Uh oh, p.5
Uh-Oh, page 5
The fire was in front of an unfinished two-room house on the side of a ridge in southern Utah. The lady who was hemming my trousers back there at the beginning of these love stories was sitting alongside me on a sawhorse. This little house is ours, and we have chosen this propitious night to dedicate it in some way. To make it special by making memories there.
I read somewhere that the Navajo Indians bless a hogan by wrapping a white string around it to ward off evil and protect its occupants from harm. I don’t know if the Navajos really do this, but I do know that evil is usually stronger than string. Nonetheless, the idea of this ritual gesture appeals to needs beyond reason. And I have purchased a skein of white knitting yarn in town.
At midnight, we tie one end of the yarn to the front door handle and start walking around the house hand in hand, unwinding the yarn. On the dark side of the house it is cold and we hurry and the yarn gets all tangled. We cannot see to untangle it, so we keep going, hoping it will reach the rest of the way. By being careful, going slowly, stretching the yarn around corners and over a wall, working together, we just manage to tie the ends together. The circle of white string is complete. We shout in triumph. We did it!
As I say, I don’t know what all this means.
I do know this. It’s another love story. The next morning, I went up the hill to the house just after daybreak. The coals in the fire were still hot. The string still held. And on the backside of the house, where the darkness was, the string had knots and tangles and was stretched almost to breaking. We could not have fixed it last night—the tangles in darkness had to remain part of the string or we could have never gone on all the way around. God bless the master of this house, the mistress bless also … tangles and all.
FOR SEVERAL CHILDREN IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, this is that very special summer between their seventh and eighth year—between first and second grade. They have been to school. And they have been out in the world for a while on their own five days a week—walking home from school.
The age of exploration has come. And they have explored every inch of their environment at home when their parents weren’t looking: scouting out the attic, garage, closets, bureau drawers, purses and wallets, and the glove compartments of cars. They have played what-would-happen-if? with electric appliances, and can tell you what becomes of Play-Doh in the toaster, how far away from the house the stereo can be heard if it is turned full volume, and what the microwave does to Jell-O if you leave it in long enough. Throw in some baseball cards, the daily walk to the corner store, a little minor theft, and it’s summertime.
A fine summer. Daring—pushing the edge. Daily, they wander off a little further into the neighborhood than their parents allow—crossing streets they should not cross, throwing rocks at dogs and cats, going through alleys instead of along front sidewalks. Up on roofs and up in trees, down in basements, into neighbors’ houses, and out in rowboats. It is the summer of mischief and the crossing of forbidden frontiers. Far more independent and adventuresome and curious and courageous than their parents realize or want to remember.
Last week I saw three of these kids hiding in the bushes up by the road with their bathing suits on. Shouting, they would leap out of the bushes, drop their shorts to moon passing cars, and then run into the nearest backyard to fall on the ground, shrieking and laughing at their bravado and their defiance of taboos. Nothing more daring—nothing more hilarious—than to wave their small white butts at the passing traffic and run for cover.
To them, I am only “Old Fulghum”—harmless enough, even though they know I know what they’re up to because I’m around during the day and come and go unpredictably, unlike their parents, most of whom are at work. I mind my business, and they mind theirs. We have an unspoken nonintervention pact.
This week they are playing with fire.
In a vacant lot, with boxes of wooden matches and a roll of toilet paper. Burning one sheet at a time and watching the flaming ash rise in the air and float away. Entranced. Fascinated. Playing with fire—taunting danger. As I watch them, I hear no laughing—this is a serious event.
When I was teaching art in a high school, I held a high card in my teacher’s deck that I always saved to deal in the doldrums of late spring when learning had dropped to a minimal level and the daily classroom experience was mostly an exercise in crowd control My ace in the hole. Fire.
We had Fire Day.
Each student was issued a full box of wooden matches and an electric glue gun, and was required to use every match to build a structure of some sort—something creative. The assignment was to see how large a construction could be built from one box of matches. Prizes for the highest, longest, most aesthetically pleasing, plus a booby prize for the stupidest contraption. There was always a lot of competition for the booby prize.
The following day we would carry the creations out behind the gymnasium, and there on the rubbly, dry ground in back of the gym, the sculptural masterpieces would be set afire, one at a time. We watched, hypnotized, as matter turned to energy—as what was something became nothing. As what had started out as imagination and became substance was changed into memory.
On one occasion we accidentally set fire to the dry grass and leaves around us. Somebody in the school office saw the smoke and both called the fire department and set off the school fire alarms. The whole school turned out to see what was burning. It was hard explaining the educational aspects of the project to the firemen. For the students, having a fire drill as the climax of Fire Day was a maximum event.
When asked to evaluate the course, Fire Day was high on the students’ list of successful educational projects. This primitive and ritualistic handling of a taboo buried so deep in their genetic wiring was difficult to express in words. The inelegance of their writing was balanced by the fiery intensity of feelings expressed in their papers.
I explained that they were—and the whole of existence was—fire-born.
Life is—and we are—byproducts of combustion. Imagination turned to form and finally, memory.
This whole world once was fire. A flaming ball of molten rock. Lava. The whole thing. The ultimate ecological disaster. And still it is on fire—at the center of the earth, far beneath our feet, the fire rages on.
The Big Bang that birthed us—that was fire.
And we are told, by scientist and religious prophet alike, that the Big Bang that ends us is also fire. Next time.
Fire may be a no-no to seven-year-olds, but it is Yes-Yes to life itself.
I spent an evening focused on fireflies recently. Sitting in a wicker chair on the high bank about a hundred feet above the Pai River in the north of Thailand, near the Burma border. Early evening, sometime in January 1990, and maybe on a Sunday. My vagueness is due to being a long way from urban Western civilization for several weeks, and having lost track of time. Which is what I came to do.
No television, no radio, no newspapers, no telephones, no fax machines. UPS doesn’t even deliver there. Not much to do at night but sit still and smoke cheap Thai cigars (sixty for about ten cents) and sip some Singha beer and watch fireflies. Not very exciting. Which is great if the last thing you want in the world at the moment is excitement.
The tree in front of me was full of fireflies—as though somebody had overdone it and put too many little tiny white lights on a Christmas tree. And, I kid you not, the fireflies were doing synchronized flashing. All together. On. Off. On. Off. My Thai host said they were all males “calling out for love.”
One of these little flashers landed on my pillow when I went to bed. So I put a water glass over him and watched him up close. And wondered:
Just how much control does a firefly have over his stern light?
Could one be trained to do Morse code and be worked into a flea-circus act?
Does a firefly ever attract teeny-tiny moths?
Is his light like the stars and always there, only we can’t see it in the daylight?
Does the firefly enjoy getting turned on, or is it more like having hiccups—just an urgent, involuntary spasm?
Do fireflies come with different wattage, like light bulbs?
Do firefly bulbs burn out, leaving old fireflies to wander around in the dark, unnoticed and unloved?
What might it be like if we humans were similarly equipped? What kind of pants would we have to wear?
I know some people who give off a lot of light. Because they have absorbed a lot of light themselves. They shine. This is not the kind of light you can actually see with your eyes, of course. But there are lots of parts of the spectrum of light we can’t see. We experience the results of its existence. It takes a different kind of looking.
To look this way is to see.
To see is to have vision.
To have vision is to understand.
To understand is to know.
To know is to become.
To become is to live fully.
To live fully is to matter.
And to matter is to become light.
And to become light is to be loved.
And to be loved is to burn.
And to burn is to exist.
Off and on.
Maybe the fireflies are onto something.
IN THE DUSTY YELLOW LIGHT OF AN EARLY SUMMER morning, in the shade of graceful old trees in the forecourt of an ill-kept temple, three small girls are offering little clay amulets tied to small bamboo cages containing tiny birds to those who come to pray. This is northwest Thailand. The valley of the Pai River. The town of Mae Hong Son. Ten kilometers from the Burma border. I see the bird-sellers each morning as I walk from my lodgings nearby to have breakfast in the only cafe in town where English is somewhat spoken.
The birds are not actually for sale in the sense that you can take them home with you. When you give the little girls a few baht, you are entitled to set one of the birds free and thereby add to your achievement of merit. You keep the amulet as evidence of your act—a kind of ecclesiastical receipt for a righteous act.
A cynical mind might conclude that here is one more example of the scams worked by organized religion on the young and/or gullible. The selling of indulgences is ubiquitous and continuous the world over. Even Martin Luther’s whistle-blowing didn’t change the matter much in the Western world. Here in Buddhist Thailand the tradition continues.
I express that opinion to my breakfast host.
In a verbal puzzle of Thai, English, and German he explains that not only have I missed the whole point of the bird enterprise, but I don’t know all I need to know about how the operation really works. Please to come with him to the temple.
“Now? Before I finish my toast?”
“Now. This is important. You will digest your breakfast better if you know.”
We returned to the temple—not to the salesgirls out front, but around back. On an old wooden table is the rest of the story. A pan of water, and several uninhabited bamboo cages with bread crumbs just inside the open doors. When the sparrows are freed out front, they fly around the temple to the table, take a drink of water, hop into a cage to eat the crumbs, and another little girl gently closes the cage and places it in a larger basket to be carried back around front.
My breakfast guru explains that this is not an official business of the temple—but it is in harmony with the purposes of the temple, so it is allowed. The little girls provide food and water for the birds, the birds provide an opportunity for a religious gesture to those who come to pray, and they, in turn, provide a small income for the little girls. It is no secret how the matter works, and no hypocrisy is involved—everyone has a part in an enterprise to which everyone gives and from which everyone is given. I see that the bird business is nonviolent, ecologically sound, and existentially meaningful as a metaphor for the great circle of being.
“Do you get it?” my teacher asks.
“I get it,” say I, wondering how I missed it in the first place.
Then he asks if knowledge of the full cycle of the bird business has affected my cynicism. That’s the heart of religious questing, isn’t it? Once you get a handle on the infinite cycle of the restless existence of all things, do you despair or do you willingly take your place in the circle? Does enlightenment lead to sorrowful disengagement or willing participation? Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you still in for the ride?
As my friend has promised, what he had to show me was indeed important and did affect my breakfast. The eating became a meditation. I ate everything but the toast, which was dry and crumbly by now. Took the toast with me to the temple. Around to the back. Gave it to the little girl. “This is for the birds,” I said, taking my place in the wholesale end of the merit market.
Give and it shall be given unto you, since the gifts go around and back again.
LOURDES, MECCA, JERUSALEM, BENARES, ISE, CAN terbury, Salt Lake City. All famous destinations of religious pilgrimage. Holy places, temples, shrines, cathedrals—containing relics, books, and wisdom. Saints, sutras, the smell of incense, high priests, stained-glass windows, great processions, and great revelations come to mind.
My own sacred city may be Pocatello, Idaho. There’s an invisible shrine there in the middle of an aisle of an Albertson’s grocery store. Where the canned meats are—right in front of the tuna fish, to be specific. Once in a while I go there in my mind— and I wish someday to make a pilgrimage to go stand at that place once more and see if what happened last time might happen again.
In the summer of 1978, my wife was in her third year of medical school. She drew a clerkship assignment for six weeks of in-service training in pediatrics at a clinic in Pocatello. Located in the Portneuf Valley just off the great Snake River plains, this town is the Bannock County seat, and the home of Idaho State University. Once a stopping place on the Oregon Trail, then a major junction yard for the Union Pacific Railroad, the town also has a place in the history of vaudeville.
Since I like Idaho, the history of the Oregon Trail, railroads, vaudeville, universities, and my wife, I thought I’d go along to Pocatello. Besides, I had just crossed the frontier of the great plains of those over forty years of age and was looking for a route across. I wasn’t quite sure where I was or where I was going, but wasn’t too worried about it, either. My journey had a kind of pleasant aimlessness that may have been either a sign of wisdom or weariness, I wasn’t sure which. Pocatello, Idaho, seemed like as good a place as any to be in my condition. Pocatello? Sure. Why not.
So. I went.
Since it was August, the university was not in session, but its library was open. The library was air-conditioned. And since the August heat was well over 100 degrees in the afternoons, I spent six hours a day in the library. Usually, I had the whole library to myself. Except for a skeleton crew of librarians, who were eager to have one customer, the library was mine.
I decided my project would be at least to touch or pick up and consider every single book in the library. One Monday morning about ten-thirty, I began at the top floor at the far end of the first row in the stacks and headed out into the great forest of All Human Knowledge.
Despite my ambitious intentions, I didn’t get far before accumulating an armload of books I wanted to look into further, and by noon each day I was settled in behind mounds of books at a big table on the third floor. The legendary scholar Fuljumowski, at work. Imagine—no papers to write, no exams … just learning. No college course I ever took gave me as much knowledge or as much pleasure as those days in that library. Anything I wanted to know was mine. As I walked home in the evening, a traveler on my own Oregon Trail, filled with experiences of that great country of the mind, I had an overwhelming bad news/good news feeling: Knowledge and the number of books that contained it were infinite—I could never read them all And as I read one, ten more were being written somewhere. That was the bad news. The good news was that knowledge and the books that contained it were indeed infinite. I would never run out of things to learn. Knowledge was infinite in every direction I turned. The ultimate comfort for an autodidact.
One Friday evening, in this reflective mood, I stopped off at the Albertson’s grocery store on my way home. Watermelon on my mind. Big watermelon. Take it home and eat the whole thing out in the yard. There was something else I was supposed to get, but could not recall, so I started walking up and down the aisles of the grocery store in much the same spirit as I had stalked the library shelves. And the same thing happened. Bad news and good news about groceries.
All this food—more than I could ever eat or taste—involving thousands of people from all over the world to get it here on the shelves—infinite in every direction because thousands of other people would come and get it and take it home and eat it at thousands of dinners and it would fuel their lives to do millions of things and I could only have just the barest comprehension of this immense complexity.
I picked up the first object in front of me—a can of tuna fish—and thought about its contents, the can itself, and the label, and all the incredible learning and working and the machinery and the processes and the fishing boats and fishermen and factory ships and trains and trucks that brought it here from so far away.
Then there’s the line of thought away from here in the direction yet to come—where would it all go?—where would it end up?—the can, the label, the fish, and the person who ate the fish, and on and on and on?
This is not how I usually spend my time in a grocery store. For a moment the rational monitor in my mind was warning: Uh-oh, you are losing your marbles.
Walking up the aisle, my eye was caught by the bold black-and-white headlines of an advertising placard, which said: WELL, YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE!—and in smaller print it had something to say about the quest for a decent canned spaghetti sauce.
