Natural science, 1995

[I'm reading Gilbert Adair's essay The Real Tadzio.I am alternately pulled in and pushed away. Words that do not try may bore. Words that try too hard may alienate. I spent a few days deleting grandiloquence from the following essay, which I wrote back in college. When it is all over and we are long dead and there is nothing on this earth that does not burn (and we are therefore in a position to judge), I think we will look back and admit that the most powerful sentences do, in fact, begin with

There is
There are
There was and
There were.]

"What kind of rock is this here? Pick up a piece and look at it under your hand lens," the professor said. We had stopped at a place along the road where the ground was mostly stone, and many of us knew for one reason or another that we were at an area in Georgia called the fall line. But we did not know where the name came from. We found loose pieces of stone and inspected the motley hodgepodge of translucent and opaque whites, pinks, grays, browns, and blacks. This was igneous rock, formed from cooling magma some 300 million years ago, but how was this significant to the question of the fall line? Over the next few minutes, as we continued inspecting our rocks and discussing the issue, the answer became clear: To the south, the rock was primarily sedimentary, which is softer than igneous rock, so that any rivers flowing from the igneous areas would reach the sedimentary rocks and erode them quickly, thus forming waterfalls.

This was a cursory trip into the realm of science, surely; we did not explicitly state a problem and creep up the steps of the scientific method. Our approach was much more casual and intuitive; we took advantage of the mind's ability to manipulate images that are not based solely on acquired experiences but can extend beyond them. We were able to start at one point—the small rock in our hands—and trace the relationship of the rock to the exposed granite below, to the presence of sedimentary rocks to the south, and to the interaction between water and rock. We were dealing not with precise observations and data, but with broader ideas and intuitions, which in this case centered on the idea of the fall line. In fact, we could consider a number of other questions about the rocky area: in wondering about its age, we think of how and when the rock was formed and how it has changed over the many years; in considering its appearance, we think of the silicon, aluminum, potassium, and other minerals in the rock and how these have come together.

Countless paths of inquiry, then, lead from any given starting point, whether it be a large area of exposed granite along the road or a strange metal statue of a horse in the middle of a yellow field. When we realize that there are infinite ways of approaching any given subject, we realize how vast and mysterious this universe is, which in turn could easily lead the inquisitive mind to a sense of reverent awe before the universe.

It is easy for man to feel godlike nowadays; we manipulate our environment in ways unprecedented. As we walk along a salt marsh and see dozens of fiddler crabs retreating en masse before us in search of their small homes in the wet ground, as we look at plankton through a microscope and test the effects of a synthesized acid rain on them, or as we trot along the beach, picking up a shell here or there, breaking off a blade of sea oats, and leaving a telling pattern of modern foot fashion—in these instances we could easily develop feelings of superiority, which undoubtedly lead to injustice and abuse.

The solution is a sense of awe before the universe, this knowledge that all things extend indefinitely depending on the angle of approach to them. Consider one example from above: as we continue to explore plankton, as we look at how they live and what makes them tick, we discover that ocean plankton provide the majority of the Earth's free oxygen. We see then how these tiny creatures connect with the rest of the entire world, and it can be no surprise if we feel a sense of vast awe before them.

Some time ago I found myself with friends in a small forest near the edge of a large tidal river. It was night, and we could not see the various plants and animals of the forest as well as we would have liked. Someone suggested that we stop and, deprived of vision, appeal to our sense of hearing. We stopped in the middle of the path, all of us more or less separated by a distance, crouching, sitting, or standing, and listened. The sound of the forest was deafening; the trilling of insects predominated, but even within that constant vibration we could detect the sound of individual insects resting and beginning again. Above the sound of the insects could occasionally be heard the conversation between two owls, sounding distant and alone.

There is an analogy to be found in this nightly forest. There are no limits in a dark wood; the trees may have outlines, and stars may be visible through a break in the growth, but no ultimate borders exist. Life and the world vibrate all around, and the cry of the human is but one of those lively vibrations.

It is important to trace back through time. We may as yet have only sketchy theories about the origin of the universe, but whether we believe in God or the Big Bang or any combination, it seems natural and fair to assume, if we extend back through time enough, that an origin does exist. At this origin, where all things are one and connected, is the heart of the awe and mystery we feel toward nature. All aspects of this universe are related to each other, and we must keep this in mind as we approach science, using not only our five biological senses, but a sense of this holy mystery as well.

"Si narmod ogdo?" she asked.

Name that tune:

And I am opening a letter from the UGA Alumni Association. They want to be sure my information is correct. Why am I so angry?

embarrassment

So what if it's all slipping away? So what if it's passing by? So what if the computer, and this Internet, trick me?

What am I listening to? Is it a boy soprano singing an American standard? It might be. Maybe you can imagine a growth of reeds beside a river, a pair of knickers trying to escape. Or maybe you have never found yourself in such a place.

There was a stream long ago, and a few pictures capture awkward teens: here the blond with the big nose smiles his big teeth, and here a shy thoughtful one catches a pebble between her toes. Another, conscious of her developing body, exposes her cotton bosom to the spray. Still another, not yet this or that, fancies desire.

We could be taken to Europe; the joke of American yodelers calls to mind Lederhosen and potato pancakes. But we remember when we had Chinese food out of a frozen bag. The yellow coagulation was unlike anything we had seen in our own country. Lost in thirst are the fresh fruits, the dark breads, of mornings in the garden house. We remember instead a restaurant with pancakes, and when we ate with Johannes and his parents. While we napped the Frau of the house prepared meats.

Theseus, in Ariadne at least, says, "Circe, ich konnte fliehen."

Two of the Myths

Two different men had two different theories.

One had his own creation myth for AIDS: Sperm is programmed to find and penetrate an egg. (This he explained over Sunday lunch in the dining halls.) Like a man, it is military, aggressive, colonial. It breaks any cell wall it can find and injects its own program. ("Do you understand?" he asked when a glob of triple-chicken casserole clung to my spoon.) When it finds itself in new territory, such as a man's rectum, it behaves as it has been trained. It attacks. The result is a confused and mutated cell. Cancerous growth. AIDS. Voila.

One had a mythology of flamboyance. Let our mortal be called Bwuce. The boys of the neighborhood thought Bwuce was a little soft. Bwuce noticed that the boys thought he was a little soft. In fact, Bwuce felt a little soft himself. Later, Bwuce noticed a certain whispering hiss in some of his syllables. He began to adopt an affected, lilting lisp. The boys and Bwuce also noticed a certain freedom of the hip in Bwuce's walk. Bwuce noticed this, and before long, what with one thing and another, he began to float around the room as if he were a happy-go-lucky blind man on the moon. Over time Bwuce convinced himself that he was the keeper of his own flame. He could turn it off at any time; he just chose not to.

Both men were gay (one more than the other).

From the Diaries of the Others

It is inexpressible.
It's behind me right now.
I've hinted at it in places.
Sometimes it is at night. Sometimes day.
Some days it rhymes with a fruit. Some days a vegetable.
But it is always there, now.

You haven't been doing the exercises!

Every night you must repeat them to yourself!

As he said, the troops are arranging themselves. The enemy is unaware.

There is not more here than has been said.

He said I should write it down: "If I said the F-word, my parents would divorce me!"

Soon it will be complete!

Right now I am listening to a song I listened to when I was sad. When did I first start listening to my Marian Andersen CD? It was the Sussex Club Apartments, when the shit hit the fan. People were dying and it was my twenty-first birthday. My boyfriend -- well, we had broken up and then gotten back together in honor of Valentine's Day -- didn't show at my party. He missed the serenade: Joanie, a fellow waitron from the Grill, and her boyfriend on vocals, flute, and guitar with "Si nos dejan."

I remember my car door freezing shut, and then freezing open. Suzy drove me down to my aunt and uncle's to pick up my car. I couldn't open it; she could. I did not tell her until later that I had to hold the door closed as we drove the thirty miles back to Athens. What did I do later that night to keep warm? It was another night I opened the twenty-year-old wine.

Later, we would go to Compadres. We'd climb those high stairs the waiters dreaded. The smoking section. My hands and mind were occupied with the rituals: chip into salsa, wave the cigarette, inhale, exhale, margarita glass up, tongue out, cigarette in more errant circles, inhale, sip, exhale. Laugh, tell story. Roll eyes. Hiccup.

When the celebrity came in I dropped my book. Who reads sci-fi? But I did not know him, and would not love him, and he could not see me.

Who were they?

Sue Ellen's Party, Part Four

"Where?" I exclaimed.

"I don't know where," Sue Ellen rasped. "We were supposed to turn off in Talesville." She looked out into the darkness, then behind us. "Somewhere back there."

I fingered my eye. "Alright," I said. I slowed and did a wide u-turn.

"What time is it?" Sue Ellen asked. I tapped the clock on the dashboard. Sue Ellen's eyes widened. "Shit, I didn't know we got such a late start."

"Sorry," I mumbled into the hand that had been covering my yawn. I fingered the last chicken finger, then brought it to my mouth. The meat was still warm somehow. Sue Ellen's fingers tapped a lost rhythm on the dashboard, and then she sat forward in her seat and guided me through two turns that took us several minutes from the highway and deeper into the dark.

"Where in god's name are we?" I asked.

"There!" Sue Ellen pointed. Up ahead, a two-story plantation house with light pouring from every window seemed garish against the black countryside. We passed cars crammed along the edges of the street. I turned into the driveway and my headlights caught four smoking women leaning against the tailgate of a Nissan truck. I braked and said, "Here we—"

"OK, bye!" Sue Ellen interrupted, slamming the door behind her. The light of the house flashed against her smile and pale face. I heard giggles through the windshield and watched Sue Ellen disappear into the crush of embrace. I sought her face to wave goodbye. Arms wrapped around the small of her back led her toward the house. I turned the heat up and backed out of the driveway.

The sounds and lights of people disappeared behind me.

Happy Ocean Story

He walked out into the ocean until it carried his weight up off the earth's sandy skin.

His legs kicked back the shore, and his hands dove toward infinity.

Land receded.

The horizon never neared.

His limbs grew heavy but his heavy heart drove him further.

At last he looked back and saw nothing.

And his head sank beneath the salty surface, and he grew still.

* * *

She had cried into the sea that day.

You know the taste of seamaids' tears.

With one webbed hand she wiped her eyes and looked up.

A cloud passed over the sun. No, a falling floating form.

She drifted up, up, and caught the sinking boy.

She opened her mouth and breathed into him sealife.

* * *

That is how a human, and a boy, came to life, and came to live, in the Sea.

Sue Ellen's Party, Part Three

Milledge Avenue was a battleground all the way out to the Loop. It was a game weekend, and alumni had descended upon the city. They were drawn here, to the rows of fraternity and sorority houses, where years or decades ago they had acquired a taste for corruption in basement orgies and attic hazings. Chicken fingers smacked between Sue Ellen's lips.

"Have some!" Sue Ellen mouthed around the spicy breading.

The box sat hot on my lap. "I just wanna wait until we're out of the city," I said.

"Umph," she said, reaching into her box to pull out a french fry.

Fifteen minutes later we passed under the Loop, and I said goodbye to the last Golden Pantry and revved into the dark countryside. We seemed to be the only car venturing out in this emptiness. Pine trees crowded up against the road to the left, and the lumpy silhouettes of experimental cows could be seen to the right over the flat expanse of the university's agricultural land. In a few minutes, they switched: cows to the left, pines to the right. And then they were gone, and the dark was flat on both sides.

I yawned and reached for a chicken finger. Sue Ellen spoke.

"I know she's not gay. I almost invited her. I almost invited her without even telling her, you know, what kind of party it would be. I mean, maybe she wouldn't notice. Or she wouldn't be on guard, you know. I bet she'd have a great time. I mean, I don't even know what we're gonna do, or who's gonna be there. Last time I went it got pretty wild." She swallowed the bite she had been chewing. "Cindi got out the motorcycles. There's no one up there; you can go like 90 on the roads." She sucked Coke up through the straw. "Even been on a bike with a dyke? Ha. I'll take you sometime."

I finished the french fries, having saved the last couple chicken fingers for the end. Sue Ellen fiddled with the radio.

The lights of a 7-Eleven appeared up ahead in the distance and then disappeared behind us.

"So where is this place?"

"Just a little farther."

I brought the next-to-last chicken finger up to my yawning mouth. Out here the stars dropped little light. The breading was cooling, but the meat was still warm.

"I'm so glad you were able to drive me up here," Sue Ellen said some time later. "Got any plans tonight—I mean for later?"

"I dunno," I said, chewing, "just head back I guess." I imagined Tom gyrating at the Pac-Man, trying to beat my score. "It'll be pretty late when I get there." I finished the finger. White letters shimmered above the dark strip of road up ahead.

"Shit!" Sue Ellen screamed, slapping her thigh. "We passed it!"

On a Plane Some Time Ago: Anger, Sadness, Love

Foreword
Humanity bore three daughters:
Anger, the eldest and strongest,
Sadness, the difficult middle child, and
Love, the spoiled baby.

Two white pedestals stood in the yard. The grass below was sad and sparse; dirt longed to cover, but grass had managed to form a few oases. The bower would come tomorrow, with the guests. Today there was a rehearsal and then a barbecue dinner for the out-of-towners.

The world is sad, and everyone in it is sad. A man and a woman are married, and they own a bed and breakfast in middle Georgia. Views from their windows and porch are of a grass ill-suited to this hot climate and infertile soil. Pine trees -- always young and weak here -- border on the rest of the world. The wife is a slight woman with a white streak in her frizzy red hair. She speaks with a Southern accent and uses her hands to gesture like a bird. Her husband is a skinny brown smoker. He is like a leathery shrunken head, and when he smiles you see the meaninglessness of his life, the tenuousness of his connection to the world. He is tormented by the dreadful kitch around him: the self-published books on the taking of Victorian tea, the gaudy pictures of horses and the hunt in the den, the porcelain figures of sailors in raincoats in the "Captain's Room."

The guests arrive in pairs with metal rings round their fingers. Young and old they are big and sad, their smiles and laughter tired play-acting. From a distance one sees the man demonstrating golf swings and putts, one sees them punching each other on the shoulder, one sees them gesturing with a Budweiser. Here are they who elected a stupid white man to office and who back him still. Here is that formidable backbone you wish to break with the weight of your humanitarian reason. Here is the man who shoots at deer and Arabs. Here is the man who will forget Abu Ghraib.

As with everything, we will never know what happened at that prison. We can never know the prisoners, and we can never know Lynndie. And most of us can never know our own atrocities. I certainly don't. I do not know the sweat shops, the work camps, the internment camps, the interrogation chambers. Of course, I do know capitalism and I do know domination and imperialism. But I cannot point a finger anywhere because we are all so sad, from the picture-perfect lady sitting next to me to the fake-smile flight attendant slowly making her way here. What do we see in the mirror each morning? How do we allow ourselves these bangs, this messy look? How do we check our teeth for whiteness, our noses for blackheads? And how do we finally say, "This is who I am," and open our doors to go out? What dreams can any of us possibly have but to understand?

One day I too shall be old. Do I think I'll be better off if I rent, if I have no retirement plan, if I continue to work in random jobs? Even now, at this moment on a plane just east of the middle of this large country, I feel I am closer to enlightenment because my shirt is untucked. It gives me thirty inches of freedom. A belt would bind me.

Not a Commercial

We interrupt this broadcast for a fish.

Sue Ellen's Party, Part Two

"Set?" she asked.

I looked away from her makeup. "Where is it, again?"

"Up 441."

"Where's that?"

She smiled. There was a maroon smear on her front teeth. "Come on. I'll show you where."

I led the way down the sidewalk and up the hill to the parking lot. The full moon drifted in and out of cloud, and winter had not yet fully settled upon the university. Sue Ellen seemed cold, and I jabbed my hands into my jacket pockets as we wandered the rows in search of my car, which I had last used the previous weekend when I left campus for Burger King.

We found my car and I unlocked the door for her. She mumbled something about my being a gentleman and folded her legs into the front seat. I walked around and got in. The cassette deck blared a recent discovery: Erasure's "Blue Savannah." Sue Ellen reached for the radio, and her hand crashed into mine. "What was that?" she asked. Then, turning it down, "Hey do you wanna run by Charlie Chicken real quick before we go?"

"But I already—" I began, still tasting the barley beef soup from dinner in the dining hall after classes. Then I thought about the thirty dollars in my wallet, which I had managed, through careful planning and only a touch of suffering, to keep there all week. Why not live a little? "Sure," I said, shifting into reverse and pressing the accelerator. An SUV careened behind us, and I slammed on the brakes. Sue Ellen rasped out a "Shit!" as the frat boys' monstrosity honked out "Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton."

"Chicken fingers here we come," I said.

Two or three cars were in front of us at the drive-thru. Sue Ellen twisted around in her seat and brought up the thick black leather wallet she always carried. She opened it up and rifled through the countless papers pressed inside. Then she turned it upside down and a few coins splatted in her lap. "Shit!" she exclaimed. "Where is it?" She continued to riffle through the contents of her billfold. She heaved a sigh and twisted in her seat again, sending the wallet back to some unknown compartment of her skirt.

"Do you think you could—?" she asked.

"Sure. No problem."

"I'll pay you back."

"Sure. No problem."

"I must've—" I began, but the cars in front of us moved and a voice twanged out of the fiberglass chicken. I ordered a chicken finger box and a Coke for each of us. Sue Ellen drummed on the dashboard, and then I pulled up and handed a twenty dollar bill to the blond sorority bob behind the sliding window.

"Charlie Sauce with that?"

The Last Years

January 2003

I drive to California. It snows at a gas station in northern Alabama. The first beautiful sight off the interstate is a nuclear power plant in Arkansas. I have no cell phone reception through most of Oklahoma and Texas and fantasize about what people do when their cars explode in the middle of nowhere. The second beautiful sight comes on the last day, just after officials stop my car to check for foreign produce: green hills in the distance covered in cloud that I later drive through, my head out the window.

Words and visions:

Woodside. A road, but also a town. Coming off of Highway 101 that first time, navigating the many roads merging into Redwood City. A sign reads "Woodside 6 Mi." But my directions say that I turn right on Middlefield Road.

Safeway. Like the Movie Groove, Safeway is something Jeff and I discovered when we dared to leave the house and I dared to drive my car in this foreign city. Only much later did we realize that the Safeway we saw from the back on Middlefield was the same as the Safeway we saw from the front on El Camino Real.

Coffee and cigarettes. We do most of our shopping at the gas station. My morning ritual is to crawl out of my nest of blankets on the floor, stumble past Jeff sleep-smoking on the couch ("Umph get me coffee."), find that the front door was unlocked (and a few times open), walk across Middlefield to the gas station, and pick up two large coffees and another pack of Marlboros for myself. Back at the house I put Jeff's coffee on the plastic green Ikea table and riffle through his beer bottles and mugs of cigarette butts in search of my lighter.

El Camino Real. This magical road connects many words and visions. The King's Way, the Royal Road, I am told it once ran straight from the North Pole to the South, but now it merely connects Canada and Chile. In early adventures I take it ten minutes north, then ten minutes south, and the suburbs open around me. I am in these places: San Carlos, Belmont, San Mateo, Burlingame. And I am here: Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Los Altos. "Couldn't you, you know, just take El Camino all the way to San Francisco?" El Camino is my own road; let the BMWs have I-280 to the west and Highway 101 to the right.


January 2004

I return from a two-week vacation in Georgia, which was part of the deal when I agreed to stay on as manager at the Movie Groove. It feels like I have failed; I moved to California, couldn't take it, moved back home, and here I am trying again. I live alone in a one-room studio in the hills above Redwood City, and it has been raining since I moved in late November. This year I have a choice: to grow inward or to grow outward.

Words and visions:

Cross. At the top of the hill where I live, concealing the engines of today's society, is an enormous white cross visible from the valley. A park surrounds the fence that surrounds the cross. A sign on the fence reads: "WARNING: Do Not Cross RADIATION: Do Not Cross."

Chopper. The bossman leaves town, and I am left with a large building at the corner of Jefferson and El Camino. In the back, tropical fish with their own freezer of frozen shrimp and seaweed hide behind frightened anemones. I pour in a gallon of room-temperature salty water; some overflows and runs down the electrical cord into the wall socket. A flash, a crack, and a little cloud of smoke. Chopper's lidless eyes are wide with terror. The aquarium goes dark.

Rectangle of light. I don't make it to the beach often. Nor do I run wild over the barren hills of Bayfront Park and contemplate the apocalypse, when all will be built upon waste and ruin. But something light in me wants to be dark, or the dark inside of me wants its own representation on my flesh. As winter wanes a rectangle of sunlight grows on my porch. It appears at ten in the morning and moves across the porch and disappears behind some trees by two. I place my parts strategically in the light; they bend and stretch like the homely flowerings of weeds.

"Write it!" They are bad, but there they are. And they weren't there before. I have typed up the semi- and demipoems I started writing last year, and I have printed them with the printer I got for fifty bucks. Creating is one of the unreachable goals; to one extent or another it has been accomplished, while I wasn't looking, while I was working, while I was sunbathing. I begin to consider life without rituals of escape and self-destruction. Miles away a man senses this change in me and dials my number by accident. I am frightened but do not run. And the great story -- the one where the two are pitted against the world, and then grow within themselves, and then in the cosmos -- begins.


January 2005

It continues to be written.