 minutes. If I had been there, I would have wanted to crawl under the seat.
The drug that could have saved Agnes' child is called Nevirapine. A one-dollar dose of Nevirapine given to an HIV-positive mother and her child can stop her from infecting her baby either during delivery or through breastfeeding. But millions of Africans can't afford it. Jesse Helms, of all people, he who once was so against foreign aid he held up payment of the US's United Nations dues, proposed $500 million to help mothers not give their children AIDS--but President Bush vetoed the first year's spending on it.
I mention this--I mention all of this--because some new words on AIDS are sinking in. The message I've been hearing is that there may finally be a way to stop at least some of this unimaginable tide of death. And part of what I can do that might actually help is to talk about what I know to everyone I know, phone the President, convince others to phone the President--because by staying silent I am agreeing to let people die.
----
Call (202) 456-1111 between 9am and 5pm on Wednesday and Thursday, December 18th and 19th, to ask President Bush to make a historic AIDS initiative part of his January trip to Africa.
When you call, please follow the prompts until you get an operator who will take your message. If you are calling from a touch tone phone press 1 and then, when asked, press 1 again to leave a message. The operator will ask for your home state and message.
We suggest the following message:
I am calling to urge the President to offer a historic AIDS initiative on his trip to Africa. The President has the chance to offer hope to the 2.5 million people who die each year of AIDS in Africa. If the President will commit between $2.5 billion and $3 billion each year, we can save millions of lives.
Or email the President at president@whitehouse.gov.
For more information, see DATA's website.
I nearly forgot this had to be here in December:
I find myself expecting him to die. "Of course," you say. All men die. That is no mystery. It would only be surprising if you expected him to live forever." I mean something more. I know he will die violently, and young. It's what happens to men like him.
And do you know why? Because evil rules this world. It does. I can prove it to you easily. You can be loved by every single person in the world but one, and if that one plunges a knife into your heart you will die. That is how much more powerful the wicked are over the good. All the kind and loving thoughts ever directed to you won't matter, they won't bring you back from the dead. One wicked man is stronger than ten thousand good ones, you may have eleven loyal men by your side--it takes but one to betray you.
Perhaps I am the only one who finds himself thinking this way. From the first moment I realized what sort of greatness he had, I was picturing him gone. It comes to me naturally, now that I have lost a few people. After their deaths I started to think: this could be the last day I spend with my wife, my son. Every small moment of gladness is shot through with tiny grief. It seems better not to get too attached to anybody--least of all to someone as marked for death as he.
And yet I can hardly help it--there is so much in him to wonder at, and to love. I just don't understand how others can take him for granted. They fight among themselves about the most inconsequential matters. All I want to do is stare at his face when he is watching the sunlight flicker on the sea. I will have this memory when he is gone, I think.
I talk well, but of course I have taken him for granted too. I couldn't make it through the day if all I thought of was his leaving. I have to ignore it, be petty to him, be rude, much as I know I'll regret it later. I'll have grief enough when he really is gone without stockpiling it now.
But there are times. This month is the month John died, and what violence that was. I know people who loved him fiercely whose faces are still vacant and lost. I never really knew him, so the paralyzing demoralization didn't touch me, except my heart shuddered when this month came and I was reminded of the anniversary. Superstition, perhaps, but I shook with fear for Jesus all day the day John died, thinking, he will be arrested today; the Baptist's enemies will finish what they started.
There was a man who had just joined the company whose look I did not like. I had long harbored suspicions of him, but apparently Jesus did not--he entrusted this man with the finances of the entire band. It wasn't that I suspected this one was helping himself to the purse as his fee for being in charge of it--though I did. It was more I felt he had another purpose for being in the inner circle, one he told no one of. He was a secretive man, and I have never held much respect for men who cloak their every move with mystery.
I would have kept all this to myself, except...it was the day John had died. Like David says, my heart was wax melting in my chest, though not for fear of my life, but for another's. I was consumed with the belief I had gotten the first inkling of danger, and that Jesus' life might depend on me getting the word to him in time.
At midday I finally called Jesus aside. "I don't trust Judas," I said, as soon as we were out of earshot of anyone else (they were all napping, anyhow--the sun was frightful that day).
"I just called him," he answered. The hem of his sleeve was fraying--he tugged the thread and didn't look at me. "Whether he follows or not is up to him."
"I don't trust him," I repeated.
"I like having people around who disagree with me."
"Jesus--"
"Yes, Nicodemus." He looked straight at me at last. I almost wished he hadn't. "I know. But I count myself lucky. Most men don't know where their death is. I like to keep my death close, to keep an eye on him."
The sun set on that day without incident. I thought, we're both too superstitious, seeing death in every shadow.