BACK AT THE 12 X 12 THE NEXT DAY, I spotted the two-year-old blonde head of Allison Thompson bobbing along the dirt road toward Jose"s and Graciela"s houses. I"d been watching the movement of a light breeze, which pa.s.sed like a wave through the trees on the Thompson farm, crossed No Name Creek, and washed through the deeper woods beyond. Seeing Allison reminded me that I had a gift for her. I spotted the two-year-old blonde head of Allison Thompson bobbing along the dirt road toward Jose"s and Graciela"s houses. I"d been watching the movement of a light breeze, which pa.s.sed like a wave through the trees on the Thompson farm, crossed No Name Creek, and washed through the deeper woods beyond. Seeing Allison reminded me that I had a gift for her.
Actually, it was from Leah, a doll she"d given me to pa.s.s along; Leah said Allison reminded her of herself as a little girl. Picturing the smile on her face, I retrieved the doll from inside and strode toward the rabbit fence. I was about to undo the twist tie when I hesitated. Beyond the cute little Allison - who had now been joined by her four-year-old brother, the mohawked Brett - I noticed other people with darker hair and skin, who for a second felt vaguely threatening. Mexican and Honduran teenagers: Hector - Jose"s son - and two of Graciela"s kids, ranging between twelve and sixteen. I wanted to give Allison the doll, but another thought crossed my mind: Did I really want to interact with the teenagers? Have them know I"m home? What if the two older ones were into gang stuff? Later on, I"d look back at this reaction as my own internalized racism - I viewed them not as unique people in that moment but through a kind of racial profile. My fingers hesitated on the twist tie, and then I heard Mike"s voice booming from down the road: "Allison! Allison! Allison!"
In a flash Mike reached the 12 12"s gate, three of his boys in tow. Even quicker, little Allison and Brett, hearing their father"s angry voice, took a shortcut between two Habitat houses and headed by a back route toward their own home.
"Have you seen my daughter?" Mike blurted out to me, his face practically cherry red. I told him she"d hung a left back toward his house. He didn"t respond; instead he charged in the direction of the teens, his boys picking up steam behind him. I thought of Mike"s gun. I"d heard it go off during target practice the day before. Meanwhile, the Latino teens seemed oblivious to Mike charging toward them. They fake-pushed each other, fooling around. When Mike was fifty yards away, the tallest boy looked up and stopped midsentence; the others stopped as well, regarding the angry father and his three blond boys. Everybody froze.
The silent standoff stretched out for a long moment, an incredible tension filling the s.p.a.ce between Mike and his boys and the Latino teens. Suddenly I felt myself completely outside of the situation, as if I were a ghost in a movie revisiting his life. I experienced a kind of inner paralysis, knowing only one thing for sure: I didn"t want anyone to get hurt. Mike moved toward the teens, his sons right behind him. They narrowed the gap to thirty yards, then twenty yards; the teens didn"t move. Then all of sudden Michele"s voice rang through the trees: "I got her!"
Mike stopped abruptly, one of his boys banging up against him. "You got her?" he called out.
"Affirmative!" Michele hollered from about a quarter mile away.
Mike hesitated for a few seconds, which stretched out to ten. He seemed at a loss as to how to act. n.o.body moved or spoke. His boys looked up to him, waiting for his cue. Without a word, Mike did a i8o-degree about-face and marched toward his house, his boys following him, a rapid retreat.
11. FORGIVENESS.
"I WALKED BACK WARD IN TO AMERICA," Jose said. "I never finished that story. Of how I came to your country." Jose said. "I never finished that story. Of how I came to your country."
Jose had invited Leah and me to his cherished woodworking studio. He gave Leah the same impa.s.sioned tour he"d given me, showing her the beautiful dressers, tables, and chairs that he struggled to sell door-to-door. He told her that Habitat for Humanity made it all possible, as he touched his sliding table saw with reverence. Leah couldn"t hide her fascination with the man. He invited us in for tacos.
They were delicious. We happily munched away, La Fea Mas Bella La Fea Mas Bella on the TV in the background. Hector got up early to go play RuneScape on the computer, and eventually Leah followed him in there, sitting next to him. "I"m killing chickens for their bones," I overheard him saying to her. on the TV in the background. Hector got up early to go play RuneScape on the computer, and eventually Leah followed him in there, sitting next to him. "I"m killing chickens for their bones," I overheard him saying to her.
The touch of mistrust I"d felt from Jose until that point - the way he"d tiptoe around his past or local racial politics - seemed to fall away as we got to know each other. Leah wandered back in and sat down next to me on the couch. Jose cleared his throat and said, in Spanish, "I lived in a village in Guerrero, Mexico, until I was one, but our family had constant gunfights with the neighboring family. A historical feud. So my grandmother decided one day that we should leave. We found another place, closer to the city, in the hillside slums, and I lived there until I was fifteen. It was a shack with old mattresses for walls and cardboard siding, with a tin roof and a single window.
"What did I do? I went to elementary school for a few years and then dropped out at age eight to shine shoes in town for twenty pesos a day. Later I sold ice cream on foot. When I was fifteen, my cousin said, "Nothing is ever going to change here." Then he mentioned "America," but I didn"t know what that was."
Leah didn"t catch all of this, so Jose stopped while I translated. She asked Jose in broken Spanish if he had never even heard of America at that point in his life.
Jose said, "I had no idea what America was. Sure, I"d heard the word America America, but it meant nothing to me. Absolutely nothing, like ... like a grunt a grunt."
He muted the TV and continued, "In the end, my cousin convinced me that we could make money in America. So we got a train - but went the wrong way and ended up in Guatemala. Guatemala! A week later we were back in Guerrero, ashamed. But soon we did travel north. We crossed the border at night, through the mountains, the desert. We spent three days in the desert.
"At one point Immigration had raked the desert sands to a smooth surface. Perfectly flat and smooth. Why? They did this so they could count the wetbacks who came in during the night. That"s why I walked backward into America, to make it look like I was returning to Mexico.
"I saw a dead man, hanging by his neck from a rope in the desert. I finally arrived at a train track. My cousin kept walking, but I risked hopping on a freight car to Los Angeles. That"s where I stayed for some years before moving here to North Carolina five years ago."
After a silence, Leah asked him, "America was nothing but "a grunt " to you as a teenager. What is it now?"
Jose stretched out his arms to take in the house, the woodworking studio. "All of this," he said. "And freedom. Opportunity. I love this country."
His response began as spontaneous and genuine, but by the time he got to "I love this country," I sensed he was mouthing what you were supposed to say to Americans.
On TV, the soap opera was over and the local news came on. Easter was on the way, and with it rumors of right-wing groups who were planning to once again impede Siler City Latinos from carrying statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary through town. Since 2000, Siler City had been a crossroads of US immigration issues, ever since David Duke, former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, had given a speech there in front of four hundred people denouncing illegal immigrants. Some supporters waved American flags; others, Confederate flags. Most Latinos stayed in their homes that day, afraid to come out to counterprotest. Duke was a.s.sisted by the National Alliance, a neo-n.a.z.i group, and most of the supporters were from out of town. Racial tensions in Siler City were high because thousands of Latinos had been moving there and taking jobs in the poultry industry, and the city government had written the federal government for help in removing undoc.u.mented workers. Days after Duke"s speech, the local Latino Catholic church was vandalized.
Since then, a group of white and black parents and the school board have tried to transfer undoc.u.mented Mexican students out of local public schools, and Duke has held several more rallies. Siler City has become even more racially divided. In 2006, protestors stormed the door of the town hall to ask for stricter immigration laws, some shouting, "I pay my taxes!"
Jose looked out the window toward the Thompson farm, toward Siler City beyond, a huge frown etched deeply into his forehead. I asked him what was wrong.
"I"m fine," he said. "A veces con un poco de miedo, no mas." - "Just a little afraid sometimes."
IN GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, in November 1979, the state"s Ku Klux Klan and the American n.a.z.i Party killed five of Jackie"s young friends in cold blood while they were protesting racism. Luckily, Jackie herself arrived late to the protest. To date, none of the killers have been prosecuted for what occurred in the Greensboro ma.s.sacre. The Greensboro police were sympathetic to the KKK and weren"t about to turn in their buddies.
As Jackie told me when we first met, her father was a Klansman, and he used to rally like the rest in a pointy white hood. Nevertheless, Jackie keeps several framed photographs of him in the 12 12. While sitting in Jackie"s great-grandmother"s rocking chair, I once examined an incredibly tender photo of her parents. Jackie"s mother sits in the same rocking chair, looking melancholic, while her father, dressed in a pair of jeans and flannel shirt, stands beside her, hand on her shoulder, looking directly into the camera. The look in his eyes is childlike. On the other side of the 12 12 is another photo of her dad. Another is up in the loft, framed by her bed. She loves him.
During my time in the 12 12, I kept wondering: How could this be? Jackie"s dad went against every principle she lives for. In the days after my lunch with Jose, as Siler City prepared to deal with more anti-Latino riots, after witnessing Mike Thompson and his sons descend in anger on those Mexican and Guatemalan teenagers, after visiting Siler City"s chicken coop and stumbling across the relics of slavery in the surrounding countryside, I felt myself become first annoyed, then angry toward Jackie. How could she turn the other cheek to all this?
These people - the ones who killed her friends in Greensboro, KKK members like her dad - they had to be brought to justice, didn"t they? A mix of fear, resentment, and bitterness grew in me, and there was nothing in the 12 12 solitude to distract me from it. So I did what I often did at Jackie"s: I walked.
Almost immediately, I realized where part of my feelings came from. I"ve been physically attacked three times in my life, in Providence, Boston, and Amsterdam. All three times by gangs of young men. In Providence, the attack on me was one of twenty-seven by African American gang members, who were targeting white and Asian college students as part of their initiation. In Boston and Amsterdam, I might easily have been killed or crippled had it not been for luck: the police happened to be pa.s.sing by. In both these cases, the perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted for violent a.s.sault, but eventually they got off without jail time.
Violent attack is barbarian and inexcusable, and I understood what Jose must have felt, what North Carolina Latinos and blacks, then and now, must feel: extremely vulnerable and outnumbered by a violent group. I vividly recalled my a.s.sailants" furious faces, their shouting, grabbing me, punching me to the ground, and kicking my skull and rib cage. They deserved punishment! Forgiveness seemed little more than another word for weakness.
These thoughts pounding in my head, I suddenly stopped walking. There before me, a box turtle was stranded between the rails. His head came in and out of his wrinkly neck. I loved box turtles as a child on Long Island, discovering them hidden amid the fallen oak leaves in the forest patches near my house. I lifted him up and placed him in the woods. His feet found gra.s.s, and he bolted forward. So did I. Onward. Something raw rose up in me, a desire for revenge against the people who had attacked me, who continue to attack others. I walked more briskly, then jogged, then ran hard. Nature absorbed some of my pain. A teal blue sky wisped with clouds to the south, a washed-out indigo blue to the north, and a million points of light green, buds and tiny leaves, bursting forth everywhere. I walked into it, walked for five or six miles, and kept walking.
I wasn"t going anywhere in particular; I just let my legs lead me. Slowly, my jaw, held tight, began to slacken. I tried to focus on the present moment. I realized I was hardly aware of my surroundings because I was so wrapped up in my inner angst. Off the tracks and into the woods. I felt tingly, sweaty, breathing hard, at first from exercise, but then from a beautiful growing realization: I don"t have to be controlled by lower-order feelings like anger and resentment, even when they burn right through me. Cradle the feeling, release it, and come back to the moment. I repeated a mantra from Thich Nhat Hahn that I"d found the previous day in the 12 12: Breathing in I calm my body Breathing in I calm my body / / Breathing out I smile Breathing out I smile / /Dwelling in the present moment/I know it is a wonderful moment.
The mantra brought me back. For a moment only; then bitterness returned. Ah Ah, I said, a sudden realization. So this is bitterness! So this is bitterness! I walked with it, cradled it like a baby in my arms, and then breathed with it, calming my body and mind, releasing it, releasing bitterness and coming back to the present moment. I walked with it, cradled it like a baby in my arms, and then breathed with it, calming my body and mind, releasing it, releasing bitterness and coming back to the present moment.
Wonderful moment. I came upon several hundred black tadpoles on the verge of death. Their mini-sea of rainwater had evaporated so much that it was now just a shallow puddle. From a distance the tadpoles looked like a swarm of insects on the water, as the top of their heads and their tails protruded. Only as I got closer did I realize they were tadpoles - and that they didn"t know anything was amiss. They swam lazily, eating from the pool bottom and siphoning off what landed on top, oblivious to the fact that their pool was drying up.
There were no replenishing rain clouds in sight. I did a quick tour of the surrounding area and found no other water where I could translocate the poor guys. They were doomed, but I reminded myself: frogs themselves are not doomed. Likewise, 99 percent of the little stunted firs, pines, and dogwoods, the tiny saplings shaded from the sun under the tree canopy, were doomed. But trees aren"t doomed. Nature played the odds, spreading out a thousand seeds of amphibians, of trees, so that a few might survive.
I sat by the puddle and looked at the black-and-gray creatures, glossy as the sad sinking surface. They nibbled at the wet clay bottom, swerved and sliced one past the next, and some of the large, grayer ones - another tadpole species - rimmed the water"s surface with parted lips, sucking off what they could and leaving a thin wake. I fished a tadpole out, put it back, watched it swim away. Dipped a hand into the clay bottom, squeezed silky mud through my hand, and then sank in the other hand. I enjoyed the cool mud, the feeling of the water.
James Holman, a blind nineteenth-century British writer and traveler, said his blindness seldom caused him to miss anything. When they became aware of his condition, people always invited him to "squeeze things" as a way of perceiving them. Perhaps this is what we in a flattening twenty-first-century world must do: squeeze squeeze things, places, feelings, and ideas until they yield something. I squeezed the mud again, deeper into the earth now, and pulled out my hands, sh.e.l.lacked in deep brown, the sun gleaming off the rippling water that slid down my hands onto my forearms. A breeze peeled back my mudcovered arm hairs and smoothed a little wrinkle out of both my eyebrows as I got up. I walked into the forest with gleaming brown hands. things, places, feelings, and ideas until they yield something. I squeezed the mud again, deeper into the earth now, and pulled out my hands, sh.e.l.lacked in deep brown, the sun gleaming off the rippling water that slid down my hands onto my forearms. A breeze peeled back my mudcovered arm hairs and smoothed a little wrinkle out of both my eyebrows as I got up. I walked into the forest with gleaming brown hands.
After another mile, the mud now caked on, I found myself once again at No Name Creek. I put my hands in the creek and rinsed the clay off, took another step and then another, and suddenly realized how different I felt.
Rather than being a tense ball of anxiety, I"d now come fully into the present moment. No marooned tadpoles, moored turtles, or hawk feathers falling from the sky announced the change. My heart pumped away as usual, but my mind had stopped. I smiled. I breathed. All the walking had paid a dividend. I looked down into the creek.
My image shimmered. I could see a face, some eyes, the strawberry blond color of my hair, the blue of my jeans, but all of this was like looking into a bubble. Seeing my translucent image in No Name Creek, I realized something important about Jackie. This is what she"s done with her life: become transparent. Later, she would confirm this and explain more: when you become so enmeshed in the fullness of nature, of Life, that your ego dissolves, emotions like resentment, anger, and fear have no place to lodge. She says she still feels these emotions, a little, but more like a dull thud against her mind. They fall away.
What would have happened if she and her friends had taken revenge on those KKK folks in Greensboro, maybe with a t.i.t-for-tat killing? This would have only continued the cycle of violence. Instead, in 2005, she and others came up with a novel idea: to replicate post-apartheid South Africa"s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They created a Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear public testimony about the event and to examine the causes and consequences of the ma.s.sacre. The Greensboro City Council officially opposed the efforts of the commission, but the process forged ahead and became the first of its kind in the United States. What the commission discovered was significant: that Klan members had planned beforehand to provoke violence at the rally, and that the Greensboro Police Department and the FBI knew this ahead of time. The commission also determined that the white supremacists fired on demonstrators without being attacked first. The commission"s 2006 final report laid out a blueprint for continued dialogue and peacebuilding, and through this process of open acknowledgment and engagement, instead of more hatred being fueled, an entirely different result is manifesting: hatred is slowly transforming into healing.
That"s what happened in South Africa. Never was there a better case for revenge. For decades, the white minority had practiced legalized segregation, keeping the black majority in separate "townships" or shadow towns, marginalized from economic and political power. If you protested against this, as Nelson Mandela did, you could be imprisoned for decades. But after apartheid was dismantled and blacks took power in 1994, Mandela exhibited wise leadership, and the other cheek was turned. Whites were not only allowed to stay in South Africa, but could keep their homes and businesses. As a result, South Africa avoided the kind of ma.s.sive bloodshed seen in Zimbabwe, and the country and its economy continued to function for everyone.
JACKIE DIDN"T MEET HER FATHER"S HATRED of other races with a dose of her own. Instead, she decided to walk the Selma-Montgomery march every year in her native Alabama. In fact, when I first met her, she"d just returned from the weeklong event. The original Selma-Montgomery march occurred in March 1965, ending weeks of political and social conflict over voting rights in the South during the peak of the civil rights movement. On March 7, some six hundred civil rights activists headed east from Selma en route to Montgomery. They made it six blocks, to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, before state and local officials met them and attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas, driving them back to Selma. Two days later, Martin Luther King Jr. led a "symbolic" march from Selma to the bridge. After that, other civil rights leaders in Alabama traveled to Montgomery to receive protection to carry out a third, full-scale march from Selma. On March 21, 3,200 marchers left Selma on their way to Montgomery. They reached the capital four days later, at that point 25,000 strong. Five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gave blacks the right to vote. To commemorate the 1965 marches, the federal government created the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in 1996, and today, thousands of people follow that route every March to celebrate the acts of heroism that took place and to continue the process of racial healing. The annual march ends with a rally on the Montgomery green, the exact spot where Jackie"s Klansman dad used to rally in his hood. of other races with a dose of her own. Instead, she decided to walk the Selma-Montgomery march every year in her native Alabama. In fact, when I first met her, she"d just returned from the weeklong event. The original Selma-Montgomery march occurred in March 1965, ending weeks of political and social conflict over voting rights in the South during the peak of the civil rights movement. On March 7, some six hundred civil rights activists headed east from Selma en route to Montgomery. They made it six blocks, to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, before state and local officials met them and attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas, driving them back to Selma. Two days later, Martin Luther King Jr. led a "symbolic" march from Selma to the bridge. After that, other civil rights leaders in Alabama traveled to Montgomery to receive protection to carry out a third, full-scale march from Selma. On March 21, 3,200 marchers left Selma on their way to Montgomery. They reached the capital four days later, at that point 25,000 strong. Five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gave blacks the right to vote. To commemorate the 1965 marches, the federal government created the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in 1996, and today, thousands of people follow that route every March to celebrate the acts of heroism that took place and to continue the process of racial healing. The annual march ends with a rally on the Montgomery green, the exact spot where Jackie"s Klansman dad used to rally in his hood.
As I thought back on the three gangs that attacked me, I realized that, to an extent, I had turned the other cheek. After I was attacked by the gang in Providence, I wrote an op-ed piece for my college newspaper encouraging Brown students to volunteer as Big Brothers and generally climb down out of the ivory tower and get involved solving the problems that were the root causes of such attacks. After my Boston attack, the prosecutor tried to get me to press charges against the princ.i.p.al a.s.sailant, but I wrote a statement forgiving him, brutal as the attack had been. Had I prosecuted, he would have been denied entrance into the navy. In my statement I wrote that his anger would be better channeled into discipline in boot camp than festering and growing in prison.
As I returned to the 12 12 after my long walk, however, I realized there was a key difference between myself and Jackie. Whereas she, from all indications, had evolved beyond anger, I still had it lodged firmly inside me - as I had just witnessed. Eventually, the stay at the 12 12 would help me let go of it for good. Yet everything on Jackie"s four tiny walls, including the photographs of her father, spoke of only one thing: love. I could not see a negative emotion anywhere. When Jesus said to love your enemies, he of course meant: Don"t have any enemies. Instead of letting racism and other forms of negativity inside you, transform them through forgiveness.
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DRIVE ALL BLAMES IN TO ONE.
12. SACRIFICE AND SEDUCTION.
DOWN BY NO NAME CREEK ONE DAY, I read aloud to Leah from Jackie"s copy of the I read aloud to Leah from Jackie"s copy of the Tao Te Ching Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu"s famous book of Chinese wisdom: "Do you think you can improve the world?"
Without hesitating, Leah said: "Yes."
I paused, and then read on: "I don"t think it can be done."
In unison we broke into smiles, and I continued: "The world is sacred, it can"t be improved."
"Hearing that," Leah said, "I feel a pressure lift."
"It"s our training," I replied. " "You can save the world!" It goes on to say, "The master sees things as they are without trying to control them. She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle.""
I turned my head to look at Leah"s profile. Neither of us said anything.
Then she slid the book from my hand and continued reading from it: "Know the male, yet keep to the female. Receive the world in your arms.... Know the white, yet keep to the black. Be a pattern for the world."
I felt lighter, in a deep well of time, the forest around us growing more roomy. "I like that," I said, "about being a pattern for the world." The opposites were bouncing around in my mind: male-female, white-black.
" "Pattern" is so much better than "model." "
"Who said anything about model?"
"Exactly. But we always talk about role models. And model citizens. Sounds as plastic as a model airplane, when we"re talking about an interwoven whole."
"Are you a pattern for the world?"
Her cheek tilted toward her shoulder and she shrugged. "Your turn," she said, handing me the book.
"He who defines himself can"t really know who he is. He who clings to his work creates nothing that will endure."
"Lose your shtick," Leah said. "The more deeply we try to carve an ident.i.ty, the less we"re ourselves."
"We"re cheapened. It"s like trying to reduce G.o.d to one of its metaphors - the religions."
"Heresy!"
"Perhaps, but the finger that points at the moon is not the moon. You know," I continued, "I had an artist friend in New Mexico. She"d paint these beautiful watercolors on homemade paper. Work on them for hours, for an entire day. And then she"d leave the finished paintings by the river bank to blow into the water and disappear downstream."
"And thus they endured," she said.
This is the type of conversation Leah and I had during those spring days. On the surface these philosophical discussions were ironic because we were at the very same time gazing deeply into the dark waters of industrial chicken factories, at an undercla.s.s in sprawling trailer parks, and even at the possibility of racial violence among Jackie"s direct neighbors. Did we believe "The world is sacred, and can"t be improved"? Quite the contrary; it needed infinite improvement.
As we walked along No Name Creek, I considered this contradiction. According to Eastern thought there is no contradiction because of nonduality: everything is exactly as it should be at any given moment. I couldn"t quite accept this. It seemed too easy a way out. Did that include the Holocaust? Six million Jews plus four to six million h.o.m.os.e.xuals, gypsies, Catholics, and communists dead in n.a.z.i Germany - is that exactly the way things should be? Part of a lesson humanity has to learn? It seemed too much of a stretch.
But gazing into No Name Creek, I realized the creek was two things at once: a crazy pattern of noise and texture on top and a quiet stillness below. Some parts of its surface were particularly rough, and some parts of the bottom, like pools near the banks, completely still. So Leah and I, as we became more immersed in Jackie"s home and philosophy, began to become more like the creek: rougher on our surfaces and stiller in our depths. We experienced more forcefully the distinction between maya maya (the illusion of sensory perception as reality) and (the illusion of sensory perception as reality) and dharma dharma (the invisible, spiritual path). In its deepest essence the creek is neither rough surface nor still depths: it"s water. (the invisible, spiritual path). In its deepest essence the creek is neither rough surface nor still depths: it"s water.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, walking far up along No Name Creek, I came to an abandoned sharecropper"s house. I"d seen them before. In fact - for reasons nebulous to me - it was all the fashion in certain Southern lefty circles to translocate, renovate, and inhabit a former slave or sharecropper house. But finding them abandoned in the middle of nowhere was something quite different. I eyeballed the hardplank structure to be about twice the size of Jackie"s: maybe thirty by twenty-four, far smaller than the abandoned farmhouse I"d seen several days before. The roof had long since caved in, but the walls stood firm. I walked inside. walking far up along No Name Creek, I came to an abandoned sharecropper"s house. I"d seen them before. In fact - for reasons nebulous to me - it was all the fashion in certain Southern lefty circles to translocate, renovate, and inhabit a former slave or sharecropper house. But finding them abandoned in the middle of nowhere was something quite different. I eyeballed the hardplank structure to be about twice the size of Jackie"s: maybe thirty by twenty-four, far smaller than the abandoned farmhouse I"d seen several days before. The roof had long since caved in, but the walls stood firm. I walked inside.
What was it like to be a sharecropper? In 1874, say, with slavery over but life largely the same? You"ve got freedom but can"t exercise it. That freedom must have seemed scary. You"ve always lived as a slave, as your parents and grandparents did. It"s the way things were done. Now, what options do you have? So you remain on the master"s plantation, in a house like this one, receive a little salary; in theory you can leave, but for all intents and purposes, life remains what it was, in bondage.
The woods encroached in and around the place. But I could see that it had been fairly recently inhabited, maybe a decade back, judging from the junk around it. It even had an electrical line, now severed, running up to it, probably pirated electricity. I could hear the gurgle of No Name Creek and see patches of blue through the forest canopy overhead. It struck me that maybe most of us inhabit the awful no-man"s-land of sharecroppers, suspended between slave and free. Between Gold Kist and free-range; between 100,000 square feet and 144; between Wal-Mart and homemade.
Recognizing the bind we"re all in together, I decided while at the 12 12 to experiment with practicing nonjudgment of others. One day up the creek, I saw the most beautiful buck leap a farmer"s fence into a corral of four horses. Sensing me, the buck returned to his mate and three babies. There, they grazed, the smallest doe rubbing its light brown face against the mother"s, a perfect little kiss. Suddenly: Bam! Bam! A shotgun rang out in the middle distance, and the deer fled into the forest. Not ten minutes later, the owner of the shotgun blast appeared - a camouflaged hunter in a shiny Silverado pickup. As he pa.s.sed, we nodded to each other, both of us equally trespa.s.sing, so no problem there. Then I saw the bulk of a light brown deer in his pickup cab, and I felt judgment rise. He"d come to shatter some skulls. But I thought: Were I him, I"d do exactly the same. Perhaps he has kids at home to help him skin the deer and roast it. Perhaps they use every single part of the animal. I pictured my own dwindling rations (with no car for a supermarket run) and thought of the pleasure of venison roasting over my own fire. A shotgun rang out in the middle distance, and the deer fled into the forest. Not ten minutes later, the owner of the shotgun blast appeared - a camouflaged hunter in a shiny Silverado pickup. As he pa.s.sed, we nodded to each other, both of us equally trespa.s.sing, so no problem there. Then I saw the bulk of a light brown deer in his pickup cab, and I felt judgment rise. He"d come to shatter some skulls. But I thought: Were I him, I"d do exactly the same. Perhaps he has kids at home to help him skin the deer and roast it. Perhaps they use every single part of the animal. I pictured my own dwindling rations (with no car for a supermarket run) and thought of the pleasure of venison roasting over my own fire.
As I tried to practice nonjudgment, things worsened with the Thompsons. Several times Mike referred to his Honduran and Mexican neighbors as "the Habitat Mexicans." Then I was told that the African American woman who lived in the third Habitat for Humanity house hardly ever came, preferring to stay in her Siler City rental, partly because "she was afraid of Mike and his guns."
When I heard these things, anger would creep in. Then I"d think of something Jackie said to me, a little cryptically, that first day in the 12 12: "When you see worthiness, praise it. And when you see unworthiness, trace it."
IT WAS NEARLY TWILIGHT the next time I was with Mike, a week after the standoff with the Latino teenagers. He told me a story as the day faded, with his family gathered around. Michele had their baby to her breast, and the other five kids lingered on the porch in front of the pond, Kyle"s shoulder pressed up against mine. Only Mike stood, and he told us about the wolves that came to their farm one night. His family knew the story of the wolves - they"d lived it, just a year before. But they listened as intently as I. the next time I was with Mike, a week after the standoff with the Latino teenagers. He told me a story as the day faded, with his family gathered around. Michele had their baby to her breast, and the other five kids lingered on the porch in front of the pond, Kyle"s shoulder pressed up against mine. Only Mike stood, and he told us about the wolves that came to their farm one night. His family knew the story of the wolves - they"d lived it, just a year before. But they listened as intently as I.
"Half-breed wolves," Mike said, the sun"s afterglow giving his eyes a sparkle, "took out a thousand dollars in livestock one evening.
"Two of them, male and female, snuck into our farm when we were in town and ravaged the place. We came back to find bodies everywhere - turkeys and ducks strewn there, there, there, all the way up the road!"
I could imagine the carnage. Imagine how he must have felt to see so much of his work devastated by those half-breed wolves.
"They even got three goats and a hog."
There was a silence. "Did they eat any of it?" I finally asked.
"Nothing," Mike said. "Killed for killing"s sake. One of the Habitat Mexicans captured a half-breed, the male. He"d collared it and came to tell me I should shoot it. Out of revenge. I grabbed my gun, loaded it, and raced over with my finger on the trigger."
He paused, the suspense before the blood-soaked ending. When you see unworthiness, trace it When you see unworthiness, trace it, I could hear Jackie whisper. Don"t judge. Trace anything you don"t like in someone else back to their unique history; then trace it back to yourself because anything you dislike in others is somewhere in you. Mike was trying, against the odds, to live as an organic farmer, Gold Kist becoming more poisonously efficient every day. He and his family were fresh out of a drug-riddled trailer park, trying to make a quixotic dream of sustainability come true in an era of the big, the efficient, the flat. He"s quick with a weapon and suspicious of other races, but in his situation, would I be any different?
"When I got to Jose"s, I pointed my gun at that half-breed wolf. My hand shaking, I -"
Just as he was about to finish his story, to deal the deathblow, an eagle"s shadow pa.s.sed over his face. We all looked up; the eagle soared right past on a warm current, in a slow arc over No Name Creek, toward the sharecropper house and out of sight. He said "Jose," He said "Jose," I thought to myself, I thought to myself, not "the Habitat Mexican." not "the Habitat Mexican." It was the first time I"d heard Mike use his neighbor"s name. Beside the porch, tiny white moths rose up in lazy flutter, seeds falling from the trees around us, and I could hear insects crackling in the dead leaves below our feet. It was the first time I"d heard Mike use his neighbor"s name. Beside the porch, tiny white moths rose up in lazy flutter, seeds falling from the trees around us, and I could hear insects crackling in the dead leaves below our feet.
"I looked at it through the sight of my gun," Mike continued. "The wolf was all huddled up and whimpering, and I lowered it. I said to myself: "I can"t kill him. He"s just doing what he was born to do." So I put down my gun, called animal control, and they took that half-breed away."
THE TENSIONS LEAH AND I DISCOVERED at the 12 12 - the creek"s rough water and its stillness, at the 12 12 - the creek"s rough water and its stillness, maya maya and and dharma dharma, that the world is evil and the world is perfect - seemed entwined with another apparent duality: sacrifice and seduction.
To reduce her carbon footprint to the level of the average Bangladeshi"s (that is, to one-twentieth of the average American"s consumption), Jackie had made some considerable sacrifices. Ciao, airplanes; h.e.l.lo, Grey-d.o.g.g.i.ng. She also said good-bye to electricity, to home heating, and to piped water. I was living these sacrifices on a temporary basis, but could I make these changes permanently? It was more than a bit scary to picture.
Leah and I talked about what would really change in our lives once our time in the 12 12 was over. I"d gotten rid of the car and begun to bike and walk everywhere - put on Jackie"s garments, as it were, for a retreat - but my international twenty-first-century life, my flat flat life, was still waiting for me. I knew that unless I changed, nothing would change. That"s the biggest test, the only test of the worth of an experience - is the change atomic? Does it get down into the very pattern of your psychological, emotional, and habitual DNA? life, was still waiting for me. I knew that unless I changed, nothing would change. That"s the biggest test, the only test of the worth of an experience - is the change atomic? Does it get down into the very pattern of your psychological, emotional, and habitual DNA?
I didn"t know what would happen. Like a caterpillar, I"d gone into a coc.o.o.n and felt my inner world shifting, but I had no idea if a b.u.t.terfly would emerge or a stillborn half-creature. Would I be wise enough to identify the changes I"d need to make to align my life with the health of the planet? Even if I identified the changes, would I be strong enough to follow through on them?
The seduction of the 12 12 experience drew Leah and me in: organic food, fresh air and water, feeling G.o.d through feeling good. But looming in the background was the unsustainable lifestyles we both normally lived. Sure, I had the financial resources to drive a car, but is it sustainable? What is the larger cost of this mentality to the planet? I tried to be transparent about my own hypocrisy, of navigating the tensions of mindfulness. I began to see things in terms of what you might call false privilege, or any action that can"t be enjoyed by everyone on the planet without compromising our ecosystems. Until that is somehow reconciled, clean living is all seduction and little sacrifice.
ON A LONG WALK ONE DAY, Leah and I talked about living honorably in the environmental era, a time when all of our planet"s life systems are in decline. Before we realized it we were a couple of miles into the countryside, near a pond freckled with leaves and seeds. We stopped and sat on its banks. Leah and I talked about living honorably in the environmental era, a time when all of our planet"s life systems are in decline. Before we realized it we were a couple of miles into the countryside, near a pond freckled with leaves and seeds. We stopped and sat on its banks.
An hour pa.s.sed in silence. I let my gaze glaze the pond"s surface. A flying insect made perfect circles, two feet in circ.u.mference, and then began lazily carving figure eights. After a while I was no longer looking at a pond; it had in a sense seeped inside of me and merged with the nearly two-thirds of my body that is water. Closing my eyes I felt its dimpled surface, its cool foreign depths. The figure eights started to tickle. I was smiling when I opened my eyes. The feeling was more than a little weird to the rational mind. What was going on? Something inside me was shifting. I was getting glimpses into the mystical experience - the sense that everything is intricately connected into a grand unity. It"s what Th.o.r.eau meant when he called fish "animalized water," or what Whitman meant when he called gra.s.s "the journeywork of stars." It"s Van Gogh"s wheat fields and starry skies bleeding into their background; Gauguin painting people in colors as earthy as the world around them.
"I feel different," Leah said, walking back to the 12 12. The sun was setting in red and orange pastels. I looked over at her. Her soft blonde hair fell over bare shoulders, just the strap of a black tank top. A bit of perspiration covered her forehead, matting a patch of her hair. She brought up a hand to push it back, and then her hand came down and took hold of mine. We stopped and kissed for a long while. It wasn"t our first kiss. Though we"d initially hesitated to become lovers - as if that would somehow obscure the spiritual and societal questions we were grappling with - we eventually allowed ourselves to express what we were both feeling. We held each other, and I looked over her shoulder into the thickening green of the oaks and dogwoods. Spring was now here.