Leah put a hand on my shoulder. I looked out the window, wanting to hold my daughter. We sat there for a long time. Finally, Leah took Kinnell out of my hand and read his short poem "Prayer": Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what is is what I want. Only that. But that.
I looked through an open window at algae green plants, heard birds, and felt the breeze, and these senses became one, whipped together into a batter of silence. Presence began to grow. We talked about the poem, untangling those three lovely is is"s, the strong full stop ("But that."). Leah said that the "what is" in the poem was her idea of G.o.d. Whatever what is what is is, is what she wants. Her old cowboy boots stood at attention next to my sneakers by the back door. is, is what she wants. Her old cowboy boots stood at attention next to my sneakers by the back door. Only that. But that. Only that. But that.
DOWN BY NO NAME CREEK ONE DAY, I noticed how, in the present light, it looked so ordinary. A creek, one of a hundred in the area. There"s a Zen saying that goes like this: When I was young, mountains were just mountains. As I matured, I realized that they were so much more than mountains. And now that I am older, I realize that they are just mountains.
This is the vital step between the wet, still flightless thing that emerges from the coc.o.o.n and a soaring b.u.t.terfly: giving up the idea of being a b.u.t.terfly. I noticed that writings about humility abounded in the 12 12, as if when Jackie reached certain levels of success as a physician, an activist, and an "enlightened" human being, she had to fortify herself with ordinariness to maintain simplicity, joy, stewardship, and compa.s.sion.
Gandhi knew this peril. When he felt even a shred of pride over his accomplishments, he stopped and imagined himself as a speck of dust that is crushed underfoot. And when he was that piece of dust, he didn"t stop. "I imagine myself," he wrote, "as so small that even that piece of dust would crush me." Gandhi went to such extremes for humility because he was in such a perilous position. The leader of a movement that would free hundreds of millions from colonialism: hearty fare for the ego. He could have had all the money, power, and self-sufficiency in the world, but he figured out a secret: we must remain atomically connected to others to feel truly happy, and we don"t feel that way when we"re on top; we feel separate. So he gave all of his money away. He cleaned toilets, wove and washed his own clothes, and lived in voluntary poverty in an ashram.
In one of his diaries, Thomas Merton writes of humility: "The proud man loves his own illusion of self-sufficiency. The spiritually poor man loves his very insufficiency." By stripping myself, at the 12 12, of some of the manifestations of independence - a car, a phone, electricity, piped water, a home - I"d come to "love my very insufficiency." In 12 12 simplicity, I discovered my nothingness and began to love it.
I looked into No Name Creek. The sun was setting, the water in gleaming flux. The creek"s beauty took me further out of myself into the country murmurs around me, to the soft new leaves on the breeze sounding like paint going on. To frogs that sounded like crickets. To the voice in my head, now just a whisper, and then silent as the waters calmed momentarily and I saw my muted reflection below. It was no longer sharp edged, as it had been when I arrived. Half of my face was clear, but the other half was who I really was: nothing concrete. I laughed a little, and then laughed deeply, right from the belly, at that fluid person, edges loosening on the water"s surface. The gloriously softening boundaries of the ego. Jackie, silently, was taking me by the hand and walking me through the gate of humility, which leads to the deepest, most lasting source of joy: simply being.
THEN ONE DAY, just as I was discovering the joy of ordinariness, as I felt the smallness of ego ident.i.ty loosen its hold on me, I was yanked out of my bliss as I walked into the Smithsville public library.
"You"re William Powers," the librarian said to me. She was flanked by another librarian. They were staring at me with dewy eyes and a little apprehension. A silence stretched out. I shifted from one foot to another.
The other librarian clarified: "You"re an author."
"I read Blue Clay People Blue Clay People a couple years ago," said the first, still gawking. "I still think about it. It"s so ... Can you ..." a couple years ago," said the first, still gawking. "I still think about it. It"s so ... Can you ..."
The other librarian finished, "Can you autograph our copy?"
As I signed, I noticed my ego expanding slightly and said to myself: J am a piece of dust. J am a piece of dust. One woman said, "We"d love to invite you to speak at the central library. But here we are taking your precious time." One woman said, "We"d love to invite you to speak at the central library. But here we are taking your precious time."
Then, checking my email on a library computer, I found a letter from a reader in Australia. "You don"t know me, but I know you. I"ve read both your beautiful books." Be so small that even a piece of dust can crush me. Be so small that even a piece of dust can crush me.
Soon half of Pine Bridge was reading my books, the Thompsons included, as the librarians spread the word. Gone was the pleasant ordinariness I"d felt, the joy of being. I"d been an obscure n.o.body, and suddenly the people around me were telling me I was "special." It became increasingly difficult to practice what I was learning about humility. Specialness and its close cousin, compet.i.tion, are a kind of disease. We make this up as an American culture, taught since childhood enough one-upmanship and hyper-individuality to make Ayn Rand look socialist. The ego is the fountainhead of your worth; I think - and do - therefore I am.
When this disease begins to invade, I consult Rule Number Six. It"s something a manager-friend would use in his humanitarian aid projects. Whenever ego wars, slights, and offenses would surface, someone on the team would say, "Rule Number Six," and amazingly, harmony would return to the situation.
I asked him what Rule Number Six was, and he told me: "Don"t take yourself so d.a.m.n seriously."
We both laughed, and I asked him, "What are the other five rules?"
"They"re all the same," he said. "See Rule Number Six."
I consider humility as closely tied to gratefulness. Thus, if someone praises me, I"m grateful; if they don"t, I"m also grateful. Even when I"m criticized, it"s an opportunity to be grateful for the breath I draw in that moment, for the sunshine and breeze, and for whatever lesson there is to learn. By being grateful, appreciating all we have instead of focusing on what is lacking, we allow more of the same to flow toward us. When I focus on missing Amaya, for example, I create a drama out of lack, of not-enough, and that becomes my reality. Instead I can focus on how much I love her, how grateful I am that she"s my daughter.
Jackie talked about this - the mystery of being grateful and "allowing" - in a letter she sent me after my time in the 12 12. She spoke of the first days of her walk to the Nevada Atomic Test Site, sending a line from John O"Donahue - "At its heart, each human life is a pilgrimage, through unforeseen sacred places that enlarge and enrich the soul." She wrote: Been walking in the desert"s emptiness, in silence. On the third night, a priest talked with us. We are all on pilgrimage, he said, a literal one to the Atomic Test Site, and also on an inner one. Using the stories of Moses and Abraham, he talked about being "called out of our captivities into unknown places ... not able to see where we are going."... Transformation. I am grateful for the gift of going into this pilgrimage with no expectations, open to take what comes. And it is a gift, not something I"ve been able to achieve.
A few days later, I looked into No Name Creek. Before, half of me had been blurred, half clear. Now the clear part was blurred, too. "I" had completely vanished.
But this was not the dull facelessness of my reflection in the Durham industrial park lake on the day of the 5K race. This "me" was full of color and leap, a dynamic jumble. Two frogs, on either side of me: one, lime green with patches of beige, its feet twice the size of its head; the other, a big old bullfrog that suddenly splashed into No Name Creek. Like the creek, I don"t have a name. Like the creek, I don"t have a name. I felt a surge of gratefulness for this feeling body, this thinking mind, this heart, and for my precious Amaya. I felt a surge of gratefulness for this feeling body, this thinking mind, this heart, and for my precious Amaya.
"Hola Daddy!" Amaya said cheerfully on the phone, when I called her the next day. Daddy!" Amaya said cheerfully on the phone, when I called her the next day.
"Hola Amaya, how"s my hijita preciosa hijita preciosa?"
She told me a story in half baby talk about Mama Martha and Tio Eduardo, about her kittens and puppies, about a world where she had little consciousness of herself as separate from the One Life, a natural humility.
[image]
CALLED OUT OF OUR CAPTIVITIES,.
INTO UNKNOWN PLACES.
21. NOISE AND WAR.
WHILE I WAS SITTING IN JACKIE"S ROCKING CHAIR, a sonic boom crashed above the 12 12: military planes flew overhead, reminding me that America was at war.
Test flights from North Carolina bases like Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force, and Camp Lejeune regularly sent down a thunder that caused the surface of No Name Creek to fl.u.s.ter. At the time, North Carolina citizens had already spent $12.3 billion in state taxes to keep state bases running - to say nothing of the hundred billion and more in federal taxes Americans had paid to fund the war. These were the taxes Jackie was resisting. Body bags came back to North Carolina, particularly from poorer families: Brian Anderson (Durham); Patrick Barolow (Greensboro); Leonard Adams and Mark Adams (Morrisville); Darrel Boatman and Charles Buehring (Fayetteville); Larry Bowman (Granite Falls). Fifty-three North Carolinians, who had been stationed at Fort Bragg alone, died in Iraq while I was in the 12 12, just a few of the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who had perished.
Not a half mile from the 12 12, by the railroad track stoplight, stood a US Army recruitment billboard with a GI Joetype fighter, a blond young American, against a comic book background of war. The caption: FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM. One time I biked past a girl kneeling beside a dented old car, a camouflaged leg coming out of it. I looked away just as she looked up and saw me. I guessed that he was about to head off from Fort Bragg to Iraq.
As a relief worker, I"ve seen war up close. I"ve seen the front lines in the former Yugoslavia, and the wounded shipped back to Zagreb. I"ve ministered to war-affected youth in Sierra Leone, including those who had had limbs amputated by rebels trying to terrorize areas. During Liberia"s civil war, I had to hunker down in the bush as a skirmish broke out in the capital, and I was at another point evacuated from my home to a compound closer to the airport and the US emba.s.sy as rebels advanced toward Monrovia. I"ve seen enough to know that war is disgusting business.
The day Jackie had nearly reached the end of her pilgrimage across the desert, she wrote me a letter. Reading it, I was struck forcefully that while I was in her 12 12 cultivating peace in silence, she was, in her own way, making noise about war: It is a bit of a ragtag band, one could say - or one could say, it"s a bit of a nomadic beloved community of pilgrims called into the desert. Imperfect humans in imperfect community - what else could it be? We bring ourselves, our broken-nesses - and we bring hearts bursting with a yearning for peace, to love better, to go deeper into compa.s.sion.The outer pilgrimage of this nomad band is the Sacred Peace Walk - six days walking deeper into the desert, walking to the Nevada Atomic Test Site calling for an end to all nuclear weapons.Mornings - we drum till the sun rises over the mountaintop, circle, plan, and are smudged with sacred sage by Willie of the Western Shoshone, whose tribal lands are illegally occupied by the Test Site. Willie brings his willow staff and his wisdom. Every morning, he tells us again: remember, every step is a prayer for peace.And then we walk. Just keep putting one foot in front of another. Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe. Beside us mountains, before us mountains, behind us mountains. The desert enfolds us. We startle a rabbit, little birds in the brush. An inch of rainfall last year, we are told - yet the desert lives - branches of creosote bushes bend gracefully, as a dance.... The desert makes its way into your heart and soul as the dust makes its way into your evening soup bowl.
We"ve dived deep into many ways of naming Spirit: sharing Muslim evening prayer, Friday evening Shabbat, bathing the Baby Buddha, re-hearing the Christian and Hebrew stories of pilgrimage, of our ancestors who were called to leave captivity, leave the familiar, and strike out into the desert, to places unknown.
Today"s last full day of walking - carrying our banner and flags - brought us here, very near the enormous gates of the Test Site. We walked and shared the fourteen nuclear stations of the cross, graphic images of the horrors of war, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the daily death-dealing of resources poured into the nuclear a.r.s.enal. Palm Sunday ma.s.s was celebrated by Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Jerry Zawada, who"ve spent months and years of their lives in prisons for nonviolent resistance to war. The setting was a gravel lot at the edge of the desert, against a van covered with a banner to ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
And now - we are spread out across the desert"s edge - the sun just set in unspeakable splendor behind the western mountains and the wind has died down. The moon is almost full and Orion hangs in the southern sky. Early in the morning we"ll walk to the Test Site to keep saying No, not in our name, not ever. No, not in our name, not ever. It is good to be in this place. It is good to be in this place.
I read her letter several times, moved by it, but unable to see the beauty she saw. I read some of the books and articles on warfare Jackie had on the 12 12 bookshelves, becoming all the more horrified the more I learned. Humans have slaughtered one hundred million million of our own species in twentieth-century wars. And the twenty-first-century has the seeds of something worse. Political scientist Chalmers Johnson, in his of our own species in twentieth-century wars. And the twenty-first-century has the seeds of something worse. Political scientist Chalmers Johnson, in his Blowback Blowback trilogy, says societies have had to historically choose between democracy and empire - but you can"t have both. He writes of "the last days of the American republic," in which an entrenched military-industrial complex sinks the vestiges of democracy. The United States, according to the State Department, has 721 military bases in foreign countries (unofficially, it"s over one thousand) and continues to build new ones. In terms of its nuclear capability, America"s current plan, called Complex 2030, is to build a new generation of weapons, including a first-strike a.r.s.enal that could theoretically destroy an entire continent and intercept incoming nukes through a protective shield. trilogy, says societies have had to historically choose between democracy and empire - but you can"t have both. He writes of "the last days of the American republic," in which an entrenched military-industrial complex sinks the vestiges of democracy. The United States, according to the State Department, has 721 military bases in foreign countries (unofficially, it"s over one thousand) and continues to build new ones. In terms of its nuclear capability, America"s current plan, called Complex 2030, is to build a new generation of weapons, including a first-strike a.r.s.enal that could theoretically destroy an entire continent and intercept incoming nukes through a protective shield.
Against the peaceful backdrop of the cabin, I read a refresher on the destructive effects of nuclear weapons. There are immediate, instantaneous effects - the blast itself, thermal radiation, prompt ionizing radiation. And there are delayed effects - radioactive fallout and other environmental impacts - that inflict damage over a period ranging from hours to centuries. Despite this, and despite the world having constructed 67,500 nuclear weapons from 1951 to the present, the United States continues to invest billions in tax money toward more.
Is this the world, I often reflect, that my daughter is to inherit? "All within me weeps." This was the refrain of a Native American woman at another anti-nuclear rally in 2007. Hundreds of Americans gathered at the gates of the Los Alamos National Lab, an annual event. Along with the politicians and celebrities, a Native American woman rose to speak: her family came from the area, which was taken from her people by the US government to create the Los Alamos nuclear complex, the place where the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were put together. She described the destruction and suffering caused by those nuclear devices, the higher levels of cancer in her people, and the government"s plans for Complex 2030. When she finished, the protestors sat for a thirty-minute meditation, and they ended the day with the floating of j.a.panese lanterns, a tradition they follow every year in Hiroshima to remember loved ones lost in the nuclear holocaust. "All within me weeps," she repeated.
Even more than protesting, Jackie suggests that if we wish to lessen the nuclear threat, we must first look inward and take responsibility for our interior s.p.a.ce. Are the conditions - the anger, resentment, and fear - that cause humans to go to war and support violence inside of us? Can we regain faith in the goodness of human beings, including, most importantly, of ourselves? Then, can we express this faithfulness in action and love, perhaps by joining a peace study group or partic.i.p.ating in nonviolent action? As the plaque on the Pettus Bridge in Selma proclaims: "When you pray, move your feet."
Jackie"s brave response to darkness inspires me. So many of us get clobbered by the system and end up living what Th.o.r.eau called "lives of quiet desperation," living, you might say, in Weimar and pretending that Buchenwald is not up the road. Social psychologist Eric Fromm astutely observed that the main reason people perpetuate evil systems is remarkably simple: they don"t love life. Sometimes I see it clearly in myself: a going-through-the-motions, an acquiescence, a living-with-it - but without the vital pulse of love. Jackie"s courage in the Nevada Desert arises out of a deep love for life.
ONE NIGHT I SAT WITH PAUL JR. at his bonfire, in silence for a long while, thunder sounding in the distance. The candle went out in Paul Sr."s 12 12, and then he came out and joined us. The flames cast a jagged glow on the left side of the old professor"s face, the right side in near blackness. "The neighbors turned us in," he finally said. "They told the police we"re living in small houses."
"That"s a crime?" I said.
"A misdemeanor. The inspectors came after the tip-off. You"re only officially allowed to live in a 12 12 if it"s for part of the year, not year-round. And we couldn"t prove a permanent address elsewhere. Because we don"t have any other address."
According to that rule, Jackie wasn"t legal, either, and could be forced to move out of her 12 12.
Paul Jr. chimed in: "And they said our front and back porches made the houses "effectively bigger than twelve by twelve," so we have to install toilets, pay various taxes ..."
"They"re also trying to make us install electricity," Paul Sr. said. "Do you know it"s not legal to live without electricity in North Carolina? It"s not a choice you may make. it"ll cost us a fortune, and could sink us. Just like legal costs to defend an ecological vision are sinking Bradley."
Paul Sr. got up, saying he was going to bed. The entire right side of his body was now illuminated by firelight, his left side fading into oblivion. "h.e.l.l is other people!" he blurted out. "What does it matter to them if we live simply? It makes me all tense inside. I believe in community, but ..."
He paused. Paul Jr. was staring down at the beer in his hand, perhaps trying to think up a Carlos Castaneda rejoinder. His dad finally went on: "Do you know what? I can"t get beyond me. Do you think I haven"t tried group living? I"ve tried for so long to diminish my ego. It doesn"t happen. I"m Descartes"s child; I only exist at all because I think." He hit his palm against his head. "With this this brain!" brain!"
I thought of what Leah said: Sin is when I"m at the center. Sin is when I"m at the center. Paul Sr. looked off, to an invisible point out in the forest someplace. "Individualism is part of our cultural DNA. We"ll never escape it." Paul Sr. looked off, to an invisible point out in the forest someplace. "Individualism is part of our cultural DNA. We"ll never escape it."
I FELT AS IF A DARK CLOUD WERE Pa.s.sING OVER the Thompsons as well. One day, after waiting for a booming military jet to fly over, I asked little Kyle if he wanted to go biking. He shook his head and said no. the Thompsons as well. One day, after waiting for a booming military jet to fly over, I asked little Kyle if he wanted to go biking. He shook his head and said no.
This surprised me, even hurt a little. One of my great joys at the 12 12 was biking the dirt roads with Kyle, his Joycean flop of hair pressed back by the wind, flying along in silence to the post office. He always asked me to do things with him: fish, walk to the creek, bike. We"d tear down the dirt road together and lay down long, curving skids, then compare them. We"d laugh and exchange out-of-breath jokes.
There was an awkward pause. Finally, I said: "Some other time then?"
"Maybe," the eleven-year-old replied, looking suddenly older. "But probably not. I"ll be riding that that from now on." from now on."
He pointed up toward the disheveled woodpile, where the first fourteen ducklings of the season had cracked through their sh.e.l.ls. Beside it was the first all-terrain vehicle, or ATV, I"d seen in Pine Bridge. He told me excitedly that it was the first of two ATVs their grandma was sending them from Florida. She"d traded a Bobcat - evidently another kind of machine - for the ATVs.
Later that day, while I watched the pink puff of a lime green chameleon"s chin on the side of the 12 12, something began to drill a hole in the blessed silence. Just a little p.r.i.c.k at first, a distant whine that turned into a motorized anti-om as a screaming red ATV ripped through the greenery into my line of vision, not two feet from the deer fence. Mike was at the helm, his long goatee sailing back into the wind, little Allison in his lap, both giddy with fossil-fueled fun. as a screaming red ATV ripped through the greenery into my line of vision, not two feet from the deer fence. Mike was at the helm, his long goatee sailing back into the wind, little Allison in his lap, both giddy with fossil-fueled fun.
After Allison came Brett, Greg, and Kyle, each riding with their dad, roaring past the 12 12, my nostrils a.s.saulted by the blue-black smoke spewing out of the ATV"s tailpipe. Coughing and covering my ears to m.u.f.fle the motor noise, I fled deep into the woods, my inner struggle flaring up, thinking of Paul Sr. saying that "h.e.l.l is other people." The enemy now was Mike. You"re flattening the world for them You"re flattening the world for them, I told him in my mind. Why not let them ride quiet, pollution-free, exercise-promoting bikes? They look up to you, adore you. Why teach them motors are better than pedals? Why not let them ride quiet, pollution-free, exercise-promoting bikes? They look up to you, adore you. Why teach them motors are better than pedals?
I viscerally react to too-much-of-the-human, too much loud, intrusive, tacky technology. It"s connected to guilt - my own complicity in the use of technology, which increases human reach and power while also causing forests to be felled worldwide and the climate to cook. Not to mention my own blatant hypocrisy through enjoying the fruits of it all. When I heard the whine of those motors I flashed back to my ecotourism project in that Bolivian cloud forest. The slash-and-burn. The global economy coming over the hill. I felt as if the harmony I"d seen so clearly in Pine Bridge"s wildcrafting community actually rested on a rather fragile foundation: everyone making somewhat similar, compatible choices with how to use their part of the land. The ATV motors roared right past the 12 12 all that day and the next, erasing the peace.
Just when the ATVs stopped, I heard something else. Rrrr-rrrr Rrrr-rrrr, came the sound. It definitely wasn"t an ATV. Less whiny, deeper. Must be out on Old Highway 117 South, I figured, continuing to stare into the creek, just down the embankment from the 12 12, and thinking about the neighbors who turned the Pauls in to the authorities for living in small houses. But the sound increased.
I looked up. Nothing.
Then, a flash of mustard yellow, and the rusty scoop of a bulldozer, fifty meters or so through the woods. RRR-rr-rr! RRR-rr-rr! stuttered the machine, and a tree came crashing down. It seemed surreal. I pictured rainforest trees falling a continent away, the Andean bears, monkeys, and jaguars retreating deeper into their disappearing nature reserves. I ran through Jackie"s woods toward the machine. There were two men, one manning the bulldozer, the other on the ground. I waved my arms. The bulldozer lurched farther and knocked down another set of small trees, the forest falling. It was aimed directly at the 12 12. stuttered the machine, and a tree came crashing down. It seemed surreal. I pictured rainforest trees falling a continent away, the Andean bears, monkeys, and jaguars retreating deeper into their disappearing nature reserves. I ran through Jackie"s woods toward the machine. There were two men, one manning the bulldozer, the other on the ground. I waved my arms. The bulldozer lurched farther and knocked down another set of small trees, the forest falling. It was aimed directly at the 12 12.
22. ALLOWING.
"STOP!" I CRIED OUT, stepping in front of the bulldozer.
The engine roared even louder. The man in the bulldozer removed his helmet, a big frown etched into his brow, and he waved vigorously for me to move. I realized, suddenly, that I"d been hearing the machine each day, between lulls in the ATV noise, but I had apparently been in denial. Now, facing that large, rumbling yellow machine, which was turning beautiful trees into stumps and ripping out the forest on a direct line toward Jackie"s 12 X12, I had no choice but to accept that Bradley must have made new plans.
The scowling man finally turned off the bulldozer. "Hi," I said. No response. A mustached good ol" boy. Below him, a Latino man was chainsawing the brush; he turned off his chainsaw as well.
"I"m living over there," I said, nodding toward the 12 12, which from our angle was completely concealed by trees.
This concept sank in: property owner. "Howdy," the mustached guy said.
"You all work for Bradley?" I asked.
"Uh huh," he said, even friendlier now at the sound of his boss"s name.
"What"s the plan?"
"The plan?" the man said, squinting his eyes, suddenly suspicious.
What was Bradley doing? I knew he was trying to bring wild-crafting to scale, going against the powers-that-be to create innovative eco-communities. But what was this bulldozer for? I also knew that Siler City legal efforts to stop Bradley from building cooperative housing were sinking him financially, so perhaps, to cover his debt, he was now planning to develop additional lots in the thirty acres surrounding Jackie"s.
"Ya"ll cutting a road all the way to the creek?" I asked.
"I don"t know. Bradley just gives the orders for a day at a time."
"I see," I said. Just what they need to know.
"But I believe this here is meant to be a walking path," he added.
Sure, I thought. A walking path as wide as an interstate. A walking path as wide as an interstate. I walked away, along the creek to the railroad track bridge and along those abandoned tracks, wondering if there was anywhere at all beyond the Flat. I walked away, along the creek to the railroad track bridge and along those abandoned tracks, wondering if there was anywhere at all beyond the Flat.
I began having nightmares. Once again the aging former n.a.z.i man living in the woods was visited by a younger man. I saw it all as if from the trees, and then that quick zoom and I"m looking right at the old n.a.z.i; I am him. He has (I have) the same warts, wrinkles, and odor; it"s now the stench of chicken factories.
I woke up soaked in sweat, lit a candle up in the loft. That absurd 12 12 slab of bare cement below. I imagined falling down onto it from the loft, with a thud. Despite all the inner progress I"d made, I wondered if it could stand up to the ATVs and the bulldozers racing toward the 12 12. They"ll give No Name Creek a name They"ll give No Name Creek a name, I thought, my spirits sinking further. Storybook Creek they"ll call it, and Jackie"s nameless road will be Cinderella Lane. The loop into the Thompson farm: King Arthur"s Court. In the forest beyond Jose"s, new roads, Mark Twain Lane and Robin Hood Road, this soft place domesticated into a thematic suburb: into the no-place I"m from.
At the same time that as I was witnessing this destruction, I met Julie and Yvonne at the Thompson farm. They"d rolled up in their old van to drop off a few Muscovy ducks for Mike. They were both heavyset, with fat rolling off of every joint, and they had bravado about farming. Julie said they were partners and lived in a shed with no electricity, "but we have Netflix"; a solar battery pack powered their DVD and TV. I told them I might bike over sometime to visit.
They didn"t tell me not to stop by, but - come to think of it - they didn"t agree either, and when I arrived I figured out why. Theirs wasn"t a farm at all; it was a garbage dump. The carca.s.ses of a half dozen vehicles rusted away, plastic wrappers caught on the edges. "Not for Human Habitation" was stamped all over their home. Actually, it wasn"t a house at all; it was a shed. They"d bought it for three thousand dollars at Shed Depot.
The animal smell was terrible. If the Thompson farm was a pleasant chaos of goats and fowl, this was an anarchic mess, a cacophony of Narragansetts sc.r.a.ping the hard ground with their feathers, geese honking, ducks quacking, hogs grunting, four dogs in a barking frenzy. Julie emerged from the shed.
We talked amid the drone of animals. "I was going to clean that up," she said of the trash around us. "We"re still getting set up here." It had been two years.
Tea wasn"t an option. They had nowhere to sit down, just their bed and an overflowing table in their Shed Depot abode. So we stood and talked. "We don"t exist as far as they they are concerned," Julie said, gesturing out toward the powers-that-be. "We tried living in the system, tried to change it. But the blight"s too deep." are concerned," Julie said, gesturing out toward the powers-that-be. "We tried living in the system, tried to change it. But the blight"s too deep."
By "not existing" she meant they paid no taxes, weren"t on any census list. They managed a hardscrabble existence from the eggs and meat of their animals. It was a kind of anarchist, lesbian-punk, f.u.c.k-you to all of society. To the empire. To complicity. Suddenly I pictured Jackie, and a thought crossed my mind: She"s naive. She"s naive. She"s now finishing a walk across the Nevada desert to a US nuclear test site. Could anything be more absurd? Why bother with useless little meditative pilgrimages across a desert? She"s now finishing a walk across the Nevada desert to a US nuclear test site. Could anything be more absurd? Why bother with useless little meditative pilgrimages across a desert?
If there was a rock bottom of cynicism and despair for me at Jackie"s, I"d reached it.
Sitting in that garbage dump of a yard, I felt the c.u.mulative weight of Kusasu"s extinction, the elimination of the world"s rainforests, the military jets booming overhead on their way to Iraq, Complex 2030"s new generation of nukes, and the bulldozers about to flatten the forest around No Name Creek. And things were worsening for Jose and other local Latinos. The Easter anti-immigration protests turned out to be mercifully small that year, but they had new worries: AgroMart, an industrial agriculture conglomerate, was spraying North Carolina crops with pesticides so haphazardly that its Mexican field laborers were being exposed, allegedly causing Latino babies to be born without limbs. Because the workers were undoc.u.mented, they had little leverage to protest. What"s more, the state"s industrial hog industry was growing by the day, and the number of industrially produced hogs in North Carolina had surpa.s.sed the number of people. Could warrior presence stop a blight this deep? Wildcrafting on the creative edge? It all began to seem hopelessly quixotic.
Then I noticed something at Julie and Yvonne"s, the chicken factory smell. To my horror, beyond a line of trees and over some barbed wire, maybe thirty yards away from where I stood with Julie - rose a chicken factory, white and windowless. It spewed the smell of suffering, the beakless-featherless-boneless chickens dwelling in darkness right beside her shed of a home.
I felt faint and found my way to a rusty chair and sat down. This was how bad it could get. Yvonne and Julie had tried to live in the system and been defeated, instead creating out of their lives a dark contemporary art piece, throwing society"s blight right back in its face. Is this what would happen to the likes of the Thompsons, the Pauls, even Jackie? Perhaps trying to live on the edge in America is so difficult that eventually, one day, you just free-fall into nihilism.
ABANDON ALL HOPE OF FRUITION.
This was one of the cards in Jackie"s stack that I always found incongruous with the rest. It seemed far too negative for Jackie. A chicken jumped into my lap, and I petted its stiff feathers. Another jumped up next to it for a little love. And amid the despair I was feeling I began, vaguely at first, to get get something key to Jackie"s philosophy that had eluded me up until then. Abandoning all hope of fruition suddenly began to make sense, a necessary puzzle piece. something key to Jackie"s philosophy that had eluded me up until then. Abandoning all hope of fruition suddenly began to make sense, a necessary puzzle piece.
"They lay eggs in our laundry basket," Julie was saying about the chickens, but her voice drifted to me as if in slow motion. I"d become absorbed by the beauty of their animals. The friendliness of the angora goats and even the hogs; such a profusion of birds and they were constantly at our feet. They lived along with Yvonne and Julie inside the shed - as well as outside, as they wished - and expressed a "suchness," their proud animal simplicity forming a fierce contrast with the domestication of the chicken factory right next door, where tens of thousands of birds lived in crippled, deformed, genetically modified imprisonment. Three Narragansetts, ablaze in color, pressed against my thighs; Julie petted a goat under the chin, and it pressed tighter up against her huge b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if to suckle. Guinea hens at her ankles, along with a cat and a beagle. She stroked a chicken. I stared at the Gold Kist factory, lost in an unusual texture of thought, the swirling sense of a profound growing realization.
Later that evening I lay on the gra.s.s under the stars at Jackie"s. Abandon all hope of fruition Abandon all hope of fruition. Just give up and accept the world, factory farms and all? No, that couldn"t be what it means. As I considered this, two airplanes soared above, just an inch apart. No big deal, planes are common, even out here, little more than heavenly static. These two planes, though, were inching forward along the exact same line along the exact same line. Suddenly a shooting star appeared, white hot, and threaded right through those two planes. Of all places in that vast sky, nature"s light blazed between the two dots of human-made light. I sat up in wonder, the shooting star"s trail fading to black.
As if an afterthought, one of Pine Bridge"s ubiquitous fireflies illuminated the shooting star"s tail, tracing a bit of its fading glory before turning itself off amid some heirloom tea bushes.
Just as I thought the show was over, a satellite - an even fainter afterthought than the firefly - followed the airplanes, in triangular tow behind them. Just a dot, trailing across the screen of the sky like a period.