Driving Over the Hill

[This is one in a series of stories/essays I’ve written this past year. They are very personal and possibly universal. Comments appreciated.]

He was driving over the Sepulveda pass on his way to class. His Jeep was speeding with the flow of traffic.

Music was blaring. He liked it. Peter Gabriel. What was the song? He knew it, knew it well, but he couldn’t grasp the name. It was from NEW BLOOD, the symphonic album Peter Gabriel put out a couple of years ago. It was a compilation of his songs orchestrated with strings and brass, no guitars and no drum kits.

“The darkness still has work to do” he sang loudly. What was that last line? He often had no idea what the actual words were, but he sang the vowels and consonants with abandon. Without abandon? Whatever. “The darkness still has work to do, the knotted cords untying.” Yes, that’s what it was ‘knotted cords untying’. That’s a good line.

He put on his turn signal and shifted over to the left lane to avoid a slow truck climbing the hill. He wondered what his knotted cords were that still needed untying. He had a visceral sense of the knot in his stomach, but not words to describe what they were. He sang, “The signs of my undoing had been there from the start.” He knew that. He wondered if it was all planned or fated? When you set up a person with all of the flaws he possessed was fate simply inevitable?

He sensed on his right there was an erratic driver. For him, driving was an act of listening, intuition, mind reading, what used to be called ESP. Part of his brain was listening to every driver on the road near him taking in their thoughts, their feelings, trying to anticipate what they would do before they did it. This was his form of defensive driving. The car coming up quickly to his right was erratic. Slow, fast, trying to figure out the lane. Was this an aggressive driver, someone in a hurry, or just pissed off? Or, was it someone who was so unconscious and on auto pilot that they weren’t really paying attention. He tuned into the driver and realized no, it was fear. The driver was afraid of the road and responded by being wild and uncontrolled. Driving with fear was the worst and cautious fear was even more dangerous than fast fear. He edged past the driver and put another car between his and her. He knew it was a young woman who was fear driving. He checked to be sure he wasn’t just being sexist, projecting, no it was a young woman.

“In the Blood of Eden,” he sang, “lies the woman and the man the man and the woman and the woman and the man.” He stopped to wonder how the song went from darkness to the woman and the man. This blended with him and the woman driver. How was Peter putting these things together in this song? Brilliant. He thought of hearing this song when Peter Gabriel played the Hollywood Bowl. That was a great concert, best he had ever seen, heard, attended, no experienced.

His thoughts went to tonight’s concert. The crew was setting up for the concert in his theatre. He’d have to work it tonight. He got a sense of agitation, something was going on, there in Santa Monica. He tried to key into it as part of his brain was telling him it was just an association with thinking about the Peter Gabriel concert nothing more. He tried to see what was the matter. He sensed the producer of the concert was pissed off about something. Well, he was always pissed off. That’s not worth a worry. No, it was something with the construction workers and the baseball team around the entrance to the parking lot. He wondered if he should call. He tuned in and felt that his staff would work it out.

God, he was scattered. He needed to focus. He would need to write something in class today and he had no clue. He was so far from the book he was writing. He tried to key into where he was last working, have some idea with the book. The problem was the narrative voice. He’d never developed one. Being a playwright and an essayist, he’d never really needed one. But this novel needed a narrator, someone to help tell the story, to explain, but he knew that he tended to over explain.

A car merged in front of him and slowed down quickly. He had to put on the brakes hard. He had been watching this old man, sensing him, as he entered the freeway, but he had not anticipated him pulling in front of him. He simultaneously braked to not hit the old man in the Volvo while checking to make sure the guy in the black car behind him was paying attention and not spaced out or looking at his phone. The black car was slowing. He checked to his right, but he already knew there was a pickup truck there in the lane beside him.

He felt his feet in his shoes, his hiking boots, depress the brake pedal. He shifted his foot back to the accelerator and wiggled his toes. He wasn’t going hiking today, he just liked the shoes. They made him feel more rugged, athletic, like a guy who would hike the AT or the PCT. Is that what they called the Pacific Crest Trail? Was this a knotted cord?

And then, he was hiking with a heavy backpack over a mountain, the ocean was off in the distance to the left, the sun behind him to the right. He figured it must be the Pacific. He felt good. He took a long breath. The air was slightly chilled. This was him and not him.

He was back driving and thinking about hiking. He had to get out and away sometime soon. He needed a drivabout: get in the car, tell his wife he’d be back in a few days and drive. Driving and hiking. Of course there wouldn’t be camping, he might like the shoes but he wasn’t in for sleeping on the ground, no showers and being cold. But time away. Time to focus.

He needed to figure out what he’d write this morning. New ground or old ground? Something from the first book or the second? He thought about Fred from the second book, then Tom from the first. They were very different. Perhaps the narrative voice could be like Tom talking to his higher self, future self? no higher. Whatever that meant. His critic chimed in loudly, All knowing narrator, what the hell is that? And yet, he felt like there was some part of him that made sense of all of this better than he could.

A Tesla changed three lanes to the right and pulled within inches from the car in front of him closing the gap from four car lengths to one and half. He tried to key into the Tesla driver and found nothing. Teslas had recently supplanted in his mind BMWs and Lexus drivers as the biggest assholes on the road. He wondered why he couldn’t connect with the driver of the Tesla. Who was this person? Then the tesla pulled to the right cutting off the car next to him and sped away.

He had to merge into the turn lane to go from the 405 to the 101.

This is all a mess. I should be back at my desk outlining the first book. Trying to reengage with it. Why am I going to class? I have nothing new to say, I’ve missed the last few, working too much, he shouted in his brain. I guess I need to return to the pack.

I don’t really write plot. Just situations that express thoughts.

Then, he was in a pill box, shining the machine gun, making sure that it was in working order. It was mid-day. The attack should come that night. The French and Americans would storm the hill. Though he knew that they wouldn’t come during daylight, he still scanned the horizon trying to see movement, hear sounds, sense the energy of the attacker. He took aim on a bush about 75 meters away. A flutter. Probably, a bird. Maybe a scout. It was too early for an attack. He caught a glint of something shiny. He squeezed the trigger in and out for a short burst, ten bullets streaming loudly from the muzzle toward the shrub. He heard a scream and saw a figure fall to the right.

“In the Blood of Eden, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.”

God, I’m really distracted, he thought, too much going on in my head.

He took the Laurel Canyon exit.

The End of the World as He Knew It

[This is from a series of stories/essays that I’ve written this past year. They are personal and possibly universal. Comments appreciated.]

“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” the band sang, he forgot which one. R.E.M? He never liked R.E.M. He thought, Little did we know at the time how right they were. The world was changing, had changed, drastically since he was scream singing that song at some drunken party in the eighties.

He was spinning his “End of the World” playlist on Spotify through his Iphone. Spinning, what a quaint word. It used to refer to actual records spinning, pressings of vinyl. When music went digital, CDs and hard drives spun for a time. These days, only he was spinning.

A friend suggested he add a happy, poppy song by Lenka to his playlist. She sings “At the end of the world, I will be there with you. And, we’ll throw a party to celebrate the things we used to do.” It would be a great contrast with the many doom and gloom songs in the list.

This playlist was his favorite. It included Elvis Costello’s “Waiting for the End of the World,” The Turtles’ “Eve of Destruction,” Blue Oyster Cult telling us “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and Dylan singing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. He was most proud of the covers of classic songs, Diana Krall with “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” or Rod Stewart crooning “For All We Know” where he sings this might be our last moment so we must enjoy it. It was not strictly an end of the world song, but he liked the sentiment. It fit.

He wondered again about his obsession with The End of the World as We Know It. For him it was a less a fear than a fantasy. What would happen if all of this changed? When he thought ‘this’, it was easy to imagine civilization as we know it changing. He could even see his house, jeep, job and city going away. Losing people was a harder swallow, but why not? He tucked that image away as being too callous and unloving. He buried the entire thought underground and got on with the myriad of responsibilities rushing towards him every moment of his existence.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it.” Yeah, he thought, I’d be fine.

He was shopping at Smart and Final. He made a Smart and Final run about once a month for large items in bulk. His house didn’t have enough storage to shop at Costco. He grabbed a couple of those 2.5 gallon water containers. His wife had used two of them last week for some event. He needed to restock their earthquake supplies: one gallon per person for seven days, fourteen gallons. He put three more jugs of water into his basket. He was buying five to go with the two left in the closet. He thought, This is pretty silly, we’ll never need these. He thought, This won’t be enough if it really happened.

If the big one happened, if the ground really shook, he knew it wouldn’t be about the first week. Yeah, some unlucky people would die, be squashed by cheap and old construction, the roads would fail, and there certainly weren’t enough Red Cross workers to create shelters and feed the 8-12 million in Southern California.

The real problem would be week two. A major break on the San Andreas would sever all roads, water, electric, gas and data lines running across the fault. It would take months to recover. In that time, no amount of boats and airlifts would be able to supply enough water and food. Combined with the lack of communication, anarchy would be around the corner. Institutions and the very structure of society would not have the resilience to recover.

Standing in the aisle of the Smart and Final, he thought, Perhaps, I should finally wander into that relic of a gun shop on Washington Blvd and buy a gun, a few guns or maybe Home Depot for some gas cans and portable generator, a tent. Could we make it to the in-laws in Mexico?

Once again he asked himself, Is this fear or anticipation? Right beneath the surface was an excitement. The big one would bring big changes. Weren’t we ready for a reset?

The end of the world and its aftermath was everywhere: in the books he read (THE BONE CLOCKS, STATION ELEVEN), movies (MAD MAX, THE ROAD, WALL-E) and television (The LEFTOVERS, THE WALKING DEAD, FEAR THE WALKING DEAD) he watched. Even if someone wasn’t drawn to the idea like he was, it was impossible to avoid.

This new age seemed particularly fragile. We could easily be rocked back to the days before electricity. The dark ages seemed more feasible than keeping up this technological wonder that we called ‘life as we know it.’ It all seemed so very fragile.

He wondered what the catalyst might be: A Major Earthquake? Aliens? Zombies? Solar Flares? Perhaps a killer virus that wiped out ninety-plus percent of the population? Or just the stupidity of war?

He was a smart guy. He knew the reason the idea of an apocalypse proliferated the world consciousness was that the world as we knew it was changing. We’re predisposed to be afraid of change. Technology, communications, power structures, societal roles and prejudices, well everything, was changing. The world was not the world his grandparents had on the farm or the world his parents lived through in the fifties and sixties. The world was different now than it was than he was a kid in the late sixties and seventies. The past twenty years had seen so many changes, such as his Iphone wirelessly connecting to an internet, gay marriage, a black president. Change was happening and it was rapid.

He remembered a book he had read, DREAMING OF THE END OF THE WORLD: Apocalypse as a Rite of Passage. It was written by a Jungian Psychologist who had collected thousands of dreams from people who had dreamt about blowing ourselves up. They ranged from the horrific to the sublime. He wrote that we were creating a new myth to deal with our fear of change.

While nuclear annihilation/apocalypse/holocaust seems farther away, it has been replaced with a plethora and smorgasbord of cataclysms. He thought, Why not? Everything is so new. Of course, there is a shadow of fear and trepidation.

Technology was changing our minds, our perceptions of reality, how the world works, and our very thought about our existence. Physicists kept telling us that what we see is not what we get. The universe is happening on a level we can’t comprehend and all of this might just be an illusion that we constructed to calm our existence.

But as he had said the other day to his friend at lunch, “The cracks were showing in the illusion, and it could break.”

He had a dream the other night. There was a large pile of storage in a theater where he worked. The pile was smoldering. He knew it could burst into flame and destroy the building along with all of the people on it. Or, it would put itself out. But for some reason, he couldn’t put out the fire. All he could do was wait, prepare for the moment it burst into flames, a conflagration. Then, he would need to have a plan to get the people out of the building, to save the most precious items. But for now, all he could do was wait. He sat across from the smoldering mass and waited.

When he awoke, he understood the dream and the symbols all too well. He knew that the dream wasn’t about a fire or about the end of the world in a larger sense. It was about the end of his world. It was time to move on, change jobs, change his world.

He had this world view that he couldn’t shake. It went, when the universe tells you to change, you need to change. If you don’t, the universe will change you, and it won’t be easy. He wondered where this world view came from, some vestige of the wrathful Christian god he was brought up to believe in as a child? Still, he knew he was the god/universe and that larger part of himself was letting him know he needed to change.

He didn’t know how, but he announced to his larger self, to his universe, he was ready to change.

He was ready for the end of his world.

Their World Collapsing

[This is a series of stories/essays I’ve written this past year. They are personal and possibly universal. Comments appreciated.]

Nancy witnessed their world collapsing.

Her task was clear. She had to empty out her parent’s home to return it to the bank. 

Six months before, her mother had “gone to be with the Lord,” as her mother would’ve said. Two years before, her father had passed. They were binary stars, to be seen together, to live in relationship.

The irreparable damage had occurred and their world was slowly collapsing in on itself.

When possibilities lose their probability, the waveform collapses, entropy takes over, and everything erodes to nothingness.

Nancy sat on the floor of her father’s study surrounded by piles of paper. Five boxes lined up in front of her, a box for each distinct category: a box for financial records needed to close out the estate; a box for files to shred, those sensitive documents that must be destroyed to protect against identity theft. Nancy wondered whose identity remained to be stolen; there was a box of papers for the essential writings and work of her parents, their intellectual essence, papers that might still inspire and teach; and there was the trash, words and documents that could be discarded lacking in any remaining importance, energy or impact. Every page, every file got reviewed and sorted. Most landed in the trash.

As she worked on the papers, the contents of the house made its way out the door, helped by friends, family, colleagues and the strangers whose jobs consisted of collecting the detritus of some to help and mend others.

Her parents had lived lives of service and learning. Their work had touched many people. They had made an impact on others. As her parent’s passed through their world, they had changed many other worlds.

Nancy imagined the tens of thousands her parents had impacted in subtle and profound ways. Perhaps it was a moment in a checkout lane or years of friendship, their lives had touched others. This large group stood in contrast with the millions they would never meet or see. The possibility of those encounters ended and part of their world fell away. For one’s world includes both the concrete and possible. When the possibilities are no longer feasible those alternate experiences collapse. This huge volume of potential evaporated.

The casual encounters that had existed in moments and did not grow, the mention of their name, the passing on the sidewalk, every moment when her parents took in another, and every moment when they we’re seen as people standing in front of another; these moments faded and disappeared.

The men from Goodwill came to the door at the appointed time. Nancy showed them the scores of boxes and furniture set aside for them. The men grumbled about it being more than they were expecting and about the heat of the day. Resignedly, they loaded their truck taking more belongings from Nancy’s parents to anonymous receivers of goods and furniture. They would never know the energy and care her parents had given to those items, their stories or the times they sat on that chair, used those scissors or admired that painting. As these items left the house, Nancy was overcome by the feelings of loss and relief. And another part of the world collapsed.

Henry, a man Nancy had known since she was 13, piled up boxes of papers and books. He had trained with her father and considered him a mentor and a friend. In many ways, he was more heir and offspring to her father than she. To him was entrusted the papers and work of her parents. He had promised to go through them and share them with other colleagues and students. In this way, her parent’s intellectual work and ideas might continue, might remain. She helped him load up his red truck until it was as full as it could be. She hugged and thanked him. As Henry drove off with his red pickup full, Nancy felt another part of their world collapse.

As the house emptied, it felt as if it was being drained of the blood that had made it a home.

Debra came up to Nancy clutching a blue vase. With tears in her eyes she asked if she could have it. She went on to tell how she and Nancy’s mother had found this blue vase at a thrift shop. It wasn’t worth anything other than the memory of days when these two best friends would share lunch and conversation. Debra said, she’d paid the quarter for the vase, because she had a quarter and Nancy’s mother would have to break a dollar bill. As tears welled in her eyes, Debra wondered why she would remember such an inconsequential moment, but she remembered saying to Nancy’s mother, “This is my priceless gift to you.” Debra said, “This blue vase has no value. It is only valuable to me.” She asked Nancy if he could have it. Nancy knew that Debra would care for the vase until Debra’s daughter would give it away on a day like today. Until then it would hold the energy of their friendship. As Debra left with the vase and other priceless items, Nancy felt their world collapse some more. She knew that while this world might collapse, remnants of it would remain in other worlds for a time until they were no more.

Aunt Susan rifled through boxes and albums of photograph. She gathered up the ones she deemed to be “keepers”. She promised to have them scanned and distributed. One was picture of them as children feeding the ducks with their mother, Nancy’s grandmother, at the creek a half mile from the house where they grew up. Aunt Susan figured she was five and Nancy’s mother was eight in the photograph. It was taken at the start of long journeys for each of them.

Nancy helped Aunt Susan to her car, placed the boxes of keepers on the back seat, hugged her cousin, Susan’s daughter, and waved as they drove away. They were the last to leave. When she turned around, the house had begun to fade.

Nancy picked up the remains, tossed them in the pile of trash and began to sweep. It was the final task before walking away. As she swept, the house itself began to fade, the very walls and ceiling opened up until she was sweeping the weeds in a lot where a house, a home, had never been. Nancy turned and looked at the world around and watched it all fall away and erode until it was gone. And nothing remained.

Nancy evaporated out of their world to a world of her own, filled with family, friends, colleagues and all of those she might encounter before her world would also collapse and fade.

[I wrote this after returning from cleaning out my parent’s house and after a dream that put it all together. Names and my gender were changed. It came out that way.]

Thoughts about GO SET A WATCHMAN

I listened to GO SET A WATCHMAN on Audible read by Reese Witherspoon.
I also listened to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD read by Sissy Spacek. I had last read it thirty or more years ago.
I chose this moment to dip back into the world of Maycomb, AL to coincide with my return to Jacksonville, FL, my hometown. I went there to clear out my parent's house.

GO SET A WATCHMAN is not a great book like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. And yet, it is an important book.

It's literary importance is as a road map of how an interesting idea and impression was taken and crafted to be the book it became. It is fascinating to see what was discarded and to suppose why.

WATCHMAN like it's progeny is also a political book. Had Ms. Lee stayed with this book and honed it, it could have become a very good book, but I doubt it would have been published or had gotten much notice. Being a Southerner, I appreciate WATCHMAN's complexity and complicity of response to race and the threat to the established way of life.

MOCKINGBIRD, while still holding subtlety and complexity, has a child's simplicity. Part of its power is that a child's point of view is clear, right and wrong is obvious to a child.

WATCHMAN attempts to illustrate how maturity and socialization leads us to the necessary evil of compromise. Cognitive Dissonance is the way of adulthood. While a mistrust of the other might be genetic, prejudice is honed and taught through experience and ambition. Racism is treated as necessary. Suggesting it isn't is naive and childlike. As any adult must know, it's obvious.

MOCKINGBIRD has been credited with having a strong impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Published in 1960 between Brown v. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act, it provided greater awareness and understanding. Reading it now made me wonder what would have happened had Harper Lee returned to the story of WATCHMAN after publishing MOCKINGBIRD. Set some twenty years after MOCKINGBIRD in the late fifties, Scout gains a deeper understanding of the racism in her hometown. I wonder what would have happened if America had been confronted by a honed and completed WATCHMAN in the mid-sixties? Would it have helped explain the complexity of racism and helped us to transition more quickly?

While the publishing of WATCHMAN today seems like nothing more than a money grab by an atrophied industry, perhaps its view of racism might help us face the racism our country still deeply harbors.

I recognize the people in WATCHMAN. I still see them in America (and not just Southern America). It made me mad and embarrassed. And, I was thankful to be confronted by this more realistic/adult view of our society.