Dances for Everyone

I have a couple of new stories here and here.  And I have another piece that (I think) is coming out this month, as well as several that will appear in print and online next spring.  All the editors have been absolutely great, and I am so honored to have my work appear in their journals.

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I saw a pair of ducks today, in a settling pond enclosed by a fence.  They were swimming together.  Not feeding, not fleeing predators, just swimming over the placid water.  “Shaded, safe, saved,” to quote Thomas Pynchon.

Dances for Everyone

The leaves in the wind

And the ducks on the water

And the kids with their cell phones

And the dogs in their yards

And the clothes on the clotheslines

And Don Carlos on his porch:

Dances for everyone.

Let’s turn up the music.

Writers of Conscience

I’ve been thinking about the basic decency of writers like Peter Weiss and Heinrich Böll, which is so evident in their work, whether or not one agrees with all of their words and opinions.  As young men, they were witnesses to the cauldron of German fascism and to World War II, though Weiss, in exile, was spared as close a view as Böll.  Both also witnessed the divided post-war world, the struggles in the Third World against European and American colonialism, the continuing political repression in Eastern Europe, the oppressiveness and spiritual vacancy of Western capitalism and the struggle of artists and activists to overcome it.  Through it all, they managed to be people of conscience, of decency, which was, and is, a hard thing thing to—both in their day and in our own.  To be decent just means to be human, but that doesn’t mean it is easy in today's world.

Above the Sea

Caspar David Friedrich - Blick auf die Ostsee

They climbed the stair, and sat them down on the green grass awhile watching the ocean coming in over the sand and the rocks, and Ralph said: "I will tell thee, sweetling, that I am grown eager for the road; though true it is that whiles I was down yonder amidst the ripple of the sea I longed for naught but thee, though thou wert beside me, and thy joyous words were as fire to the heart of my love. But now that I am on the green grass of the earth I called to mind a dream that came to me when we slept after the precious draught of the Well: for methought that I was standing before the porch of the Feast-hall of Upmeads and holding thine hand, and the ancient House spake to me with the voice of a man, greeting both thee and me, and praising thy goodliness and valiancy. Surely then it is calling me to deeds, and if it were but morning, as it is now drawing towards sunset, we would mount and be gone straightway."

                                                                                             —William Morris, The Well at the World’s End

The World is a Revelation . . .

Alles, was wir erfahren, ist eine Mitteilung. So ist die Welt in der Tat eine Mitteilung, Offenbarung des Geistes. Die Zeit ist nicht mehr, wo der Geist Gottes verständlich war. Der Sinn der Welt ist verloren gegangen. Wir sind beim Buchstaben stehngeblieben. Wir haben das Erscheinende über der Erscheinung verloren.

Ehemals war alles Geistererscheinung, jetzt sehn wir nichts als tote Wiederholung, die wir nicht verstehn. Die Bedeutung der Hieroglyphe fehlt. Wir leben noch von der Frucht beßrer Zeiten.

                                                                                                           —Novalis, Neue Fragmente

Everything we experience is a message. So the world is indeed a communication, a revelation of the Spirit. We no longer live in a time when the Spirit of God is comprehensible. The meaning of the world has been lost. We stopped at the letter. We have mistaken the image for the manifestation.

In the past, everything was a spiritual phenomenon; now we see nothing but dead repetition, which we don’t understand. The meaning of the hieroglyph is missing. We are still living on the fruits of better times.

All of this is true, and yet, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness . . .” (Romans 8:26)  We were made to read the revelation of the Spirit in the world.  But which of us is willing to go into that inner desert—to listen quietly in that arduous but necessary silence?

Let Us Go to That Country Where Dwells the Beloved

The servant Kabîr sings: "O Sadhu! finish your buying and selling, have done with your good and your bad: for there are no markets and no shops in the land to which you go."

                                                                                              —Kabîr, Song LXXIII, tr. Rabindranath Tagore

Desert and Mountains

I have lived most of my life surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert and spent time in all the great deserts of the Western U.S.  I immediately learned to love the desert upon encountering it as a child.  My love only grew as I learned to understand its diversity, its synergies, and its connections to the biomes bordering it: the relict forests (that retreated to the cooler, wetter slopes and tops of great, rugged mountains as the basins became dry and hot after the last ice ages), the riparian zones created by rivers and streams that came down from the mountains and cut through the arid landscape, and the great grasslands with their reliable patterns of rainfall, which gradually replaced the true desert at its norther-and-easterly limits.  In the desert itself, the rain was fickle, but essential. Each year the landscape would be shaped by the unpredictable patterns of precipitation.  Spotty rains of the monsoon season would create floods in one place and leave others untouched.

I saw the ways in which plants and animals adapted to living in a land of scarce water; and how, if left undisturbed, the desert that sustained them always remained a land of inexhaustible variety.  As a child, I marveled at the strangeness of the devil’s claw seed pods, which seemed like objects from another planet--or perhaps they truly were the devil’s claws.  I would look out on the desert in spring, or after the rains, and see a million flowers that had opened in an instant, many for only one short day or night.  I was full of awe, tinged with a sense of disbelief, at the sheer size of the vine that produced a melon known as the buffalo gourd.  The vine would grow impossibly fast, adding meters of grey-green foliage almost overnight.  And by the end of its season, nothing would be left but tangled, dead tendrils and bright yellow little gourds with an odd smell.  I remember learning about the tiny yucca moths, the only insects that could fertilize the yucca—the desert lily—with its great clusters of white flowers, and I remember examining dried yucca pods in the fall and finding the remnants of seeds eaten by the moths’ larvae, who always left some intact so that the collaboration between yucca and moth could continue.

I knew all of this was magical, but also fragile: that a single bulldozer was capable of leveling acres of desert for some new development, that cactus poached from a site or region might not return in my lifetime, and that a clear-cut relict forest would be gone forever.  I also knew that a grave where the ancestors slept could not be restored once it was desecrated, plundered for artifacts.  Tire tracks didn’t disappear in an arid landscape, and overgrazing reduced areas of biological diversity to mere sand dunes dotted with half-buried mesquite bushes.

I learned that nature is sacred: that the mountains are sacred, the rocks are sacred, the desert woodrat’s ungainly nest is sacred, and that each life is precious and necessary for the well-being all.

Judge Not

The French writer Léon Bloy wrote something like, “The friends of Jesus see all around them the modern Christians, and it is thus that they are able to picture hell.” (Quatre ans de captivité à Cochons-sur-Marne)  So many people who claim to be Christian have no trouble ignoring the simple command that Jesus repeated over and over, forcefully and unambiguously: do not judge.  They get worked up over what other people are doing—usually things that Jesus, in fact, didn’t seem particularly concerned about—but think this command doesn’t apply to them.  Instead of following Jesus’ example, his words: “Father forgive them,” “Neither do I condemn you,” “Judge not,” “Do not condemn,” “I did not come to judge the world,” etc. etc., they are always the ones to “cast the first stone,” and to act like it is their personal religious duty to do so.  What is the source of this perversity that drives people to disregard so clear a command, and become so invincibly self-righteous?  Jesus preached love.  Where does all the hate come from?  No one was more about mercy, forgiveness, and not judging others than Jesus.  He reserved his harsh words for hypocrites, for those who thought they were better than everyone else, because he knew that no one had the right to condemn another.  Yet so many Christians refuse to acknowledge this basic message—and seem to have no trouble preaching its exact opposite!

The Cosmic Dance

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

                                                                                     —Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Spring

As I walked past a sandstone bungalow in the incomparable light of spring, I thought of a friend who had lived there.  A fig tree grew outside the front bedroom window, but he—my friend—would never see it again.  He’d died during the previous winter in another city, far, far from this place.  One day, I, too, would no longer be able to stand before this golden sandstone house, this fig tree.  The house would still stand, and perhaps the tree, the orange and purple wildflowers in the yard would return, the spring sun would bathe them in its incomparable light, but someone else would observe it all; someone who, in all likelihood, would know nothing of either me or my friend.

Love is the Highest Reality

Novalis wrote: Das sind glückliche Leute, die überall Gott vernehmen, überall Gott finden, diese Leute sind eigentlich religiös.  (These are happy people who hear God everywhere, find God everywhere; these are actually religious people.)  To find God in all persons, all things, all circumstances of life, in an unending dialog of love.  Wer Gott einmal suchen will, der findet ihn überall.  (Whoever wants to seek God, finds him everywhere.) 

Once, in a dream, I was walking toward the door of a house that I had never visited before, across a red stone yard, and I was suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to have nothing in me but God, to finally be rid of everything that wasn’t God.  The dream stayed in my memory as a great inspiration, a great hope, and a great reminder of my deepest desire.  Novalis also said: Glauben ist Empfindung des Erwachens und Wirkens und Sinnens in einer andern Welt.  (Faith is the sensation of awakening and working and being in another world.)  Not just looking at this world differently—but being in another world.

“How I Spent My Summer Vacation”

I remember being twelve and going to Vacation Bible School on the military base near our home. My father had lost an eye during a brief stint in the army, long before I was born, and received a disability retirement, though he was in fact the least disabled (or soldierly) person I ever met. The disability retirement meant that he and his dependents continued to have full military privileges, a state of affairs my siblings and I took advantage of in every possible way. We swam at the base pool, went to the movies at the base theater, shopped at the base stores, and used the base library, which featured a remarkably comprehensive collection of children’s books. Eligibility for participation in the base’s Bible School was another perk of being a dependent. Like most of the kids who showed up for it, we went mainly for the freebies handed out daily, including beach balls, Frisbees, reusable water bottles, tee shirts, Nerf balls, and, of course, Bibles. Those of us who lasted long enough even ended up with windbreakers and pup tents. (Years later, I knew a woman who had been a chaplain’s assistant in the army. She put together a huge buffet of donated food for the opening of a new campus ministry center at the local university, and when I complemented her on the quality of the feast—not to mention the door prizes—she told me, “The one thing I learned in my time with the military was that if you want to pack an event, you have to give away free stuff.”)

     We would be picked up by a bus at Center Chapel and transported to a collection of unused barracks deep inside the base, rather dilapidated wooden buildings painted pale yellow on the outside and gray on the inside. Each building was furnished with cafeteria tables and metal chairs. The buildings also held an assortment of coffee cans filled with sand and labeled “butts only,” which we, the kids, found very amusing. On the wall near the drinking fountain in each building was a gadget that looked like a soap dispenser packed with shiny salt tablets. For a couple of days, I was strangely and stupidly happy to have unlimited access to the tablets, even though I had no idea why someone would actually want to consume such a thing.

     We were assigned to the different buildings according to our ages. This meant that I couldn’t just hang out with my siblings. If I wanted to score a freebie, I would have to mingle. The Bible School was a joint effort by chaplains of different denominations, and perhaps for that reason there was little actual studying of the Bible. We spent most of the day singing folk songs and doing arts and crafts or having “rap sessions” about drugs and drinking, dating, bullying, and the like. I had been raised, both at home and at school, in my own faith tradition, but the army was a pragmatically non-sectarian institution. I remember how the chapels on base could be quickly altered to accommodate the different denominations that used them. Every Sunday, after Catholic mass, the Reformation was symbolically reenacted in a matter of minutes.

     At the Fort Bliss Vacation Bible School, I found myself surrounded by kids of many faiths, who struggled with the same issues and fears and hopes that I did. There was a girl who had been in an inpatient drug treatment facility when she was only eleven. A boy whose mom was an army nurse and whose dad was doing life in prison. And there was Andy (not his real name), a pastor’s son who had lived in Guam and Korea and with whom I remained friends until his dad was transferred to the Presidio a few years later. He was an incorrigible prankster and a talented and fiercely competitive baseball player. When it came to picking teams, he was always the first one chosen. Baseball brought a special stability and purpose to his otherwise unsettled, peripatetic “army brat” life. But as I got to know him better, I discovered that in spite of his athletic prowess, he often seemed lonely, lost, and rather alienated, overwhelmed by feelings that neither his family nor baseball could fix. All of that didn’t necessarily make him a better friend, but it did mean he was someone you could be honest and authentic around. He understood inner pain.

     The chaplains who led our discussions were predominantly young, and, unlike Andy’s dad, were not career soldiers. They were surprisingly open-minded, even when it came to difficult issues like the morality of killing for one’s country, and they tended to have more than a little healthy skepticism about unquestioning obedience to authority. In the midst of the ugly, impersonal military barracks and the avid queuing for freebies, I experienced a real sense of community (though I didn’t put a name to it at the time), and I also gained a new openness toward kids and adults of other faiths.

     By the end of it, my knowledge of the Bible was not appreciably greater—and I was already pretty knowledgeable on the subject, as it was—but I had made new friends, and created plenty of artwork that my parents could proudly display, and ended up with lots of free stuff, though most of it turned out to be rather shoddily made and, unlike the friendships, didn’t survive the summer. 

I Want to Tell a Story . . .

I want to tell a story, but it immediately becomes a project of infinite proportions.  Every detail calls for a complimentary detail, every character summons up countless other characters, and every event, every emotion, a million others just as important.  Suppose a character says, “I love you.”  Is not the first person who said those words a hundred thousand years ago now a part of this story?  Perhaps those were the first true words ever spoken by a human being.  Perhaps the story of why a long-ago ancestor chose to say those words is the element that must be told as a part of my story.  And must I not also tell the tale of every joy and heartbreak that my character had previously experienced or will ever experience in the realm of love, in order to be true to my original story?  How to cut through this hopeless tangle, and still communicate the full import, the full meaning of the story? 

     Perhaps it is only possible through the vehicle of metaphor to at least approximate the beating heart, the true essence of my tale.  How can one communicate the deepest reality of a story without that queen of language, the metaphor?  Think of Rory Gallagher’s song “Philby.”  It would be hard to imagine two persons more dissimilar than Rory Gallagher and Kim Philby, and yet Gallagher was able to express his own rootlessness and alienation by choosing to identify with the famous double-agent in his song.  In the song, he became a metaphorical “double-agent,” torn between his public persona and his lonely private self, and he articulated those feelings so well that he allowed the listener to recognize them, too.  Is it possible to express the meaning of the words “I love you” through any other means than metaphor, or to prune the branching roads of story with any other tool?

Under a Willow Tree, on a Summer Afternoon

It was a late summer afternoon in the little park.  She sat at a wooden table under a willow tree, drawing rather absentmindedly in a thick, heavy sketchbook.  The sun was low, and the willow leaves rustled and sparkled with orange-yellow light.  I didn’t know her well—she was really a friend of my sister—but she had always been kind and considerate toward me.   We’d discussed books and art and philosophy on a few occasions, and she even lent me Frank Herbert’s Dune after we talked about The Lord of the Rings.  We discussed the Gormenghast trilogy, too, even though I had only skimmed it once or twice.  She referred to it as “Gormenghastly.”  She was smarter, deeper, and more well-read than any other high schooler I knew, and we’d both recently graduated from different schools.  What I found most remarkable about her was her openness to being just what she was: smart, thoughtful, well-read, and artistic.  It wasn’t a source of pride or arrogance for her; it was just that she felt no shyness in possessing those qualities and letting the world know of them (which was so unlike the rest of us, who saw those things as liabilities and vulnerabilities that should be hidden from our peers).  What a source of courage and inspiration she was, without even knowing it!  She was a truly agreeable person, but one who also liked to stay in her own little world.  We chatted casually for a few minutes, as the road of life seemed to spread out endlessly before us.  When we parted on that late afternoon, under the shimmering willow tree, we both quietly suspected that we might not see each other again for a very long time (which proved to be the case), and that we would be virtual strangers the next time we met.  We were like two people from the same village waiting on a pier for separate ocean-bound ships, great, steady vessels that would take us to strange, exotic ports on widely-divergent continents, places from which there would be no easy return.     

Two Ships at Anchor, Andries van Eertvelt

Das Paradies ist das Ideal des Erdbodens

Verstand, Phantasie – Vernunft, das sind die dürftigen Fachwerke des Universums in uns. Von ihren wunderbaren Vermischungen, Gestaltungen, Übergängen kein Wort. Keinem fiel es ein, noch neue, ungenannte Kräfte aufzusuchen – ihren geselligen Verhältnissen nachzuspüren – Wer weiß, welche wunderbare Vereinigungen, welche wunderbare Generationen uns noch im Innern bevorstehn.

                                                                —Novalis, “Fragmente und Studien” 1799-1800

Mind, imagination—reason, these are the tenuous frameworks of the universe within us. But no one speaks about their wonderful mixes, designs, transitions. No one has thought of seeking new, unnamed forces—of studying their common relationships—and who knows what marvelous associations, what wonderful inspirations are still awaiting us within.

In Praise of the Imaginary

I maintain my strong interest in the relationship between the imaginary and the external world, despite the fact that it may seem unimportant in the scheme of things.  This is the place where I like to discuss this topic, given that this blog is, after all, named, in honor of Novalis, after his famous collection of ideas.  The imagination was certainly a subject of interest to Novalis—Novalis who said,

     Phantasie nur gar zu gern nach den Grenzen sich begibt, und übermütig das Unsinnliche, Übermäßige zu ergreifen und auszusprechen sucht.  (Imagination is only too happy to push the limits, and exuberantly seeks to grasp and proclaim the nonsensical and excessive.) Heinrich von Ofterdingen

     Here we are not talking about the “practical imagination,” that helps us to dream up new machines and new ways of cheating death and new ways of making money.  No, we are speaking of imagination that allows us to experience what is possible only in dreams: to fly under our own power, to visit cities out of the lost, distant past, to walk hand in hand with the spirit of a tree, or to speak in the languages of wolves and bears.  How are we able to experience the products of our imagination (or of the imagination of others—through mere words), so vividly?  Why are these experiences so much like the experience of external reality?  One could certainly argue that it is because we also “imagine” the outside world, we experience external reality through the mirror of our idea of it.  The mental tools that allow us to perceive and comprehend the external world are the same ones that we use in constructing the imaginary (or summoning forth memory).  While this might be true, it doesn’t explain why we are able to actually experience something that doesn’t incorporate direct sensory input, and experience it so completely.  I understand that this could be considered a philosophical question, a psychological or general neuroscience issue, or even a subject for cognitive linguistics or cognitive anthropology.  But my interest in this question is motivated by something very simple: a real eagerness to improve the status and position of the imaginary in all of our manifold human affairs.

A Lesson in Linguistics from Heinrich von Ofterdingen

»Die Sprache«, sagte Heinrich, »ist wirklich eine kleine Welt in Zeichen und Tönen. Wie der Mensch sie beherrscht, so möchte er gern die große Welt beherrschen, und sich frei darin ausdrücken können. Und eben in dieser Freude, das, was außer der Welt ist, in ihr zu offenbaren, das tun zu können, was eigentlich der ursprüngliche Trieb unsers Daseins ist, liegt der Ursprung der Poesie.«

                                                                                  --Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen

A lesson in linguistics from Heinrich von Ofterdingen.  Poetic language not only allows us to describe reality, but also to create reality.  Poetic language surpasses logical language by not only making possible the description of concepts, people, and things—as well as revealing the relationships between them—but by also allowing those descriptions and relations to become infinitely malleable, infinitely configurable, like musical notes.  Poetic language allows the impossible to be possible and, even more importantly, grants the possibility of independence from so-called “reality” itself (so-called because our understanding of “reality” is limited in so many ways).  Yielding to the possibility does not mean choosing falsity over truth, but rather, represents the opening of a door to different levels of truth.  Poetic language also allows for the translation of those truths into apprehensible meaning, as it is capable of genuinely expressing what is inexpressible in ordinary language.

Swami Vivekananda, January 12, 1863—July 4, 1902

That is the one cause of misery: we are attached, we are being caught. Therefore, says the Gita: Work constantly; work, but be not attached; be not caught. Reserve unto yourself the power of detaching yourself from everything, however beloved, however much the soul might yearn for it, however great the pangs of misery you feel if you were going to leave it; still, reserve the power of leaving it whenever you want. The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death. There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them. There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened. This is the great fact: strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery: weakness is death.

                                                                                              —Swami Vivekananda

Handouts

 Les Saints donnent l’Aumône, les Bourgeois seuls font la Charité.

                                               --Léon Bloy, Exégèse des Lieux Communs (nouvelle série)

I remember when our kids were in Head Start—and how it entitled them to a series of rather random charitable giveways.  One of them was a free jacket, courtesy of “Operation Noel,” a charity drive sponsored by one of the local television stations.  The jackets were cheaply made, not really warm at all, and worst of all, they were all the same garish color and design.  That meant wearing one was like wearing a scarlet ‘A’.  You were immediately identified as a “poor kid.”  Needless to say, you never saw a child wearing one at Head Start, or later at our kids’ elementary school, but that wasn’t the strangest part.  What was really weird was that you never saw them in any of the local thrift stores, either.  I really have no idea how, year after year, those tons of shoddy coats, including the ones given to our children, just disappeared.

     Another freebee they were entitled to was a ticket to a toy giveaway held before Christmas every year.  Unlike the jacket giveaway, participation was voluntary.  The toys were of pretty poor quality, but were good as “supplementary toys,” especially as our kids were still small and not particularly discerning.  The giveaway was held at a local Boy’s Club and involved my wife or I standing in line outside for a couple of hours in the cold.  (I remember that a friend of my wife was visiting one year and seemed a little shocked by the wait.  And she was living in Nicaragua just after the revolution.)  For some reason, enormous quantities of two toys kept showing up at the giveaway every year: plastic batmobiles, and pillows crudely printed with Hulk Hogan and other professional wrestlers.  There were also bikes, but when we asked if our kids could have one of them, we were told that they were for “other kids.”

     “However, we do have these lovely Hulk Hogan pillows . . .”

It is by Loving, and Not by Being Loved

It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy beams yet illuminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above the world. I arose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself upon it, floated with it in sight of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray; but the grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose-hue within; for now I could love without needing to be loved again. The moon came gliding up with all the past in her wan face. She changed my couch into a ghostly pallor, and threw all the earth below as to the bottom of a pale sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.

                                                                                                     --Phantastes, George Macdonald