whispering in the dark

The Journey (On The River)

It began on the river.

Do you remember that bend in the river, just as the forest begins to thin out on either side, past the old red factory building, towards the old railroad bridge? We once ate our sandwiches from the bridge, tossing crusts into the river below, but this time we were on the river.

What were we on? We had borrowed kayaks, and you were in the bright blue one and I paddled behind you, and your brother was in the yellow kayak, the banana boat, and he was doing tricks, paddling in circles, from shore to shore, scaring away the ducks.

We packed our backpacks with apples and juice and water and crackers and sandwiches and some chocolate chip cookies from the cupboard, even though the cookies were special and we knew we weren't really supposed to take any, but this was an adventure and chocolate chip cookies are essential for river adventures. We were going to see where the river began and the forest ended and where the railroad tracks were born, somewhere deep in the unexplored world that didn't appear on maps.

We had tried paddling to the factory before, and you had climbed to the roof and called out to the forest Halloo! Halloo! and your brother had found a nest of brilliant green lizards napping in the sunlight, and we had climbed the railway bridge and eaten our sandwiches and do you remember your brother trying to jump from the bridge into the river, just because he could, and we had to each take his arms and beg him not to, so instead we found a tree and jumped from the branches into the river, and came home soaking wet and after dinnertime and had promised not to tell -- even though I know you told, that evening, in an excited whisper to your mother.

But this adventure we would go further than we had ever gone before. We set out early, and jumped and splashed into the kayaks, stored our backpacks and kept going, past the forest, past the factory, past the railroad bridge.

What were we looking for? We didn't know. Your brother was going to draw a map as we went along, so we wouldn't get lost, and you had just learned about the Loch Ness Monster in school, and we thought that out there on the river past the forest and the factory and the bridge, past where everybody lived or used to live, we might find it. Our own monster, in a hidden lake or a deep river or living like a dragon behind a waterfall or like a pterodactyl in an old, old wrinkled tree.

What would we do with our monster? Your brother would mark it on the map, of course, or it wouldn't be a very good map if our monster wasn't depicted, maybe with a drawing so that it could recognizably be Our Monster.

Would we tell the grown-ups? I know you would mention it at breakfast, and tell your friends at school, but did you want your monster being chased by adults with cameras for television? Or would you want to keep the monster a secret? So we were keeping our eyes open, looking for the creature that lived where the map ended.

We paddled and paddled and paddled, your brother dodging this way and that, drawing everything with his pencil and his sketchbook, you looking at the birds for signs of reversion to dinosaur characteristics. Dinosaurs had feathers, sometimes. And they came in all sizes. Maybe in all colors. Monsters were probably related to dinosaurs – maybe were dinosaurs that hadn’t died. There was a giant turtle -- it must have been two feet across! -- swimming alongside us, and a family of ducks gathering in a line, and was that a branch or something else?

We ate our apples and looked at your brother's map and saw how much river there still was to explore, and decided to save our sandwiches until we were much hungrier, and to not have our cookies until we were on the way home.

There were no other boats, but with all three of us, we were safe. Your brother the cub scout, and me almost a grown-up, and you had just learned about building campfires with your Brownie troop, using pretzel stick logs and coconut kindling and red hots as coals, so we knew we could handle any of that scary stuff.

The river decided to split into two, and your brother the cartographer (it means map maker) authoritatively decided that we would go left, because he was left handed, and any earlier explorer probably was right handed, and so went right, so we would choose the least explored left river as our adventure. He drew the right river, and made a note in the margin: "Boring River. Choose the other way." Maybe it wasn't boring; we'll find out on our next adventure. But on this expedition we turned left.

There was a huge flock of birds, birds as big as you, birds which would have tipped over our little kayaks, so it was good we wore our life jackets and paddled fast fast fast past them. They weren't friendly looking birds, like penguins; they were birds that looked like they ate alligators for breakfast and little girls as a bedtime snack. But it wasn't bedtime so you weren't afraid. If we had been carrying a bit of alligator beef jerky you would have thrown it to them, as a snack.

But with such giant birds it meant that we really might find a dinosaur or other forgotten monster, since if the birds could live so long to grow so big, then it was possible there were other creatures waiting for us. We paddled past the scary birds, deciding not to come back after dark, when they might be hunting for dinner, and kept going on the river.

Your brother didn't think anyone had ever even been down the river this far before: it didn't look like there were any other people, or roads, or cars. Once we passed what looked like an old house with a tree growing right through the living room, and the roof had collapsed into the front yard, but we kept going because you knew that a witch lived there, and were weren't looking for witches, we were looking for dinosaurs.

It was possible, you agreed, that the witch might know about the dinosaurs; might even keep one as a pet instead of a cat, the way you have a shaggy yellow dog who tries to sleep on your bed and steals your slippers, especially the pink fuzzy ones with the pompoms, but your brother reminded us that witches ate little boys for lunch, so he drew the witch's house on his map with a big X for Stay Away Little Boys and we didn't stop. But I'll bet she knew all about dinosaurs and maybe even other monsters, especially with that tree growing straight through her living room.

The river got shallower and shallower. We didn't know how much longer we could paddle our kayaks, so I got out and pulled our bright blue kayak by the cord at the front, and you lay back like a princess and drank your juice. Your brother didn't want to look like a baby, so he pulled his kayak, too. He pulled it in a straight line, not darting side to side or trying to make it spin in circles. His map was safely stored in his jacket pocket, and he drank his juice as we walked in the cold cold water over rocks and got our pants very, very wet.

It wasn't really warm enough to swim, but the river came up to my knees and even higher on your brother and we almost felt like we were swimming in our clothes -- and suddenly it was super-deep and we were swimming in our clothes, and you laughed at us and your brother was worried about his map, but when we were soaking wet and back together in the yellow kayak (you wouldn't let me in the blue kayak because I would get you all wet, so I had to attach your blue kayak like a train behind the yellow kayak, and paddle both forward), your brother found the map in his pocket, which was in pencil and still could be read, and he found a dry piece of paper in his notebook in the kayak and started a new map on the next page, with a warning about falling into underwater holes just like we had.

There weren't any dinosaurs that we could see, but there were minnows and as we pulled the kayaks to a little beach to eat our sandwiches, there was a big puddle behind some rocks and there were hundreds and hundreds of huge tadpoles, big thick tails and four little legs, on their way to becoming giant frogs. Your brother had brought his collecting jar, and caught a few giant-frogs-in-process to bring home and add to his goldfish bowl.

We ate our sandwiches and looked at how far we had come on the map and wondered how far the river would go. Would it start at a waterfall or a tiny bubbling fountain or a lake or come out of a rock or go on forever, past when our sandwich supply ran out and after bedtime? We didn't know: no one had ever been this far before.

And then we saw a footprint. It wasn't a grown-up footprint, and it wasn't a little girl footprint, and it wasn't a shaggy yellow dog footprint, and it probably wasn't a giant frog footprint, and it wasn't a big white bird footprint, and witches don't leave footprints and do you know? It was possibly -- just possibly -- a dinosaur footprint. And it was going in the direction of the water.

So we got back into our kayaks, and I was dry from the sun so you let me back into your bright blue kayak, and we paddled harder than ever. We were going to find our monster, and when we found it, we were going to add it to our map.

---

reading
why read when there are Ginger Rogers / Fred Astaire / Gershwin movies to be seen? the inspiration of tap dancing on roller skates in Central Park

weather
not quite amenable to tap dancing on roller skates in Central Park

and then

Overhead, a canopy of trees, the branches knitted together in shades of green which blocked the direct rays of the sun and filtered through only the rays which could weave amongst the branches, the green tinted light and green leaves and heavy dark brown of the bark holding aloft the thatched ceiling.

Underneath, sandy soil, pine needles. Some pebbles placed at specifically awkward angles to dig into hip bones, shoulder blades; ants marching across left foot, detouring around the slope of an ankle.

Somehow, the ground seems like the safest place to be, a reassurance that when all else fails gravity will continue to operate according to Newtonian principles, that the greenish rays of the sun will continue to make their way through an unexpected distance of space, possessing still enough strength after those miles of soul emptying nothingness and the filter of the atmosphere to warm the air to where precisely it is today.

The earth rotates, the shift perhaps imperceptibly felt from this spot on the ground, as the alignment of the uppermost branches of the trees for a moment doesn't tally with what the eyes expect to see. Then everything matches again, the planet spinning effortlessly along its track as the ants work their way across the tendons of the left foot, searching for food or a new nesting site.

The ground is comfortable, or it would be if it weren't for the awkwardly placed pebbles and the suspicion that natural may also harbor the detritus of human existence, bottle caps, cigarette butts, but with the blinding pain in the left temple and a sense of misalignment associated with the right elbow, the undesired paraphernalia is immediately preferable to trying to locate a cleaner spot of dirt.

The how of the situation becomes part of the mythology of life: bicycling along and skidding on gravel; declaiming a monologue or sonnet from a park bench, miscounting steps taken for dramatic purpose; discovering a rabbit hole while running and upending tail over top; stooping to remove a carelessly discarded soda can and suffering a seizure; the vertigo of climbing a tree, experimentally and not successfully, a squirrel laughing at the effort; walking along the ridge of an old stone wall, whose strength lay in the habit of being a wall, but which was unprepared to shoulder the burden of a passenger. The how is immaterial.

There seems to be a predetermined absence of other people: the dogwalkers, joggers, mountain bikers, boy scout troops, conservation managers having all made arrangements to be elsewhere on 3.30 on Tuesday afternoon; the sounds of humanity vacant, replaced by the trees, the birds, the wind, the squirrels, the sounds of distant roads the only incursion of an outside population.

Would Lassie appear over the ridge just beyond that fallen log, appraise the situation, return in a fraction of an hour with the paramedics and a bartender.

Would a Saint Bernard amble past, flask of scotch and sufficient bodily might to clamber upon the back of.

Would an otherwise unwelcome mud encrusted retriever snorfle down the trail to investigate the situation, magically knowing to bark out S-O-S in morse code upon the whispered command of "help."

Would a spaniel dash past intent on finding the waiting duck in the pond, to be followed by a gruffly sympathetic trainer in shades of camouflage and international orange.

Would aliens suddenly decide to land in this inaccessible site, no clearing for acres around, at midafternoon midweek, and offer an escort service to their mother ship, whose medical services must be more advanced than the local county hospital.

Would a tabby cat meander into the area, and sit, just there, offering company if not assistance.

Would the rocks beneath give the slightest compromise to the situation, would the ants not be exploring the valleys between the toes of the left foot, would the sun slow its progress towards the horizon, lengthening the afternoon and enticing out the recalcitrant local citizens, would a sense of impending doom and brain churning dizziness cease descending every time the thought of moving occurred.

Above, the light shifted from the brilliant, intense blue of a June afternoon to the heavy, deepening blue of midsummer dusk. The crickets replaced the birds and the squirrels, the branches of the trees beginning to merge with their own shadows, turning the vaulted ceiling of greens into a web of grays.

A skunk trundled past, at an impassive distance, neither curious nor annoyed. Counting the tree trunks or trying to identify leaf types had long ceased to be a diversionary tactic, with the distinction made only between evergreen, not-evergreen, growing, and rotting. The air cooled, intensifying the scents of mulch and moist, taking with it the comfort of the sun whose warmth had radiated so perfectly between the branches of the trees.

In the end, as the mosquitoes were descending upon a captive feast, it was a five year old who stumbled upon the scene, screamed loudly, was followed by a shrill rejoinder not to scream, then the indelicate cursing of a woman whose schedule hadn't included rendering first aid to random strangers discovered in the woods. She lacked social graces, wore inappropriate shoes for walks on the trails, neither feigned sympathy nor hid disdain.

The child broke into enthusiastic renditions of Indian war whoops, the woman said she would call for help when she was out of the forest, and eventually two men and a stretcher appeared in the distance. They wore head lamps, carried backpacks stuffed with bandages, reflective shock blankets, and a recently legally mandated automatic defibrillator, and there was an end to the afternoon in the woods.

Of the ride in an ambulance strapped to a stretcher along roads which wanted repaving, of the hassle with admissions owing to a lack of both identification and memory, of the florescent lights which bathed everything in a glare whose shadows still held secrets, of a hospital gown which suddenly appeared and a pair of shoes which were never seen again, of a ridge whose scars can still be felt along the left side of the skull, extending back four inches from the temple, and a shaved patch of hair which took months to grow out again: these snapshots of memory fly past in rapid sequence, a period of manic action following the incalculable hours laying under the canopy of trees, listening to the branches.

---

reading on the plane, "Three Cups of Tea"

weather well-earned

betwixt & between

The windshield wipers swishing back and forth, attempting to hold back the sheer force of the rain through effort alone. Visibility minimized to perhaps five feet of space, headlights reflecting the downpour without illuminating anything of the road ahead.

The clock on the dashboard echoed back across the display 8.21 imperceptibly becoming 8.22 until suddenly it was 9.38 and it was impossible to remember whether the hour had all been lost negotiating a path between the raindrops or if it had been whisked away unexpectedly by some sort of time-stealing highway fairy or if sleep had descended in a flash of lightening and autopilot steered the car through the storm, another four miles or forty miles onward into the distance.

The defroster struggled against the mounting humidity, the condensation of breath, the storm's moisture seeping into all the corners of the car. The radio played several songs about lost causes and idleness, fell into a samba beat with cocktails on the beach, and devolved into a local political call-in talk show, where the supervisor of the highway department was answering enquiries about snow removal, or it was the board of selectmen arguing about library funding: it was hard to tell which.

A third of a tank of gas remained: another two hours of driving, assuming some type of progress through the increasing madness of the storm; assuming there would be an open gas station in this long forgotten stretch of road during a storm which continued unabated.

Occasionally a car would pass in the opposite direction; much less frequently would a car speed past in the same direction, in a hurry to arrive at whatever lay in the future: a sick father, an old flame, a warm kitchen, an empty house, a dog to feed, a job to do, a delivery to impart, or an impossible night that required any possible escape route. The highway signs were few and far between, green with the unexpected names of unlikely towns, a promised cradle of civilization 8 miles or 23 miles ahead in the night. These fabled metropolises appeared, disappeared in the swish of a windshield wiper, unlit hamlets of lonely houses clinging to the roadside, lacking diners, gas stations, general stores, post offices.

It became less and less apparent that the road led to any final destination; more and more likely that the asphalt would slowly return to field just at the same point where the car finally ran out of gas. A few freckles of billboards lay scattered along the road side, advertisements for banks or milkshakes or hamburgers or new cars or Quick Stop gas stations offering a memory of a civilization that seemed to have vanished twenty years ago.

The rain lightened, outlines of trees dark shadows against the darkness of the sky, flat planes of black reinforcing the emptiness of the landscape. Ahead loomed the skeletal remains of an amusement park, abandoned to fire and fate, a one-time attraction lost to the abstraction of memory. It passed, forgotten in the encroaching growth of trees and scrub, the road settling back into unbroken silence.

The radio advanced to a d.j. playing top hits from 1974, which, as it turned out, wasn't a year for the production of memorable hits; but the cd's in the passenger seat were either overplayed to the point of mind-numbing redundancy or scratched beyond recognition, and so the memories and enthusiasms of the d.j. of 1974 played on, filling the car with a loneliness only slightly less intense than the swishing of the windshield wipers and the clattering of disconnected thoughts.

The check engine light came on, glowing red on the dashboard, flashing briefly at first and then settling in for the long-term presence. Perhaps the catalytic converter no longer converted but condemned. Perhaps oil was leaking, antifreeze was empty, the internal workings of the car wrestling with automotive spite or exhaustion or overwrought emotion: the car having a nervous breakdown, or perhaps just asking for a stiff drink of something based in petroleum or some other solvent.

The car still maintained a wheezy forward momentum, but now it was unknown: would the road end in a pile of asphalt; would the gas run out; or would the engine erupt in flames and fall out? No outcome was either more or less likely than the others, and any of the possibilities was equally acceptable. Roads must end. The tank was just under a quarter full. If oddly colored smoke billowed from the tailpipe, it couldn't be seen in the rear view mirror.

The seat belt was beginning to strain against the collarbone, the right foot cramping from continued tension, the spine frozen into an unnatural rigidity. Hands paralyzed on the steering wheel, tailbone losing feeling, eyelids craned open, scanning the road for markings, traffic, making up patterns to stay awake and alert.

The d.j. exhausted the possibilities of the unlikely 1974, and began a rundown of l.p.'s that had been found in his aunt's garage, most of which were warped, scratched, or hideously bad performances, all of which he played, recounting stories of childhood visits to the aunt, the stories no more compelling than the girl groups and spoken work recordings and church hymns and woodwind ensembles played as sets for what passed as radio entertainment.

Ahead lay a gas station, ill lit, untidy, surrounded by cars which had either broken down or were for sale, a layer of grease and a sense of apathy hovering over the two pumps. It was staffed by a man who matched the station, wisps of unwashed white hair, swollen knuckles, black shadows under fingernails, sunken eyes, playing the same radio station as was on in the car. If the road was going to disappear or the engine fall out of the car, it had another six hours in which to do so.

In six hours dawn would begin creeping over the horizon, an echo of light eventually swallowing the entire sky in its unremitting declaration of day, but for now the sliver of a moon whisked past the outlines of the clouds, the trees hugged the roadside, and the broken yellow line pulled forward into the night.

The swish of tires on wet pavement replaced the rhythmic wash of the windshield wipers; the check engine light became a beacon into the soul of the car; the tentacles of the seat belt both strangled and caressed. The radio played the national anthem, silenced for the night, and on either side of the road lay the unbroken emptiness of the past and the future, the bubble of the car filled with the tangible force of the now, each breath, each minuscule movement to adjust hands on steering wheel, temperature of air conditioning, flick of the radio in search of companionship magnified until it became a symphony of the body unified with the car.

Tomorrow would come, but for now there was only the deafening roar of the journey.

---

reading the town's master plan, which, alas!, clearly states a preference for development over historic preservation. O! Woe!

weather the deep purple explosion of iris in bloom

character notes

I. Eeyore
[Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne, 1926]

It was only recently brought to my attention that Eeyore is a she. This explains, of course, the pink bow tied on the tail attached with a nail to the donkey's rump; but I, and presumably many others who haven't been consulted, simply assumed the donkey had the masculine gender.

What does that say about our -- or my -- preconceived notions regarding fatalism and melancholy? Or the dear male friends whom I have told remind me of Eeyore? Darlings, all, content to sit quietly in the corner getting on with life or watching the shadows shift across the wall, never intruding on the larger scene, preferring not to make a fuss, responding to gentle prods with a resigned sigh, a shrug, and usually undertaking the request because doing so is less of a bother than trying to resist.

I admit to a soft spot for the Eeyores of the world; the melancholy steeped in perhaps too much contemplation, as opposed to Pooh's mind-numbing unconsidered in-the-moment cheerfulness -- won't someone please muzzle that damn bear? -- or the incessant pacing of Rabbit; my inner Tigger finds the balance of Eeyore calming, grounding, and, though maddening, charming.

---

update May 23, 2009:
rereading Winnie the Pooh, and confirming childhood gender memories:

Chapter IV: In which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One

"The old grey donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" -- and sometimes he didn't know what he was thinking about."

---

II. Reflections

What was the question? I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention: the light was shifting against the branches of the trees, illuminating everything in an inarguable golden yellow, and if I had paid attention to the question I would have missed this five minutes of glory when everything is transformed into Technicolor and the world switches into high definition surround sound with every tree, cloud, house, cat, car, bird outlined in its truest form, so I actually have no idea why you are looking so quizzical, so expectant.

Had I enquired about the health of your grandmother, forgetting that she died in China in the 1960s, confusing her with some other grandmother who gardens in Seattle or moved to Buenos Aires with a man thirty years her junior; or did I inadvertently mention plans to go on a trip which you believe to be the ill-advised tom-foolery of too much wine too late at night and access to airplane reservations; or were you following up on the discussion of the Napoleonic era from yesterday or last week and I obviously wasn't paying attention then, either, since the book I promised to look up for you -- what was that? Something about a chair, or a new method for the espalier of apple trees?

I'm sorry, the coffee is cold, and now you are upset, and I'm not sure if it is the cold coffee or the forgotten question or the cat that just crossed the neighbor's lawn stalking a robin or if you just remembered that beginning of the month bills are due and there is a meeting tomorrow morning regarding signing a power of attorney for the family business.

You don't mind if we let the question drop for a moment, do you? I'm sorry, what did you say?

---

III. Dusk

There, across the way, was a house I had never seen before, in a year's worth of comings and goings, and never looking out the window, the same chair, the same lamp, the same scene for over fifty two weeks, and the house suddenly appeared, taking precedence over the compelling hypnotic power of the paper.

It didn't appear as a new house, shiny siding, faux-old shutters and front door, hurried landscaping hiding the shame of recent foundations. The grass is overgrown, the bushes shaggy, the wooden shingle siding darkened over time, years of sunlight, rain, wind, nightfall calming the wood to a subdued deep brown.

The shingled roof has likewise weathered to the point of becoming part of both the house and the canopy of trees, from bleaching at the peak, darkening towards the edges, shadows of moss and the calming of age. There are columns, supporting a deep and uninhabited front porch, the rainbow stripes of a peace flag hanging in the recess of the porch, clashing with the brilliant pink of the dogwood.

Has the house always been there, hiding quietly in plain sight, my attention so focused on the phone call, the meal, the outpouring of ink that an entire collection of people's lives could disappear?

There are three full stories; it is impossible to be precise about the division of floor space. Is it a house, with or without an apartment, the apartment designed as a component or separated out when an owner fell upon hard times? Are there numerous apartments, chiseled away from what was once a unified whole, coexisting now from a sense of habit if not design?

Are the residents students, filled with that particular sense of hurried timelessness, where nothing can happen quickly enough but days can last forever, where there is a world to change but for the insurmountable obstacle of a tedious history professor, a compelling new love, the discovery of philosophy, the terror of becoming a part of the suburban over-accomplishment only just recently escaped?

Or are the residents members of the eternal class of the not-quite-settled, the adults with careers whose outlines never solidified, who find themselves five or seven or ten years on not doing much beyond the job that was convenient enough and lucrative enough at the time, watching movies, drinking beer, be-ing, content, not driven, suddenly surprised to find their parents aging, uncertain at which point commitments become compulsory, vaguely restless but mostly anchored in the present tense, awash in an endless state of now?

There are no toys scattered about the yard or on the porch, which argues against the presence of a family, an infant or toddler or perhaps unexpectedly an eight or nine year old just becoming aware of the trauma of an impending adolescence, unless the parents are especially organized and enviably responsible to the progression of cars and pedestrians down the street, containing the chaos of family life within the confines of the apartment's walls, toys scattered across the floor, bike or stroller in the entryway.

It is equally possible that the residents have aged with and into the house, moved in many years full of now forgotten memories ago; worked, dined, did or didn't raise a family, socialized, tended the garden, canvassed political campaigns, and settled in for a retirement of catching up on everything there wasn't time for in all those years of life. There is a piano, still played, more slowly now, fewer new pieces, and recordings of Gershwin or Mendelssohn or Wagner, in the summer drives to the concerts on the lawn at Tanglewood, the same cardigan sweater, the same Volvo, fewer of the rooms used now, a wood stove in the kitchen.

No one has moved. No lights are on. Neither car nor bicycle are visible. The house may only appear once every fifty four weeks, then disappear into the fog of perception for another year and a fortnight, to be found as dusk settles over a spring evening, birds calling in the background.

In a year's time, ten year's time, will the residents have changed, aged, moved, been replaced? Or will they remain who they are not today, complacently existing in a world of smoky tea and settling soup, the log crackling, the papers updated, but the people eternal?

Dusk settles, and the house disappears.

---

reading a list of 100 books published since 1900, perhaps 75% of which I have read, the plots and characters of the vast majority of which have been consigned to the shadows of memory

weather everywhere, the satiated scent of lilacs