Uh oh, p.7
Uh-Oh, page 7
The man who came this long way to build this tiny cabin so far from civilization was himself a civilized man. Well educated. A doctor. And not just an ordinary doctor, but a trained surgeon. Also a musician who sang and played the fiddle. He knew literature well enough to quote long passages from great books, and loved words well enough to write poetry. What he needed now was a place to put down roots and recover from sorrow and failure. He was looking for a place to call home.
He dug in here on his homestead a long way from anywhere, and built his cabin with his own hands. While he had indeed escaped from one set of troubles in Indiana, his new life had its own serious hardships. For all our romantic notions about the good life on the great American frontier, the Kansas plains were not paradise. Fierce cold, deep snow, wild winds in winter. Fierce heat, deep dust, and tornadoes in summer. Creeks and rivers that flooded in spring. Prairie fires, rattlesnakes, plagues of grasshoppers, and a mysterious equine disease that wiped out half of the horse population. The Native American Indians were fighting a last-ditch battle for their way of life, and often gave no quarter in their desperation. Then there were all the problems of distance from supplies, and distance from help in time of need. Hard place to make a go of a new life.
Worse if one had a serious alcohol problem, as did this man. Tough, too, if one got called out in the worst weather to ride long miles to amputate gangrenous feet or dig bullets and arrows out of patients who had no means to pay for the services of a surgeon.
Brewster M. Higley VII, M.D., was his name.
Despite the hardships of his life, he found time to sit on a stump in the sunshine—in front of his cabin in the silence of that place—and write poetry. About open country, clear skies, and the great joy of feeling at home at last. He was not one of those whom adversity destroys. Rather one of those whose virtues and strengths are catalyzed by tough times. Brewster Higley was one of those who would sing in hell itself.
One fall he wrote down some verses about his sense of well-being, filed them away between the pages of a book, and forgot about them. In the spring, a patient who had come to his cabin browsed through the doctor’s books as he was being treated, found the poem, read it aloud, and urged the doctor to get it set to music.
Doc Higley took his patient’s advice and carried the poem with him to Smith Center, Kansas, to share with his young friend Dan Kelly, the local druggist. Kelly had been a bugler in the Civil War, played several other musical instruments, and liked to compose songs. He took the doctor’s poem with him that night when he went to see his girlfriend, Lula Harlan. They sat together on the couch and made music together. Lula’s two brothers, Clarence and Eugene, joined in with fiddle and guitar. Before long, a song was born.
If you could be transported across time and space to the Harlans’ home one Friday night in April 1873, in Smith Center, Kansas, you could join right in with the premier performance of the new song. They called it “My Western Home.” But you would know it was “Home on the Range.” And you would probably sing your lungs out, because if there’s one song you likely know by heart, this is it. “Home on the Range” is our real national anthem. Frederick Jackson Turner would agree. His whole frontier theory of American history is summarized in the spirit of that song.
The song is larger than that, however. Millions and millions of people all over the world can sing it with you. People who have never seen Kansas or buffalo or deer or antelope. But who understand what the word home means and who are tired of discouraging words and who yearn for clear blue sky and a fine day away from the endless traffic of our lives.
Brewster M. Higley VII, M.D., moved on from Kansas in time because of age and health. Ever the optimist, he married again and lived happily with his wife Sarah Ellen. She was the home he had been looking for. When she was sixty-seven and he was in his ninetieth year, she passed away. He followed not long after. Died of grief, his family said. They are buried side by side in the final peace and quiet of a small cemetery in Shawnee, Oklahoma. “Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”
JEWISH, I’M NOT. BUT I OFTEN OBSERVE THE SPIRIT OF Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Not as Jews usually celebrate—not in a synagogue—and not for ten days. In my own way and time. The temper of Rosh Hashanah appeals to me. The idea of the new year coming in the fall fits my life better than January. During all the years I worked as a teacher and minister, the fall was the beginning of my annual cycle—the end of summer vacation and the start of work anew. That mind-set continues. By January, I am already in the middle of a cycle of living.
The ten days of the Jewish New Year, called the “Days of Awe,” begin with the “Day of Remembrance,” and end with Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement.” A trumpet made from a ram’s horn is blown, summoning the people for judgment and self-assessment, for repentance and self-improvement. At the center of this event is a sense of hope. One gets personal accounts squared away so that one may go on with life, with high expectations for another year—a better year—to come. And someday, next year perhaps, Jerusalem—the City of God on Earth, with the Anointed One, the Messiah—will truly come. That is how the Jews see it and believe it.
This year on Rosh Hashanah, I stood out on the end of a high ridge in southeastern Utah and watched the sun go blazing down in a clear sky. September 19. No congregation, no horns, no hymns or prayers or candles. Just the passing of the daylight and the coming of night. Great silence. And a view of 60 million light-years when I looked straight up into the stars. “Days of Awe” indeed.
On occasion, in years past, I planted daffodil bulbs on Rosh Hashanah, as a reminder to myself that hope for better times is not enough—that one must be an active participant in the quality of the future. If I want flowers in the future, the planting must be done now.
One year I went so far as to plant an apple tree and some strawberry starts, knowing full well that I would not see flowers or fruit for a long time to come. But I intended being there. Hope and faith must be active verbs.
My friend Willy and his six-year-old daughter, Emily, planted bulbs last week. Went to the seed store, bought a sack full of hardy crocus and a bulb-planting tool. Then they walked around their neighborhood and planted crocus bulbs in yards along the routes they take as they walk to the grocery store, to Emily’s school, and the nearby playground. Places that needed a bulb or two. At the moment, Emily thinks of this as one more game her daddy plays with her. Willy thinks of it as “affirmative vandalism.”
For five years in a row my two sons and I were right there in line when the local amusement park opened in the spring. This was a long time ago. We rode everything that moved—the Zipper, Matterhorn, Wild Mouse, Galaxie, bumper cars, and the Ferris wheel. Ate cotton candy, hot dogs, snow cones, candy apples, caramel corn, slurpies, licorice whips, and corn dogs. Our attitude was if you are going to get sick anyhow, you might as well go ahead and get really sick. It’s a philosophy of life—go whole hog and take the consequences.
The boys are men now and married and they work for a living—too old for this kid stuff. But I have started going again, now that I am younger than they are. My wife says I am looking for my childhood. So? Maybe I’ll find it. I’ve tried being an adult. I know what that’s like. Don’t push me to choose.
Not that I’ve started doing the rides again or eating all the goop again. I’ve learned a few things, and besides, I’m waiting for the senior-citizen discounts and saving my strength for when my grandchildren are ready.
I go now simply because the amusement park is on my way when I walk to work. And I stop and watch. When you think about it and look at this activity dispassionately, human intelligence is called into question. Why is it that people will pay a dollar to have the hell scared out of them, knowing full well they will likely toss their cookies before it’s over? And do it again and again and again. Why did my sons and I go year after year in springtime?
It had something to do with risk-taking. Wildness. Adventure. Wanting to break loose from being earth-bound, but safely. Wanting the adrenaline to pump through us in that way that drives home the fact of life and death for a moment. Fear and release. All that, I guess. We didn’t consciously think of it in that way, but those words point at what we not only wanted, but needed, to happen.
The rising of the sap in all living things in spring.
I know that I always went back to the more mundane tasks of life with a lighter heart, feeling a little braver, and loving being alive a little more.
I carry a permanent burst of excitement somewhere in my soul as my sons and I soar up and over the top of the Ferris wheel, the seat swinging free, the music playing, and us screaming YAAAAAgggh … as we fall through the air. The sky is blue. The sun is shining. Everything is green and alive and blooming. And so are we.
For that moment, we are spring.
In the same way that Native American Indians think about doing a rain dance. They are not just dancing about rain—they are raining. We weren’t just observing spring, we were being spring. Anthropologists call this “participatory mana.” The Indians call this the Way of Life.
In my hometown, in my childhood days, Easter Sunday was observed with a sunrise service. A great host of Baptists, about half of Waco, would rise before daybreak, dress in new clothes, and journey out to the local cemetery. Facing east, they would greet the rising sun with hymns and prayers. The belief was that Jesus, the Messiah, would return from the east, and raise up both the living and the dead together into heaven. And they didn’t want to miss it.
My theology wasn’t too clear then—and for that matter, it’s still not too clear. But I do remember with clarity the power of the moment when people would sing “Up from the Grave He Arose” and the sun would suddenly come up and I would think I was going to fly away to heaven. It never happened. Year after year, nothing came but the sun. No angel choirs and no Saviors. None of my mother’s explanations stemmed my disappointment. We went out there even on Easter Sundays when it was pouring down rain and we couldn’t even see the sunrise. This confirmed my feeling that the whole thing was a hoax. I knew Jesus wouldn’t come when it was raining.
Watching the sun rise—or the earth turn toward the sun—is mostly accidental now. Something that happens while on my way to do something else. Something I glance at when I’m up running for exercise and too busy to stop to look at. I don’t think I’d get very far if I tried to organize a group of friends to get dressed up in new clothes and watch the sunrise in a graveyard on Easter or any other Sunday. This is for romantics, insomniacs, Sunday painters, and religious fanatics. And who has time these days to be one, even if one is one? But there’s something missing when there’s no Sabbath act of any kind in my life. No Rosh Hoshanah, no Easter sunrise. Not even much of a Sunday anymore. We live in a world where it is thought great progress that stores are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and it is a sign of great entrepreneurial industry to work on weekends. I need more than a read through the Sunday paper to feel I’ve experienced a Sabbath ritual. If I don’t have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?
I know. I could go to church. But I went to church every Sunday for almost fifty years. And there are Sabbath moments I need that don’t happen sitting in a pew.
Makes me think about a lady I know. She went to see a psychiatrist about her troubles. After listening to her, he wrote a prescription. He asked that she promise not to return until she had used up the prescription. When the druggist read the prescription, he returned it to her. “I can’t fill this,” he said, “but you can.” The prescription; “Spend one hour some Sunday watching the sunrise while walking in a cemetery.”
She did. She got in touch with the big picture again. It was the first time she had been to church in years. She goes several times a year, now. She won’t go to heaven because of this. But her life on earth is no longer the hell it was.
Not far from the Tokyo International Airport is Naritasan, a Shingon sect Buddhist temple of great age and size. It is dedicated to Fudo-Myo-o, the deity of “Immovable Wisdom.” More than 15 million people come to this shrine each year. On the grounds is a sub-temple containing a complete collection of Buddhist scriptures. The scriptures are housed in a round, ten-foot-tall structure, which is mounted on a base that turns. From the base of the wheel radiate long open spokes, somewhat like a Western turnstile. It is customary for a visitor to the temple to stand behind one of the spokes and turn the scriptures around once. You have to push hard, for it is very heavy. Slowly it turns, as you slowly consider the basic truths of Buddhism.
There is a bell to ring to call your deed to the attention of the gods.
Afterward, you write your troubles on a piece of paper, fold the paper, and leave it hanging on a wood-and-bamboo fence. In time the rain and wind and sun will dispose of your page of troubles.
Buddhist, I’m not. Also not Japanese. But on two different occasions I have visited Naritasan on my way from something to somewhere, and have paused to turn the great wheel and leave my troubles on the fence. There are no words for these ritual moments and no reasons that words satisfy. It is a touching base with elemental needs. A finite gesture toward infinite concerns.
January 1 of 1990. Nagano-shi, Japan. Zenkoji Temple. Kondo Hall, the largest wooden building with a thatched roof in all of Japan. Thirty meters high, with a floor space of 1,766 square meters. Huge. The Japanese equivalent of the great Gothic cathedral of Chartres in France.
Inside it, in the inner sanctuary area of the high altar, the Amida Trinity is enshrined. (Amida Buddha, with Kannon and Daiseishi bodhisattvas on either side.) To the right side of the sanctuary is a stairway entrance to a long, pitch-dark, circular corridor underneath the high altar. Somewhere in this corridor is a lock hung on the wall. If, while groping your way in the dark through this circular corridor, you are fortunate enough to touch this lock, you are destined to go to the Buddhist paradise. Or so it is said.
So there I was on January 1. Groping my way along in the darkness and towing my wife along behind me by the hand. (She is afraid of the dark. I am also afraid of the dark, but she doesn’t know that and she thinks as long as she holds my hand she will be okay. Family myths.) Anyhow, we’re stumbling along in this wooden tunnel and it is seriously dark in here.
Feeling the walls and ceiling and floor for the lock. I am going to find this lock. But I am looking for a Western lock—something I can put my hand on. No luck. But I push on through the darkness and back into the light, with relief and also with the suspicion that there wasn’t a lock down there in the first place. Somebody else must have found it and taken it with him. I braved the dark and didn’t find a thing.
I asked a priest about this. He gave me his kindest smile. “Perhaps you were not looking in the correct way for the right thing. This is a rite of passage. You see, the corridor itself is the lock, representing a year of life. To unlock it means to have made the journey through the darkness with courage to the light. Happy New Year.”
ONE REASON I HANG AROUND WITH MY FRIEND Grady is because I like to watch him put on his shoes and socks. We work out together at a gym, and after we shower off and are getting dressed, the high point of the event comes. When Grady does his shoe-and-sock performance. He carefully examines each sock, trying to decide which one he wore last on which foot so he can reverse them now and put them on opposite feet so he doesn’t wear out the big-toe side. He also turns them inside out to even the wear on both sides of the sock. I’m not kidding. This is a complicated ritual, not easily carried out—I know, I tried it once when Grady wasn’t around.
When Grady has his socks repositioned correctly, he then puts one sock and one shoe on one foot—all the way to tying the laces. Followed by the other sock and other shoe. I observe that most people put on both socks and then both shoes. Sock, sock, shoe, shoe is the usual order. Grady is a sock, shoe, sock, shoe kind of guy. I’ve never talked to him about this. He might have a reason—a long reason—and I don’t think I want to know.
Grady and I have played poker together for years—couple of hundred years or more. Well, no, it hasn’t really been that long, but his name isn’t Grady, either. His name ought to be Grady. Do you know people like that? People who got the wrong name when they were born. This guy is a Grady if I ever saw one, and I’ll leave it at that. And when I say I’ve been playing poker with Grady for a couple of hundred years, it’s because he’s one of those guys who can take FOR-BLOODY-EVER deciding what to do with a hand. If you’re dealing draw poker and you asked him how many cards he wants, you could go out for a full-course Chinese dinner and come back and he’d not only still be thinking, he wouldn’t have noticed you left. Grady does not ever leap to conclusions.
But this isn’t about Grady’s poker playing. It’s about two gallons of yellow paint and the meaning of Grady’s life.
Grady has a problem with scale. Scale in the sense of the real world being the base reference and a road map being drawn on a scale of one inch equals twenty miles. Like that. He tries to live on more than one scale at a time. In the real world and on the map at the same time. In the present and in the future at the same time. I will elaborate.
(In passing, I should point out that Grady is intelligent—he’s got several diplomas from upmarket private colleges hanging on his wall to prove it. But being intelligent doesn’t mean you aren’t stupid. His income is good, too. It’s his outgo that gets him in trouble.)
Anyhow, about the paint.
It all began seven years ago when Grady moved out of his marriage and out of his house, and into a bachelor apartment. Temporarily, or so he said. The apartment was a hole—in an old building that had once been pretty classy, but that was now dark, moldy, and depressing. The smell of stale bacon grease pretty well established the ambience of the building. He’s been temporarily there for seven years. Grady says he’s waiting for the future to clarify itself enough so that he can either fix up his present apartment, move into a better set of digs, or maybe move back home with his wife and family. Which is a real laugh because his wife divorced him, remarried, sold the old house, and moved to Wyoming five years ago. She is out of it, free and clear. There is some real lunatic optimism loose in Grady’s head, because he still doesn’t quite believe she’s gone and it’s all over. Grady doesn’t come to hasty conclusions.
