

### A Misunderstood God

And Other Essays

### G. J. Lau

Copyright © 2011 G. J. Lau

Smashwords Edition

The Windroot Press

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The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. The essays are for the most part in their original form, although grammatical corrections and other minor edits have been made by the author.

**ISBN:** 978-1-4580-4391-7

Homepage: http://www.windroot.com

Blog: http://www.windroot.blogspot.com/

Other Books by G. J. Lau:

The Magpie's Secret at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36482

SitRep Negative: A Year in Vietnam at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49814

Fifty Years of Global Warming at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/56573

# Introduction

At some point in our journey from cradle to grave, we all ponder the meaning of life. This seems to be—insofar as we can know such things— a uniquely human trait. Presumably, the other animals we share the planet with don't feel they have a need to know. Hard to say who are the lucky ones.

These essays chronicle my encounters with the natural and unnatural world along the way to a different understanding of what it all means. I don't have any new answers, just more questions. Maybe God doesn't have a plan, but I do believe there is a process that was set in motion at the point of creation, a process that will inevitably lead to a result, a result that we can influence through our individual and collective actions.

As I re-read these essays, one thing that came through was the joy to be found in the small things in life, be it sitting in the backyard watching the birds, or playing with blocks, or feeling the bite of a wintry wind against my cheek. I like to think I share that much in common with my fellow animals—an appreciation of the now.

If I were to hope for one thing a reader might take away after reading these essays, it would be a greater appreciation of the mystery that permeates everything around us. From the flight of a bird to the subatomic particles dancing all around us and within us, nothing is as simple or as obvious as it seems. To me, that sense of how little we truly understand about everything is the first step towards understanding anything.

# What's In A Word?

Words are the gene pool of our intellect. Like our biological genes, words contain within them a history of what went into their making, and they contain every conceivable future in their expression of new combinations of thought and insight.

Given that our edge as a species lies in our ability to reason, you'd think that words would be treated with respect rather than the carelessness that has become so commonplace in our national dialogue.

Maybe that is what drives a writer to write: the appreciation of the value of words, an appreciation that fuels the passion to use words to dig into the past and to the make visible a future perhaps undreamt of until it took shape inside the writer's brain.

But it begins with a respect for words and the spaces between them, a sense of words as discrete bundles of intellectual energy that singly and collectively contain the accumulated wisdom of an entire species, from its earliest days until now.

What's in a word? Everything ... and more.

# Behind These Prison Walls

I hear the geese before I see them. The syncopated honking heralds their passage, a wedge plowing a furrow through the night sky under the watchful eye of a waxing moon.

They carry with them secrets our science will never fully unravel. Is all that ceaseless honking the amiable bantering of any group traveling together or instructions being passed down the line? How does it feel to lock on to a line of magnetic energy and just know it is the right way? For that matter, how do they know where to go or when they have gotten there?

Perhaps it is punishment for some original sin or just the way things turned out ... I don't know. But the older I get the more I am filled with sadness at being shut out from so much of the natural world around me.

We got to where we are thanks to our intelligence, but at what cost? In the solitary confinement of our brain we can look out through the prison bars to the very edge of time, but the geese and their secrets are forever beyond our grasp.

# Prudence

Ezra Pound was none too pleased at the prospect of winter (Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM). That's a pretty typical reaction. Winter gets a lot of bad press and for good reason.

This is a season that has teeth. Winter winds will gnaw your flesh away if you linger outside for too long on a really cold day. Fall through the ice and you have minutes to live. Forget to pay the electric bill and you have hours before you slowly slip into the big sleep.

Winter is all about being prudent. Prudence is an underrated virtue in these self-indulgent times. Growing up in the New England of the 1950's, when the winters were still very hard, one quickly developed a natural caution.

You didn't just go outside. You thought about what to wear, the condition of the roads. You sniffed the air, trying to catch the scent of any snow that might be heading your way. You always made sure there was enough milk, bread, and toilet paper—the Holy Trinity of winter survival—to last a fortnight if need be.

That prudence was the legacy of a uniquely New England Puritanical fear of having too much of anything, an instilled distrust of excess that made you hedge your bets. Prudence served as a flywheel that kept your life from spinning out of control. Not so much any more, or so it would seem.

# Mackerel Skies

Sitting by the ocean gives you a sense of the immensity of nature and also its fragility. You can look out beyond the waves to the earth's curve while the morning tide deposits the flotsam and jetsam of civilization at your feet. A nor'easter can move mountains of sand in a single night. A rising sea can slowly overtake islands and coasts over the course of decades.

Sitting by the ocean leaves you mesmerized by the waves lapping against the shore in the same rhythm that soothed us in the womb. Their sound was the first thing heard on earth and will probably be the last thing heard before the sun novas out.

Sitting by the ocean connects you to the deep past. Stay for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a lifetime and the rhythm of the tides will never vary. Only the gods have longer memories, and the sea has outlasted more than a few of those.

Sitting by the ocean forces you to accept the indifference of nature to the fate of the living things it nurtures. What happens to clams or men is of no concern to the sea. It gives us life; it is up to us what we make of it.

Sitting by the ocean makes you think of generations to come as you listen to the squeals of delight from children as they try to outrun the waves that nip at their heels. You know right then and there that you would do whatever you could to protect them from the dangers that you as a parent know are out there.

Sitting by the ocean teaches you to see and feel the changing world around you. The beach is calm even as storms are forming far out at sea, beyond the horizon line. But nature plays fair, sending mackerel skies ahead of the storm to let us know that a sea change is coming. Such signs are all around us. You just have to know where to look.

# Summer's End

Moiré clouds dawdle across the early evening sky. A cooling wind is freshening from the west, clearing away the humid remains of the day. There is a feel of autumn in the air, the end parenthesis closing in on summer.

Around the side of the house, pumpkins are slowly turning orange, in anticipation of the fall colors that are due in another month or two. This year's patchwork quilt of reds and yellows and purples moving slowly down the slopes of the mountains will be lackluster, another casualty of the months-long drought that has afflicted this region.

The drought this year has been hard on the garden. The older plants and the weeds have managed to make it through just fine, but perennials newly planted in the spring have struggled against the dry sapping heat. Miss a day of watering and the leaves begin to droop, curling inward in a desperate attempt to thwart evaporation of their life's blood.

High in the locust tree, a squirrel has curled up for an evening's snooze. His tail hangs down, swaying gently in the breeze. Finches dart across the yard on their way home to their roost. The air grows cooler, raising small goose bumps on my forearms. It's time to go in.

# A Small Tragedy

I live in a typical suburban neighborhood on a quiet cul-de-sac. We have a relatively small fenced-in backyard that harbors a variety of different birds: sparrows, finches, cardinals, robins, mourning doves, black-capped chickadees, goldfinches, snow birds, mockingbirds, catbirds and the odd assortment of migratory visitors.

Over the years I have learned a lot about the birds in my backyard: the ones that like to flock together, the loners and the players, the predators and the solid citizens. One thing they all have in common is a fierce devotion to protecting their young.

The smallest bird is fearless when it comes to standing between one of its babies and any kind of threat, be it a human who has unwittingly walked to close to a well-hidden nest or a predator like a blue jay, the T-Rex of the local avian community.

I was witness to an example of this the other day when I heard a commotion in my backyard. My dog, a Parsons Russell terrier named Mabel, was being attacked by a pair of cardinals. It took a second for me to process the fact that they were probably guarding a baby that was trapped on the ground.

Unfortunately for them, I was too slow, and Mabel was too quick. The next thing I knew, she was running to the other side of the yard with an already dead baby clenched in her jaws. I'd like to say that was the first time, but it wasn't. She is a terrier, and that is what terriers were bred to do.

Still, I felt bad for the cardinals. They hovered over the area where the baby had been taken, swooping in and out in hopes, perhaps, of a last minute rescue. A couple of hours later I walked by that part of the yard and saw a male cardinal perched on the fence right where the baby had been lost.

It struck me that perhaps he was still mourning the loss of his child. I looked for his mate and couldn't spot it, which got me to wondering if their union would survive the stress of this loss.

I know what you are thinking. Animals are not capable of those kinds of emotions. Only we humans possess such feelings of loss. Only we humans understand the finality of death.

Well, I wonder about that. It seems to me that this gulf that supposedly exists between mankind and all other living species may not be as wide as we think it is. Certainly those cardinals knew malice and menace when they saw it, and were prepared to resist it with everything they had, no matter what the odds.

Maybe we need to believe we are special in order to buttress our belief that God cares only about us. Personally, I think we would do better to see ourselves as a little less special and all the other living things on the planet as a little more special.

##

# A Misunderstood God

Heinrich von Kleist wrote from 1799 to 1811. His collection of short stories, _The Marquise of O and Other Stories_ , foreshadows a time when the optimism of the German Enlightenment—with its belief that the world is rationally ordered and that all things can eventually be understood—was beginning the long slow fade to black we now call the 20th Century, where nothing seems to have worked out as planned.

I know what you are thinking. German writer ... 19th Century ... got to be dull. Not so. Kleist writes about ordinary people whose lives are caught up in increasingly bizarre twists of fate that carry them forward into their unexpected destiny. The writing is deceptively simple, the voice flat, the plot an inexorable progression from normal to abnormal.

My favorite is _The Earthquake in Chile_ , which explores the aftermath of a cataclysmic earthquake. The story centers around two lovers and their illicit child. Let's just say it doesn't go well for any of them and leave it at that. The horror of the tale is intensified by von Kleist's way of just letting the story tell itself. The opening sentence is a brilliant example of von Kleist's dense yet mesmerizing style:

In Santiago, the capitol of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jerónimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and was about to hang himself.

What brought von Kleist's story to mind was last week's terrible events in the country's midsection. Parts of Oklahoma and Kansas were devastated by a storm system that spawned more than 70 tornadoes in a destructive rampage that leveled hundred of homes and left dozens dead. The intensity of the destruction was reminiscent of the damage caused by Hurricane Hugo.

At about the same time, another tragedy unfolded on a smaller scale, but one no less devastating to those involved. A group of kids had been in Mayhill, New Mexico, attending a youth retreat sponsored by a local church. They were returning home to Lubbock, Texas when a spare tire fell from a passing truck and slammed into their bus. Six Lubbock-area girls and a 67-year-old Albuquerque man died in the wreck. Another 27 persons were injured.

To ponder these events is not to make light of them or to diminish the anguish they have caused. But one can't help being drawn to these events, just as we are inevitably drawn to stand at the edge of an abyss to peer nervously downward at the inverse apogee, perhaps to sway just the tiniest bit as we ponder the closeness of the infinite.

Heinrich von Kleist would have been drawn to just such events as these, using them as a source of inspiration for one of his intricately crafted tales of chance and destiny. In a letter written in 1806, von Kleist expressed the hope that, "contrary to evidence, the world is governed not by an evil spirit, but simply by a God who is misunderstood." In 1811, at the age of 33, he committed suicide.

# Fathers and Sons

My father died 33 years ago. It was just a week before his 61st birthday, and he was playing golf when he dropped dead of a heart attack while he was waiting to tee off. Not a bad way to go, really, especially if you are an avid golfer.

For the first two decades or so of my life, our relationship was ... okay. We were two very different people. He was good with his hands. I was not. Other than the newspaper, he was not much of a reader. I was a bookworm. He loved tools and fixing things. I never met a machine I could understand.

Things shifted between us after I went to Vietnam. He never got to serve in the Army due to an already bad heart. Like other men of his generation, that failure to serve in uniform gnawed at him. I think maybe he got a vicarious sense of vindication from my service. Certainly, I think he felt duty-bound to treat me as a man in full, especially after I came home on leave in my uniform.

What really sealed the deal between us was when I got married. I'm sure he and my mother were both despairing of that ever happening. The fact that not only did I get engaged but also she was beautiful and smart and got along well with them was ... well, just about as good as it gets.

My father was a very talented man. He was a professional cabinet-maker and built custom homes in the days when homes were still stick-built. He could fix just about anything with moving parts. He was a scratch golfer who won the championship (First Flight) at just about every club in the area. He loved to play guitar and looked forward to his jam sessions with a few of the other local musicians.

The thing I remember most about him was his inflexible sense of honesty. He was the kind of guy who was honest when nobody was looking, if you know what I mean. I guess it rubbed off on me, or at least I hope it did.

The other thing we shared is a basic gregariousness. (My kids are rolling their eyes along about now.) He taught me that most folks are pretty friendly if you just treat them that way. It sprang from a fierce sense of small-town egalitarianism. Wherever he was, there was nobody any better than he was. After all, this was a guy who used to play with JFK and who knew secrets about Humphrey Bogart.

The one way that I am different from him as a father is in telling my kids that I love them. My father's generation didn't do that. I know he loved me, but hearing the words would have been nice. I don't hold it against him, though. That's just how things were in those days.

So maybe on Father's Day it is fitting that I stop for a minute and tell my father that I love him, because come to think of it I don't know if I ever said that to him when he was alive. Dad, if you are up there listening, "Happy Father's Day. You did all right in my book. I love you."

# Memorial Day

Family business took my wife and I down to Florida over the Memorial Day weekend. Her parents had moved there several years ago, but now it was time to sift through the stuff that accumulates after decades of marriage and children and grandchildren.

My wife spent hours looking through envelopes, loose papers, and photographs. We rediscovered a lot of family history. This was a Gold Star family of soldiers and sailors who fought in two world wars. They endured the hard times and worked hard during the good times.

Hidden among piles of old McCalls and Family Circles was a Saturday Evening Post, dated July 10, 1943. Flipping through the magazine you couldn't help but notice that in every article, every joke, and every advertisement the war was mentioned in some form or another. World War II permeated every aspect of life in a way that we can't even begin to comprehend today. People were totally committed to the war effort and adjusted their daily lives so that the war always came first.

Compare that with what happened after the attacks on the World Trade Center. We sent our soldiers to Afghanistan while back on the home front we were told to carry on our lives as usual and to go shopping. Instead of hitting the beaches at Normandy, we were ordered to hit the malls. Not once were we asked to sacrifice anything for the war. I guess they were afraid we didn't have it in us.

And maybe they were right. Maybe that is why before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq we remained silent, knowing all the while that our leaders were deceiving us and perverting our most cherished traditions of truth and justice—what we used to call the American Way.

Looking back through the lens of history at how we were in 1943, you have to wonder if we the people could ever summon up the sense of overriding purpose and shared commitment that existed during World War II. I guess there's a reason why they became known as the greatest generation. Makes you wonder what our generation will be called.

# The Bird Feeder

The next time you get all wrapped up in thinking about how important you are to God, remember this. God created birds millions of years before creating mankind. I'm not saying we are an afterthought, but clearly populating the planet with quarrelsome tribes of men was way down on the to-do list.

Birds, on the other hand ... God apparently liked to have them around. And what's not to like about birds? When you think about it, birds are pretty much all good. What can you say bad about a bird? Not much really. Certainly not compared to mosquitoes, which by the way birds like to eat. Another good thing.

If you want to learn more about birds or just enjoy them, there is no simpler way than to put up a bird feeder. Whether you live in the country or the city, whether you are rich or poor, you can feed birds and in the process enrich your life and your understanding of the natural world.

I have lost track of how many generations of finches I have supported in part with my feeder. Our feeder hangs on a hook right outside the kitchen window, where two generations of children have delighted in the sudden appearance of a goldfinch or a little Carolina wren.

Some of the seeds get scattered on the ground, but that's okay. The mourning doves and snowbirds and other ground feeders are there to mop up. Even our dog, Mabel, gets in on the act. Turns out she likes sunflower seeds, too.

After a while, you begin to see that the lives of birds can be quite as rich and complex as any other living thing. Mourning doves form very tight families. Cardinals mate for life. Mockingbirds are very bossy, and blue jays ... well, we just won't go there.

Spring is the perfect time to get a feeder going. In my experience this is when birds feed the heaviest. So if you can, get a feeder, load it up with the seed of your choice, and sit back and wait a couple of days for the birds to find it. After that, you will find them to be wonderful companions who reward your generosity many times over.

# To See A Mockingbird

Walking to work this morning, I saw a mockingbird perched atop a lamppost. Most folks wouldn't think twice about something like that, but for me, to see a mockingbird is always a little special because it is my bird.

What do I mean by that? Well, I'm not sure I can answer that because I'm not sure myself what it means. I just know that several years ago it struck me how often I would look up and there would be a mockingbird perched somewhere near by.

I see lots of different birds, but somehow this was different. I began to believe that the constant appearance of a mockingbird at unexpected moments had meaning. So, one day I just decided that the mockingbird was my bird. From that point on, every time I saw a mockingbird I felt reassured, as if nature was taking a moment to let me know that it was still thinking of me.

I can't explain why I feel this way. I guess this is what they call faith. Come to think about it, this must be what religious folks feel when they talk about believing in God or Allah or whatever name they use. They probably would scoff at my connection with mockingbirds, but I can't say that what I believe is any stranger than what passes as gospel in some organized religions.

So, I get the idea of faith. What I don't get is the idea that you have to believe what I believe. I don't expect or need or want you to believe what I believe about my personal relationship with mockingbirds. How about returning the favor? What's so hard about that?

But I guess it is too much to hope that we humans could come up with something besides a God whose rules you have to follow or else it's off to the fires of Hell. The recent controversy over Rick Warren's waffling over his position on gay marriage in California shows how carefully even a big-time religious leader has to tread, lest the righteous rise up in wrath.

As far as I know, there have been no religious wars fought among birds about their sexual proclivities, which as I understand it are all over the map. That's something only a more advanced species like we humans could come up with.

# Church of The WYSIWYG

I started out as a Roman Catholic. I come from an Italian family; so going to Mass was not a subject for debate in our household. I was even an altar boy for several years. The best part was getting out of school to serve at funerals. Even so, Catholicism never really stuck. The part of my brain that was supposed to respond to the religious impulse did not seem to be functioning too well.

The terminal phase of my active Catholicism began when I entered Georgetown University, a Catholic college administered by the Society of Jesus, or as you probably know them, the Jesuits. The combination of being away from home and being exposed to a form of religion not geared to the European peasant created doubt, a state of mind fatal to the religious experience.

This was a time of great upheaval in the Church. Pope John XXIII's attempts at liberalizing the Church generated a counter movement among the Church's conservative hierarchy that continues to this day. The Catholic Church was no longer "one Church universal and apostolic." In the wake of this turbulence, I became part of a unique generation of Catholics: born in the 40s, raised in the 50s, confused in the 60s, and lost in the 70s.

I now belong to the Church of the WYSIWYG: What You See is What You Get. How does it work, this Church of the WYSIWYG? Simple. To understand God's plan, look at the world about you. If you see it, then it's part of the plan. If you don't, then it's an assumption, an attempt to explain what may be unexplainable.

Death ... real. Heaven or hell ... assumption.

Evil ... real. Satan ... assumption.

Chromosomes ... real. Predestination ... assumption.

Getting the idea? The Church of the WYSIWYG seeks God through His creation. A thing exists either because God wants it that way or else because He is willing to let that thing be a possibility among potential outcomes. He lets us die, because that's the way He wants it ... or because He is unwilling to prohibit it. Bad things happen to good people: maybe its part of the plan or maybe He just doesn't worry about things like that.

The Church of the WYSIWYG requires no elaborate theology to explain away inconsistencies in God's creation. We'd rather think that these inconsistencies are due not to God's plan but to our limited ability to perceive that plan.

# What's The Plan, Stan?

I have become comfortable in my agnosticism. An agnostic is one who believes that the essential nature of God (or anything else, for that matter) is unknown and unknowable. God may or may not be out there. _(S)he probably is._ God may or may not have a plan. _(S)he probably did at one time._ The plan may or may not be unfolding as it should. _God only knows._

My agnostic comfort zone has expanded as result of three conclusions I have come to after years of pondering the two mysteries at the heart of all religion: What happens to us after we die? Why do bad things happen to good people? I have finally come to accept that there is no afterlife. I have also come to accept the fact that like it or not, shit happens for no apparent reason.

Francis Bacon wrote, "Men fear death as children fear the dark." All Christian theology eventually comes down to that. We are all of us, myself included, afraid to die. We live in a world where everything dies. But we are special in God's eye, so there must be something different in store for us. To satisfy that need, we came up with the idea of an afterlife.

But not an afterlife for the masses. Our Heaven was to be a meritocracy. Only the virtuous could get in. Otherwise, what would be the point of leading a virtuous life? Nope. We needed one place for the saints and that, by its own inexorable logic, meant there had to be another place for the sinners. But the price of admission has grown increasingly steep, as centuries of religious thinkers have come up with ever more restrictive interpretations of God's will and word. Christians and Muslims especially have formulated very restrictive theologies that limit heaven only to the faithful.

All of this fighting over who has the ticket to Heaven. But what if there is no Heaven? What if we just die? Whoa ... doesn't that simplify a few things. What do I need a religion for if it all ends in the grave? Talk about your Faustian bargains. How much have we bargained away in return for the mere promise of an afterlife that no one has ever really seen? We have no trouble accepting the fact that this is what happens to everything else, even to our most beloved of pets. How did we come to believe that it would be any different for us?

The problem of bad things happening to good people is especially vexatious. We can't just blame it all on the Devil. God is the Creator, and random acts of unkindness are part of that creation. It is my belief that bad things are going to happen because ... well, because that's just the way it is. They are part and parcel of the warp and weft of creation, and there is no point in screaming at God about it because clearly this is the way (S)he wanted it, assuming that we are indeed God's handiwork as opposed to a slight glitch in the Big Bang.

So, if the bad-thing deal is in fact all part of the plan, then only one of two conclusions is possible. Either God doesn't care (which even I would prefer not to accept), or God has chosen not to control the specific events of our specific life. Personally, I have no problem with that. I like to think that maybe God has bigger fish to fry, so to speak. I like to think that maybe it is up to us to work our own way through our own lives. Only if you think that way does the idea of free will begin to make sense and to be meaningful.

There you have it, the sum total of my wondering what is the nature of God's game. I can only live life as best I can, trying to make the most moral choices I can. I have no expectation of reward or punishment, and I have absolutely no clue as to what it all means. I have become comfortably numinous.

# A Twist of Fate

Some questions can't be answered. Like the time I was home on leave after my tour in Vietnam and I went to the funeral of a local boy who had been killed in action and his mother asked me why I was alive and her boy was dead.

Or maybe you have just watched your house and your neighbor's house and your whole damn town get wiped out by a tornado, and you are sitting there amidst the debris field of your life wondering why of all the places in the world that tornado had to touch down right on top of you.

This gets to the larger question of why bad things happen to good people, what Herman Melville called "the accidental malice of the universe." Another question without an answer, at least none that satisfies.

I could have told that young man's mother that there really was no reason at all why I lived and her boy died. I was just a little lucky; he was a little unlucky. Just like the guy across the street whose house was spared while his neighbor's house was reduced to a splintered rubble pile.

They will sit there, looking at each other across the street and wonder what the difference was. But on that one, God seems to have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, so we are left to fill in our own blanks. Maybe that _is_ the answer.

# The Art of Surviving Hard Times

There are two simple pleasures in life that seem immune to hard times: napping and reading a book. I am often able to combine the two during a short visit I make to the local library while on my lunch break. I usually pick something that I suspect will soon render me drowsy. Every once in a while a book will surprise me, and instead of snoozing, I will find myself caught up in a graphic novel or a coffee table book on ancient holy cities or a history of trains used by the British royalty or whatever else happens to be handy that day.

This happened last week with a book with the distinctly unexciting title of  500 Handmade Books: Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form. Surely, I thought to myself, this will have me nodding off in no time. Well, I opened the book to a random page and found myself stunned at the image in front of me: an exquisite creation by Carol Barton called _Alphabetica Synthetica_. I was hooked. After 10 minutes of intense visual pleasure, I checked the book out to bring home with me.

What was it about the book that was so engaging? Two things. First, the time and the effort and the skills needed to produce these books were evident in every aspect of each book, from binding to cover to paper. Second, the artistic vision behind each book was sufficiently distinctive to produce 500 completely unique works that extended the notion of what a book was beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

The combination of artistry and artisanship just blew me away. It reminded me of the power of art to enable one to perceive the possibilities that lie hidden in the commonplace, just waiting for someone to come along and liberate them. Equally important, I was freed from the tidal wave of bad news that seems to be the curse of the interesting times in which we live. I was able to leave my troubles behind and lose myself in a world I could never have found by myself.

The next time you hear some politician complaining about spending money on art during hard times, remind yourself that a thousand years from now, our humanity will be measured by our art. Indeed, in troubled times art is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

# All Good Amoebas go To Heaven

We die. That unavoidable fact plus the mystery of what happens after we die lies at the root of religion, starting with Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden of Eden into a world subject "to its bondage to decay."

Once we defined death as the loss of God's love, that led to the next thing, getting God's love back, which led to following all kinds of rules, which since that's a pain in the ass meant there had to be some kind of reward, which is Heaven, otherwise known as eternal life, which kind of gets us back to where we started.

All that trouble, all that grief, just because we want to live forever. Boy, this immortality thing must be pretty special if God makes us put in all that work just to get to Heaven, where we can live forever.

Well ... maybe, maybe not. God doesn't seem to want you and me to be immortal, but apparently it's no problem if you are an amoeba. These tiny single-celled creatures routinely cheat death by dividing into two new amoebas instead of dying. This is as close as any life form gets to immortality.

Doesn't seem fair, does it? But then again, maybe God has big plans for the amoeba, which has been around for a lot longer than we have. Consider the fact that the human genome has 3 billion base pairs of DNA as compared to the 670 billion base pairs in an amoeba.

It's a long life, this eternity thing, and you never know what might happen along the way if you are patient enough.

# Coming Home

The Pentagon recently announced a sad milestone. Suicides in the U.S. Army reached an all-time high in 2008, a rate of 20.2 per 100,000. When asked why the numbers keep going up, Army Secretary Pete Geren's response was: "We cannot tell you." Well, I don't have the answer either, but I can give you a couple of small pieces of the puzzle, something to think about the next time you see a veteran.

There is no such thing as a typical combat tour. Everybody does their own time, but whether you are a cook or a grunt or a supply clerk, a tour of duty in a combat zone is highly stressful. What keeps you going is the knowledge that sooner or later you will leave it all behind and go home. But once home, it doesn't take long for the returning vet to realize two things.

First, the war comes home with you. It is inside you, like a malarial parasite that flares up at unexpected moments. You jump at any sharp noise. You can't sleep soundly at night. You can't just walk into a dark room; you have to wait for your night vision. Memories of the war buzz around inside your head 24/7. And then there is all that anger bubbling up ever closer to the surface.

Second, the image of home you carried in your head while you were overseas no longer matches reality. Everybody but you seems to have moved on with their lives. Mom and dad have gotten older. The neighborhood isn't the same. Your wife got used to taking care of things by herself. Your old girl friend is seeing someone else. Your best buddy is married and can't party with you like he used to. Joe got the promotion you would have gotten.

My point here is that every veteran has lived through an experience that takes a long time to process, and it doesn't help that the coming home party may not be what they thought it would be. It is a lot to deal with. Most do, but many can't. And the military culture is still uncomfortable dealing with stress-related issues. But then so is everybody else, which is part of the problem.

We used to say that nothing is too good for the troops and that's just what they get: nothing. Well, for their sakes and our sakes, that needs to change.

# Dream On

Dreams are an enigma wrapped inside a riddle. We do not yet fully understand how dreams happen or what they mean. Hell, we don't even know why we sleep.

I dream every night, often more than once. I know that some dreams are my brain stowing away the flotsam and jetsam left floating around in my head from the events of the day. I have a couple of recurring dreams, old friends who stop by from time to time, the kind that when you hear them knocking on the door you don't answer right away in hopes that maybe they'll go away. And every once in a great while, I will have a dream that foretells something about someone.

Most of my dreams are like watching a movie with lots of action. These dreams feature events and places utterly removed from anything I have experienced but with such detail that I feel like I am seeing scenes from someone else's life playing out in my mind's eye.

All of which makes me wonder what happens when I sleep, perchance to dream. Am I looking at a play written by myself or am I using ghostwriters?

# Buddha By The Sea

My wife and I like to go down to North Carolina's Outer Banks, usually in April, before it gets too crowded. The weather last spring was pretty good, so we were able to spend time just sitting on the beach, listening to the steady roar of the waves rolling in and out, while in the distance squadrons of pelicans skimmed the surface of the water, rising and falling with the waves.

For some reason I got to thinking about Buddha. The story goes that he arrived at his final enlightenment sitting under a fig tree. I wondered if he would have seen things differently had he been sitting on a beach listening to the waves for 49 days and nights.

I can't speak for Buddha, but I know what I have learned sitting by the ocean. First, the ocean speaks of creation and continuity. All life began in water, and as long as there is an ocean there will be a place for life to develop again if need be.

Second, the ocean is eternal and unchanging, yet it is never the same. You can sit by the beach for 49 days or 49 years or 49 millennia and the waves will still roll in and out precisely on schedule, but each set of waves will be unique. Unchanging but never the same.

We get hung up wondering whether change happens by evolution or by intelligent design. What we lose sight of is that change _is_ the medium and the message.

Our world may look the same from day to day, but in reality nothing stays the same from one nanosecond to the next. Our world does not and cannot let things stay the same. It forces things to move, somewhere, anywhere. Whether that movement is what we call progress is up to us, but movement there will be. There is no going back.

# Dealt A Bad Hand

The world is replete with mysteries so commonplace that we have stopped thinking of them as mysteries. One that hits close to home for me is being left-handed.

No one knows why some of us are left-handed. One theory is that we lefties are missing a gene that forces right-handedness, leaving our handedness up for grabs. The other main theory is that stress during birth somehow leads to left-handedness. In my case, I was born with a birth defect, but there is also some family history of left-handedness, so I guess being left-handed was in the cards for me from the get-go.

Does it matter? Well, that's another open question. My brain probably doesn't work in quite the same way as a right-handed person's brain. It has to do with the division of the brain into a right and left hemisphere and that our dominant hemisphere is opposite from our dominant hand. So theoretically speaking, my right hemisphere pulls most of the weight.

Generally speaking, the left hemisphere is the analytical side, while the right hemisphere is the artistic side. Mankind started out pretty even-handed, so to speak, but as tool making kicked into high gear during the Bronze Age, right-handedness became dominant. I guess if early man had decided that cave painting was more important, we'd be mostly left-handers (and maybe a whole hell of a lot better off).

For me, being left-handed was just another way of letting me know that I was different. From where I sit as an adult, different isn't such a bad thing to be, but as a child it wasn't always easy. One thing for sure, you learned a lot about people from the way they handled otherness. You still do, I guess.

# Ghost Stories

I have had moments when I felt I was traveling through the wake of someone else's life, past or present. Sometimes it felt okay, sometimes not so okay, but always the feeling was quite real.

So what's happening here? Well, the way I look at it, we are constantly surrounded by a cloud of radio and television waves, but the only way we can hear or see them is by having a device tuned to receive them.

Similarly, our waking and sleeping brains constantly generate electromagnetic waves, but they generally remain trapped inside our heads because they are very weak. However, maybe there are times when our emotions cause us to generate an especially strong burst of brain waves. Or perhaps our long-term presence in a certain place builds up a patina of memories and feelings that persist after we are gone.

Think about it. How often have you met someone and felt an instant attraction (or revulsion)? How often have you walked into a house for the first time and immediately felt welcome (or unwelcome)? How often have you thought about someone you haven't seen in years and then, don't you know it, you see them crossing the street? How often have you had a dream that foretold an event, a dream that you dismissed as just a coincidence?

Every thought and dream we have creates brain waves. Is it not possible that occasionally they might become entangled with other brain waves — both present and past — at some unexpected moment when we let our guard down? If so, then we are each of us weaving our own ghost stories, stories waiting to be found by ... well, that's the question isn't it?

# Tangled Up In Gluons

Two things to think about. Then a question.

First, I have read that every time we shake hands with someone there is an intermingling of sub-atomic particles that goes on at the point of contact.

Second, there is a property in physics called entanglement, which posits that once two subatomic particles exchange information with each other they are aware of changes in each other no matter how far apart they are.

Question: If two people shake hands are they at some level intertwined—entangled, if you will—forever, even after their dead? For all eternity?

# Time Management

You could argue that our ability to learn from the past and to imagine future possibilities is what separates us from other living creatures. Throw in speech and writing, and it's game over. We rule.

Yet bees and ants quietly go about their business, operating pretty much in the present. Throw in a few simple rules hardwired into their brains a few million years ago, and it's game on. They persist.

Have we evolved past them or not yet caught up to them? Ask me the same question a couple of million years from now ... if we're still around.

# Alphabet Soup

Our alphabet has 26 letters, the source of countless books. Our DNA is made up of billions of paired combinations of four nucleotides, commonly referenced by their first letter: A-G or T-C.

So people and books are really no different. Both become a sum greater than its parts. Letters to words to books. Nucleotides to DNA to all living things.

Are alphabets the result of something inside us trying to express the very essence of our creation? Maybe all this time the medium was the message, only we just didn't know what to listen for.

# Dharma Bummer

Ropes are strands of hemp, flax, or wire braided together. DNA consists of two nucleotide strands coiled around each other.

To prevent fraying in a rope, the ends are often wrapped around with cording. To prevent fraying in DNA, the strands are capped with long sequences of non-functioning DNA called telomeres.

Eventually any rope frays, and so does DNA. Each replication shortens the telomeres until the cell can no longer replicate itself. This is what keeps cells from turning cancerous before we can have kids. It also keeps us from living forever.

God moves in mysterious ways.

# Of Mice And Men

Science and religion often seem at odds with each other. Each, in their own way seeks answers to the same questions. One group seeks truth in a divinely inspired book, the other in a method of inquiry shaped by fellow humans. Well, no matter where you are on this spectrum, you may find the latest brain research literally mind bending.

Scientists have discovered fetal brain cells that seem to be a fundamental unit of brain matter. These brain cells have two remarkable properties. First, they can reproduce themselves indefinitely. Second, these cells can transform themselves into any one of the three specific types of brain cells needed for the brain to function. This seems to confirm a theory that all the major types of brain cells arise from a common pool of cells that are active in the fetus.

Now here comes the truly strange stuff. To better study the nature of these brain cells, they were injected into a mouse's brain. Guess what? These human brain cells settled right in and adapted themselves to the mouse's brain! To make matters even ickier, the same thing has been done with rat brains.

What is more fundamental to our notion of being human than our brains? And now we find that human fetal brain cells are plug-and-play compatible with rat brains. Does this not suggest a common origin beyond mice and men? Does this not raise profound questions in your mind about life and its innermost structures? I haven't felt this way since the time I saw the layout for chlorophyll and hemoglobin. They are identical except that chlorophyll has an atom of magnesium at it core while hemoglobin has an iron atom at its core.

I don't know what to make of a brain that is part mouse and part human, but I do know that I have just seen a part of God I didn't know was there. Awesome, dude.

# The New Golem

Thanks to O.J. and the CSIS shows, we all know that DNA is used to solve crimes. We can do this because each person's DNA is a unique blend of four compounds called nucleotides: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The A compound always pairs with the T compound; C with G. Put them all together and you have a genome.

A-T...G-C: Four letters in two pairs that taken together can and do represent every single life form that has ever existed ... or, more importantly, that ever will exist.

The human genome consists of three billion base pairs. The blueprints for the human genome and that of many other species have been read. The DNA sequence for the human genome was completed in 2000, perhaps the single most important scientific advance in our lifetime in terms of knowledge that will literally change our lives.

Genomics is the science and practice of controlling DNA. Today, DNA researchers are on the verge of creating new life, starting at the microorganism level but ending who knows where. Expect breaking news on this sooner than you could ever imagine, and when you hear it, ponder the following.

Jewish tradition speaks of a magical creature called a golem. This was a creature that was fashioned out of clay and brought to life by reciting a specific combination of words and letters or by inscribing a specific word on its forehead.

Golems were usually created to do the heavy lifting since they were physically very strong. Inevitably it would begin well and end badly. The golem would get out of control and have to be destroyed.

Something to think about as we venture forth into our brave new genetic world.

# Beautiful Stranger

This week's recommended reading is a book entitled _The Elegant Universe,_ a review of modern physic's search for The T.O.E, the Theory of Everything. The scale on which this discussion occurs is impossible to comprehend. The latest theory centers around one-dimensional strings, each a trillion trillion times smaller than an atom. These strings vibrate in different patterns. As the author Brian Green explains it: "What appears to be different elementary particles are actually different 'notes' on a fundamental string. The universe—being composed of an enormous number of these vibrating strings—is akin to a cosmic symphony."

Today's paper had a little blurb about an event on a much larger scale—the Big Bang, which occurred about 12 billion years ago. (If you believe in the Bible as literal truth, be advised that what follows may be offensive to your world-view.) According to the current theory, that event should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. Had that been the case and had the matter and anti-matter exactly cancelled each other out, then there would have been nothing left.

Obviously that wasn't the case. The search for an answer has led scientists to the meson, one of the ever-growing group of sub-atomic particles that flow between two people shaking hands. Anyway, mesons apparently don't exactly follow this matter/anti-matter proportionality. Every kajillionth time, a little more matter is made than anti-matter. That's it. The whole enchilada. We are here because of a little glitch in the meson deal.

I read this stuff not to understand it but to get a whiff of the possibilities. In my mind, the stranger the universe gets, the more intricate its secrets become, the more beautiful it gets. And if there was indeed a creator, then he, she, or it is also beautiful. Whether it is superstrings or mesons or Orion's Belt glinting in a clear winter sky, the universe is within us and around us.

# The Hawk

This part of the country has a history of late-February, early-March snowstorms. On March 13, 1993, we had a so-called "storm of the century" that started in Florida and marched up the East Coast to Maine before petering out near Nova Scotia. When we moved out here 21 years ago, on March 1, 1978, we did so in 2 1/2 feet of snow. Yesterday, we got about 6 to 8 inches of thick heavy snow that stuck like clotted cream to the drooping branches.

When we moved here, there was nothing in our yard but a few shrubs and trees put in by the builder. Over the years, we have planted countless bushes, trees, shrubs, and perennials, most of them ending up dead, doomed by the impenetrable red shale that constitutes the soil in these parts. Eventually we learned what will grow and what won't. Our backyard showed the genius of Darwin's theory of natural selection, where the fit survives and the unfit definitely doesn't.

It is a small backyard, measuring 100 feet wide and about 40 feet deep. We have watched with interest as the mix and variety of birds and animals has grown over the last 20 years. For the first year or two we had killdeer, which like vacant lots to nest in. As the lots filled in with houses, the killdeer vacated the premises, to be replaced by finches, robins, cardinals, mockingbirds, starlings, grackles, mourning doves, snowbirds, wrens, chickadees, and the occasional stray Baltimore oriole. There is great pleasure in knowing that our trees and thick bushes provide a place for birds to live and breed and sing their songs at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Around this time of they year we also get migrating birds. Every year a flock of goldfinches stops in the backyard for an afternoon's respite. Then they will leave in a yellow cloud, swooping and dipping away to points South, although for the last couple of years we have had some stay behind to nest.

Of course, nature doesn't always keep accurate time. Like the tourists who have come to Washington to see the cherry blossoms, some birds got caught up in these late season snowstorms, their internal clocks just ever so slightly out of synch with the rest of nature. At one point yesterday, I looked out at our honey locust and saw an early flock of robins, their orange chests puffed up against the cold.

But perhaps the strangest sighting was of a bird that I saw huddled under our Japanese pine, where the drooping branches had created a dark cavern, which gave the illusion of total isolation from view. At first I thought the bird was a mourning dove, for they often can be found laying on the pine needles that carpet the area under the tree. Then I realized it was a hawk, busily devouring its catch. Red bands of flesh were stretched tight between beak and claw. I stood transfixed by a sight that I had never seen before and probably will never see again. I took a voyeur's delight in seeing something that is normally kept private, this communion between hunter and prey.

All in all, a most unusual day in a most unusual season.

# The Lamb Cake

When I was a child, Easter was always my favorite holiday for one reason—food. My mother would make bread in all shapes and sizes, from intricately braided loaves to round buns with a hard-boiled egg in the center. She would begin with a clear counter space and then begin forming a mound of flour, yeast, salt, butter, eggs, and milk. When the mound seemed to have reached some degree of proportion clear only to her inner eye, she would vigorously knead and shape the dough until, voilá, a beautifully rounded loaf emerged from beneath her fingers.

The crown jewel of these culinary treasures was the lamb cake. My mother had special cake molds in the shape of a lamb in repose. She would make a white cake batter and pour it into the bottom half of the mold. The upper half of the mold would then be put into place and the whole thing would go into the oven for baking. Once the baking process was completed, the molds would be carefully removed so as not to split the cake. Once the cake was cooled, it would be slathered with a thick layer of white frosting. Atop this frosting would be applied a layer of coconut. Finally, she would add two small raisins for eyes and a thin piece of apricot to form a smile of such serene inscrutability as found only on the Mona Lisa.

Memory is so peculiar and selective. Whole decades of my life are a blur. I can't remember what I did last weekend, but that little smile on the lamb cake remains vivid and clear in my mind's eye. Wherever it is that we keep such things tucked away, nestled among the neurons, that place remains secure from the ravages of time.

While we are on the subject of food, let's talk about dieting. My daughter recently went through a flirtation with these new protein-rich and carbohydrate poor diets. Whole shelves have mysteriously populated themselves with books trumpeting the evils of carbohydrates. It all has something to do with insulin, which is triggered by sugar from carbohydrates, and which, in a defensive reaction bred from millions of years of living on the edge of starvation, triggers the body to store fat, just in case another ice age comes along.

The problem with this diet is simple. Anything worth eating is made from carbohydrates. I can't think of a single food that I really enjoy that isn't dense-packed with carbohydrates. Pasta. Bread. Bagels. Pies. Cereal. Donuts. Yogurt. The list is endless. After a week or so of carbohydrate deprivation, we both said to hell with it. Food is too important to be left in the hands of a bunch of nutritional gurus, who, after all, were only last year singing the praises of pasta. Yes indeed, I will have my lamb cake and eat it, too.

# The Dove Family

My backyard is about 40 feet deep and 100 feet wide. You can walk from one side to the other in about 15 seconds. Yet within that small area thrives an increasingly complex web of life. The Triassic red shale that dominates the soil in this area has grudgingly given way to the roots and earthworms that nourish a panoply of plants and shrubs and trees that in turn host a lively group of insects and birds and small mammals.

As I grow more familiar with my little backyard ecosystem, I am becoming more attuned to the mundane routines that are as much a part of the animal world as our human world. Just yesterday, I looked out at a little row of vertically embedded landscape timbers that form a retaining wall. Perched on the tops of the timbers was a baby mourning dove, huddled between mom and dad. There seemed to be no particular purpose being served by this assemblage other than just chilling out on a sunny spring day. Each parent would take turns snuggling up to the baby, affectionately rubbing their beaks over the baby's wings and back.

I know the risks of anthropomorphism, but I look at those doves and see a point on a continuum of emotions that links them to me and me to them. I love my children just as they love theirs, and given that they were here a long time before humans were, should I not acknowledge perhaps a debt of gratitude for passing this love of child on to me?

# Wild Geese

Certain sounds resonate deep within us. The rustle of leaves scuttling down the street. The sound of waves lapping against the shore. The honking of geese flying overhead.

This winter the airways overhead seem busier than usual, filled with the amiable bantering of skeins of geese coming in for a landing across the street. I don't remember this many geese here at winter. But then there is a whole lot I don't remember so well these days.

The geese vex our dog, Mabel. She stands firm in _her_ backyard, challenging the geese as they violate _her_ air space with impunity. Her plaintive barks add a staccato counterpoint to the legato of the geese gently drifting down out of the sky onto the land.

What does it all mean? Another year gone by, another season passing through. We do well to take this time to pause and reflect, to listen carefully to the sounds of the earth. Who knows what you might find out?

# Wounded Grass

With spring come the pleasures of gardening and yard work. The columbines and day lilies have thrust up from the dead earth, the green shoots offering a tempting target for the ever-growing population of rabbits, who are most definitely not welcome.

Our lawn has already started growing, thanks to the fertilizer I laid down a couple of weeks ago. The mower purrs contentedly as it grazes upon the newly minted crop of grass. Here's something to think about as you cut your grass this summer. According to an article scheduled to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists have discovered that injured grass gives off volatile chemicals such as methanol, acetone, and butatone. "Wound-induced and drying-induced compounds are expected to be significant in the atmosphere." They estimate that lawn mowing adds 1.6 million tons of acetone to the atmosphere.

Injured grass? Wound-induced compounds? Am I cutting the grass or engaging in ethnic cleansing? And what about these dangerous compounds that are being emitted every time I cut my grass? Not to worry, says Ray Fall, a biochemist at the University of Colorado. "It just doesn't seem likely to me that the smell of new-mown grass is toxic." Well, I for one will breathe a little easier knowing that.

# A Weather Eye

The morning commute took place under cover of a heavy blanket of fog. Anything beyond 100 yards was swallowed up in gray. I got to thinking about Serbia and how the folks there would welcome this kind of weather because it makes bombing operations more difficult.

I remember pulling guard duty in Viet Nam and dreading a new moon. In a world with no electricity, sunset brought true darkness. A new moon left the landscape impenetrable from a distance of 3 inches out. With a full moon, you could see clearly to the tree line, lessening the odds of being caught unawares.

War heightens the senses and makes you alert to the environment. You watch where you foot lands. You hesitate for a moment before entering a dark room. You see things without having to look at them. The weather defines what is possible, adding importance to the shape and color of the clouds and the direction of the wind.

And so the people of Serbia and Kosovo take their place in an endless chain of Europeans who have learned to watch the skies for portents of how their day is likely to go. Rain. Perfect. Let's go the market. Sunny and bright. Better get ready to hunker in the bunker.

# The Goldfinch

In 1975 my father died suddenly from a heart attack. He had been playing golf, as he did nearly every weekend. A doctor who happened to be at a nearby tee rushed over to give assistance, but my father was already dead. It was Saturday, September 6, just short of his 61st birthday.

The next few days were a swirl of events as we immersed ourselves in planning for the wake and the funeral. My father had been a life-long resident of Cohasset, and we expected a big crowd at the wake, especially since my mother wanted to limit the wake to one night. Just the immediate family was enough to fill the Sons of Italy Hall. When it was all over, about 700 people had come, including my father's kindergarten teacher.

The funeral was held at St. Anthony's. My father was buried in a plain pine casket. The marker was a large stone from our back field. Beside him were my older brother Louis, who drowned as a young boy, and Maria, who died in infancy. Three simple graves that blended in with the hundreds of other graves in the cemetery, some plain like my father's, most with large granite monuments, the names and dates carved deeply in cleanly chiseled strokes.

After the funeral, the family returned to my mother's house to sit and talk and eat. This is something we have always done. People joke that Italians deal with most major events in their lives by cooking and consuming enormous amounts of food. But aside from the fact that preparing several different courses keeps everyone busy, the meal itself, which lasts for hours, surrounds you with people to share the grief and ease the burden. It was during this get-together after the funeral that a strange thing happened.

To set the stage, I must go back to something that happened almost a year before my father's death, when my wife and I and our 10-month old son were visiting for the Thanksgiving holidays.

This particular incident stemmed, I suppose, from attempts by my younger sisters to get my father to quit smoking. Cursed with a bad heart all his life, his heavy smoking created a combination that was clearly unhealthy. My sisters had pestered him into quitting several times, but he always went back to smoking. Finally, a rough compromise emerged. He could smoke as long as nobody saw him doing it. This worked out for the most part, but after dinner, when my Dad really wanted a cigarette, he would contrive some sort of excuse to leave for a few minutes so he could sneak out in the back yard and smoke.

On this particular Thanksgiving visit, rain had fallen for several days, typical New England late-fall weather. Not being aware of the arrangement concerning smoking, I was surprised when Dad suggested that he and I go outside after dinner. After a bit of cajoling, I finally figured out that there was more to this than met the eye, so I put on my jacket and walked with him to the back yard. The early evening air was gray and heavy with a thick drizzle that chilled to the bone.

Our house had at that time two back yards. The first went back about 100 feet, ending in a cultivated area where my mother raised blueberries and my father kept some strawberry beds. Behind this was an acre field bounded by a stone fence that ran around the property. When we bought the house, the back field was a tangle of brambles and weeds. My job was to clear all that out, which I did using a contraption called a sickle bar, a self-propelled cutter that had a blade like an electric hedge clipper that ran along the ground. Since the brambles were all tangled together, on a single swath I would pull the entire row behind me, forcing me to stop and disentangle the mass of thorny branches about every 10 feet. It was the first really hard work I had ever done, and I have never forgotten it.

That field, now neatly mown, was to our backs as we huddled behind a lone cedar that grew at the corner of the blueberry patch. My dad hunched over as he lit his cigarette, then waved the match in the air to extinguish it, and let it fall to the damp ground. Looking out over the blueberry bushes, he began talking about a bird he had seen just the other day.

My dad knew nature from working outdoors all of his life. He knew the names of all the local bushes and trees and wild flowers, and he had a good knowledge of birds. He started telling me about this bird he had recently seen. Judging by his interest, he must not have seen this particular bird before. He described it as small and bright yellow.

I said I didn't know for sure what it was, but I thought maybe we could look it up in our bird book, _A Field Guide to the Birds_ , by Roger Tory Peterson. When we got back inside, we quickly flipped through and found our bird right away. It was a goldfinch. I had only seen them once myself, during the spring migration, when a flock settled on a small tree in the back field of our first house. They filled the bare tree with bright yellow leaves that fluttered and chirped. After a brief rest, they swooped away, a flashing yellow cloud dipping and rising off to the east.

We studied the picture awhile and decided that, yes, it had to have been a goldfinch. When we finished, I laid the book down on the hutch beside the dining room table, figuring that was the end of that. I eventually forgot about the goldfinch and was not reminded of it again until the day of my father's funeral, during the get-together at my mother's house.

The main room of the house was a kitchen and family room, divided by the kitchen counter. Set against the counter on the family room side was a large rectangular table, made from pine, with two leaves that ran the length of it. My father had built the table years ago. He always sat at one end, in front of a window. My mother sat at the other end, and we kids would squeeze in along the long leaf.

On big occasions, we would pull the table away from the counter that divided the dining area from the kitchen so more people could sit at the table. On that day, the table was covered with large China platters, filled with layers of sliced meats and cold cuts, breads and rolls, salads and vegetables. Little dishes of pickles and black olives filled the chinks between the platters, making a sturdy mosaic of foods.

I was sitting at the dining room table, facing into the kitchen. My father's chair sat empty to my left, the window behind it. I was listening to Aunt Georgina, my mother's older sister. Like a chess master who can play many games at the same time, Aunt Georgina had the ability to track several different conversations at once, and she would interject comments into these conversations at random moments. Unfortunately, she was usually about 5 sentences behind, so her comments never quite caught up with the current train of thought.

I was trying to decipher one such comment that ranged back to something said about 5 minutes before, when Aunt Georgina and I were both startled by a splash of yellow as a bird flew up to the window, hung there beating its wings frantically for a few seconds, and then swooped away. Aunt Georgina let out a cry, pointing excitedly out the window. All the conversations stopped as everyone in the room looked over to listen as she explained what had just happened.

Birds occupy a prominent place in Italian superstitions concerning death. It is commonly believed that if a bird flies up to your window at night, it is looking for a soul to take away. A bird inside the house is very bad luck. My mother was horrified when she visited our first house and discovered our family room wallpaper featured huge birds in bright colors.

With this in mind, it is easy to imagine the babble of excited conversation that broke out, especially among the old woman, after they understood what we had seen. Aunt Georgina immediately proclaimed it a sign that Louis, God rest his soul, was in heaven and that everything was all right. There were fervid murmurs of agreement throughout the room.

Meanwhile, I quietly went first to the hutch and then to the bookcase and found the bird book. I laid it in my hand, and it opened to the last page used, as books often do. There, looking back at me, was the picture of a goldfinch that my father and I had studied together, the one that looked like the bird he had seen fluttering around his garden.

# My Monet

The promise of spring is, after all, just a promise, and sometimes promises aren't kept. Our yard bears grim witness to this truth each year, as we peer anxiously at some spot in the garden that should be filling in with a perennial but which stands ominously empty.

This year the cost has been especially high. A beloved Japanese red maple is not leafing out properly. This tree is the focal point of the whole southeast corner of the yard and its loss would leave an immense hole. A favorite tree becomes ... well, part of the landscape, and its absence is a bit of a shock that may take several seasons to overcome.

Then there are the plantings that just don't work out. After several years of pointed comments from my wife, I have finally come to agree that the smoke bush maybe wasn't my most inspired moment and maybe it is time for it to go. Perhaps a nice pair of holly trees would do nicely, since they do so well in other parts of the yard.

So this afternoon my grandson and I took the smoke bush down, and after a couple of hours of lopping and sawing, there was an empty plot of ground available for let. Weary from my labors, I moved around to the front yard and plopped down on the grass. As I stared vacantly upward, I noticed the leaves of the pear tree waffling back and forth in the afternoon breeze. When certain leaves were turned just so, the leaf surface was white from the reflected light of the sun. Other nearby leaves had varying hues of green, while at the denser center of the tree, the leaves were nearly black.

It brought to mind a letter written by Georges Clemenceau to Claude Monet in which Clemenceau wrote "When I look at a tree, I see only a tree, but you, you look through half-closed eyes and think 'How many shades of how many colors are there within the nuances of light of this simple tree trunk.' Then you set about breaking down those values in order to rebuild and develop the ultimate harmony of the whole--and all for us."

For a few minutes, I looked at a tree and saw the interplay of colors and the "nuances of light", and like Clemenceau, was left in awe of a talent that could capture forever those evanescent flashings of the leaf in the wind with daubings of paint on a canvas.

# Super-Size Me!

I was putting away the dishes the other day and was visited by one of those rare moments of epiphany wherein one of the more nettlesome aspects of contemporary American society was brought home to me through the unlikely vehicle of a plastic cup. Obviously this was no ordinary plastic cup. This was one of those mega-jumbo cups that holds enough Coke to supply the daily needs of a small country.

When was it decreed that all portions must be of a gargantuan size? I can remember a day not that long ago (okay, so maybe it was 20, 30 years ago) when everything came in much smaller portions. A candy bar could fit in the palm of your hand. A bottle of Coke was half the size it is now. A sandwich ordered in a diner was not filled with a two-inch layer of tuna or chicken salad surrounded by thick bread that could not be encompassed from top to bottom in a single bite. Today's sandwich must be eaten in stages, the first bite taking the bottom crust and half of the filling, the next bite taking the top crust and the remaining filler. What used to be a simple salad is now served in a bowl that could hold the Olympic flame.

And it is not like we were unhappy with our smaller portions. We expected less, and were content with what we got. Now we get more, but it's hard to say if we are any happier for it. Look around. See all those overweight Americans? Ever wonder how they got that way? Part of the answer has to lie in the ever-growing size of the portions we are forced to accept when we buy snack foods or order food in a restaurant. Let's be honest. Not too many of us are going to turn away from food that is sitting right there in front of us. My wife and I may share a single meal, but this is not a practice that most restaurants find endearing. So we eat more than we need and, in many cases, more than we want.

Why has this happened? Two reasons, I suspect. It probably began as part of the competitive process. This candy bar maker comes out with a bigger-sized product so the others follow suit. Of course, the price goes up. That was when some genius discovered that the price increase didn't have to bear any relation to the cost of the extra product being added. So we get more, but we pay disproportionately more for that extra bite of chocolate. Over time the large became extra-large which has in turn evolved into super-sized, and we end up paying more for a product we don't really want that much of but which we have to take all of to get the part we _do_ want.

Fortunately, I have noticed a new trend. The small-bite-sized candies, like the ones you get to pass out at Halloween ... well, they are getting bigger. I figure that in another year or so, the bite-sized candy will be about as big as the candy bar that I remember from when I was a kid. Of course, I won't be able to buy it for a nickel, but then a nickel isn't what it used to be either. As for the restaurants, my wife and I order a lot of take out, but we only order one meal and maybe an extra side dish or salad. The service is a lot faster, there is no tipping, and the portions work out just about right for two smaller-scale appetites. Adapt or die, so they say.

# Joining the Club

Last week, I spent a couple of hours at the Museum of Natural History. My daughter had brought my grandson, along with a couple of her friends, into town to see the dinosaurs. The exhibits had been completely revamped since the last time I had been there, so it was all new to me as well.

We wandered in and out of exhibits, traveling through thousands of years with each turning of a corner. We were in the Neanderthal area, studying bone pits and burials, when I turned suddenly to see where my daughter had gotten to and stared straight into the face of an old Oriental gentleman walking past me, his black eyes intently focused on something or someone behind me. His face was a melting pot of Mongolian and Chinese features, golden skin drawn very tightly over high cheekbones. It immediately struck me that his face was a living replica of the Neanderthalian figures crouched around the burial pit just behind me.

This same feeling came over me once before, walking along and suddenly looking up into a visage straight from the middle ages. The broad peasant face, with thick lips, wide cheekbones, and a mischievous alertness in the eyes, all echoed precisely my recollection of those paintings of medieval feast days where everyone is drinking and dancing in the village square. My man would be swinging a thick-hipped girl high into the air, causing her heavy aproned skirt to flare away, revealing a sturdy calf. And here he was before me, wearing a suit and clutching a briefcase, striding purposefully down L Street, far removed in time and space from his ancestors' peasant Bacchanals.

One of the pleasures of America is this great melting pot of people that we see each day. I overheard someone talking the other day about how the Hispanics had just about taken over North Carolina in the last several years. Probably what they said about my Italian grandparents when they arrived in our small New England town ... not good enough to join the country club but good enough to build the beautiful stone walls that continue to line Jerusalem Avenue nearly a century later.

Some people fear these newcomers, worried perhaps that they will steal their jobs or marry their daughters. I see each new group of immigrants as a source of strength, an invaluable addition to our country's pool of talent and culture. As America gets browner, I remember that it wasn't so long ago that my parents and grandparents were discriminated against and made fun of because they talked funny. Perhaps that is the inevitable initiation that must be gotten through in order to join that great country club we call America. Not perfect, but still better than most other places you'd care to call home.

# The Eclipse

Back some time in the early 70's—probably 1970 or 1971 (after Vietnam, before marriage)—I went down to Virginia Beach, where a friend of mine lived, to watch a total eclipse of the sun. Virginia Beach was in the path of totality, and I thought, what the hell, that might be cool, so I jumped on my motorcycle and was there in about 4 hours.

The day of the eclipse, we went outside and waited, clutching little strips of exposed 35mm film. None of us had ever been through a total eclipse, so we didn't really know what to expect. The process begins very gradually. At first you wouldn't even notice anything happening. But at some point you realize that it is a little less bright, and when you look at the sun you can see the shadow of the moon beginning its slow movement across the sun's face.

Nothing much seems to happen and then all of a sudden the shadow has obscured a significant portion of the sun and now it starts to get a little spooky. The pace quickens and an unnatural twilight settles in. It is about then that the dogs begin to howl. (Yes, they really do howl.) Finally, there is that last second or two before totality and there is just one incredibly bright point of light and then ... _boom_ ... it is pitch dark. Lights out.

The most startling effect is the immediate and rapid drop of the temperature. I don't care who you are, you will have this irrational fear about what would happen if the moon somehow got stuck, didn't keep moving, that maybe this _is_ the end of the world and we will all be dead, frozen solid, in a week. Meanwhile the dogs are still howling, now joined by roosters who begin crowing when the moon finally does shift enough to let a streak of daylight squeeze out the other side. No wonder the Aztecs used to run and hide in the forests when an eclipse rolled around.

In that moment of total darkness, when your skin feels the brush of swiftly cooling air and the reptilian part of your brain grows uneasy, you can understand how people would give total allegiance to anyone who could explain such things, who could predict such things, who offered hope that such things could be controlled. A man who could tell you when such an extraordinary event would occur, a man who could build a temple in such a cunning fashion that exactly on the solstices and equinoxes the shadow of the sun would fall at a precisely marked point, such men were ... magicians.

Magic was man's first attempt to understand and control the world we were born into. In time, magic gave birth to a pair of warring siblings: religion and science. Magic faded away as the doubt and fears of older times were replaced by the certitude of the religious fanatic and the quiet confidence of the scientist slowly picking apart and putting back together the universe, atom by atom.

But, as you stand there in that moment of totality, you will wonder, my friend, if perhaps we weren't a bit hasty in discarding our ties to magic. You will wonder what we would do if at some future moment of darkness all of our protective layering of technology was to be stripped away for more than just a minute or two. And you might then begin to regret, perhaps, what was lost when we turned away so completely from older forms of understanding, what Jung was talking about when he wrote:

"No voices now speak to man from stones, plants and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with it the profound emotional energy that this connection supplied."

# Like Clockwork

I stepped out my front door this morning and, as is my custom, looked upward to take one last look at the waning night sky. Sitting perched in the eastern sky was a beautiful crescent moon, what the _Old Farmer's Almanac_ would call a gibbous waxing moon. A small planet hung underneath the moon, a single bright diamond suspended on an invisible chain of moonbeams.

I like to look up at a night sky. I feel connected with the ancients, who surely spent much of their time gazing upward at the winkling star dots, perhaps tracking the progress of Orion's Belt as it worked its way from fall to spring. So many of our rituals are tied to this movement of the stars and planets across the night sky, the lengthening of the sun's shadow until it falls precisely on a carved niche in a wall, signaling the beginning or ending of yet another season. From such ancient rituals did science emerge, heir to the magicians and high priests who first grasped the wheel of time.

The cobalt sky, unblemished by any cloud or haze, augured another dry day. This summer has been one of the driest on record. In fact, the last several seasons have been unusually dry. The prolonged drought has prompted the Governor of Maryland to implement mandatory measures to reduce the consumption of water. The two main measures that affect homeowners are the bans on washing cars and on watering lawns.

The ban on washing cars will wreak havoc on the street where I live. I have three neighbors who wash their cars every weekend. Early in the day, before it gets too hot, the garage door openers will grind into action, and out they will come, buckets and wash clothes and sponges at the ready. The hose is activated and soon the car or truck or sports ute is covered with a frothy layer of suds which are then washed away, shearing off the highly waxed and polished surface of the hood, gathering into rivulets that stream down the driveway into the gutter. From there, the sudsy discharge slowly winds its way down the slight grade to the storm drain at the corner. A wipe of the towel finishes the job. The sun bounces off immaculate metal surfaces in spiky slants that hurt the eyes.

Every weekend. The same thing. Like clockwork. What will they do this weekend now that their ritual cleansing has been banned by a ukase from the Governor? Will they defy the Governor's writ and wash their cars anyway. And if they do, will they get ratted out, as has already happened in several instances of illicit lawn watering? Or, will they accept the mandate of heaven and find other ways to fill their Saturday morning. Alas, I will never know, for I will be in my house engaging in my own inviolate Saturday morning ritual, the weekly quote acrostic.

# Clue Tiles

Toynbee Ideas in Kubrick's 2001:

Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter

This message and others like it can be found on street corners in D.C. and in several cities up and down the East Coast. They have been there for years, and no one knows how or why they were put there. They are rather like the monolith in the Kubrick's movie. You know it might be something important, but the purpose is unknown, at least for now.

Arnold Toynbee was a renegade pantheist who believed that monotheism was the root of all evil. Turns out that the idea of monotheism originated with a fellow named Zoroaster. His name is more familiar to us as the title of the famous opening theme to 2001: Thus Spoke Zoroaster. How this all adds up to resurrecting the dead on Planet Jupiter I have no idea. And yet, Kubrick must have seen something.

Who knew or cared enough about these matters to invest so much energy into this street writing enterprise? As a mystery, this ranks right up there along with the fellow who accosted Dan Rather on a street in mid-town Manhattan, screaming at him, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

Perhaps it's the street person I walked past a few weeks ago. He was crouched in front of a bench, hunched over a loose-leaf notebook that was packed with dense forests of words and drawings. The knapsack on the ground beside him bulged with other notebooks, heavily thumbed on the corners.

I sit here and squeeze words out like drops of blood from a pricked thumb, and this guy fills notebook after notebook. I wonder if anyone will ever read what he writes? Will anyone ever read this? What he knows and what I am still learning is that the writing of it is what matters.

# Clouds

It is twilight. I'm in the car heading for a last minute grocery run. The sky is filled with purple mesas, vast ranges of them hurtling over the mountains, rushing away from the setting sun. The cold air coming in from the north has whisked the clouds into strata of purple and gold and gray, their tops cut flat by the wind shear.

I have this theory about clouds, that they are the remnants of an ancient race of magicians. At some point these magicians became embroiled in a war fought in the twilight of their age, the dawn of ours. They lost. At the moment of their final defeat they transformed themselves into a single consciousness that spread itself throughout the world as ... clouds.

They watched over mankind as it spread rapidly over the earth like the shadow of a cloud flowing down the slope of a mountain. They still watch over us while we play the child's game of looking for shapes hidden in the clouds, never guessing that those hidden forms are not there by chance.

# Goose Bumps

The moon hangs high in the dusky sky, a thin curl of lemon peel in a cosmic cocktail. Below the moon, a distant jetliner gouges a bright orange scratch as it cuts across the sunset, following the line of the mountains north. Later, I go out to put the trash on the curb. A skein of geese dopplers by, right over my head, gliding serenely through the cooling night air.

I think back to an evening some years ago, a little deeper into autumn. The moon was full and very high in the eastern sky, surrounded by a mottle of gray and purple clouds made gauzy by the moon's light. As I walked back towards the front door, I heard a very soft honking, just barely loud enough to register in the ancient folds of the brain that are always on alert, listening patiently for a twig to snap. I looked instinctively towards the moon and saw a long winding gaggle, there must have been hundreds of geese, moving in and out of the light and clouds, way up high on a great circle route to their winter grounds.

The two memories touch each other in passing, and unbidden the inner jukebox plays the opening chords of Neil Young's great song, _Helpless_ :

There is a town in north Ontario,

With dream comfort memory to spare

It's _Déjà vu_ , all over again.

# Hide and Seek

After years of feeding birds, there is still much I do not understand about the whys and wherefores of their appearances at our feeder. Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day to you and me, presumably just another day in Margaritaville for the birds, our little feeder was packed all day with an astonishing variety of birds.

For the most part, we only see purple finches. Yesterday, they could barely find room to perch. Among those competing for space on the feeder were house sparrows, tiny flitting little Carolina chickadees that seemed to materialize as if coming out of some warp drive inches from the feeder, Carolina wrens looking pert with their sharply up-turned tails, a gold finch, a female cardinal, an odd finch-like bird with an orange chest, and most incongruously, a pair of blue jays, clearly way too big for our small hanging feeder.

When not fighting for space on the feeder, the birds would all perch amicably together on our locust tree, little round balls of feathers adorning the otherwise bare tree limbs. A pair of squirrels raced through the garden like two kids playing tag. Snowbirds, never seen any other time of the year, scurried around the Japanese maple scavenging the soil for seeds.

Today ... nothing. Not a single bird. Nothing has changed, just the day. It was almost as if they had come on that special day just to ... well, I guess you know what I mean.

For some folks, belief in a personal God has come easily. I have yet to be persuaded, not by any sermon heard in a church or lesson read in a book. What may finally tip the balance for me are the little discontinuities that seem impossible to figure out. One day—a special day for me and my family—the feeder is full of birds celebrating together the bounty of sunflower seeds offered to them. The next day, business a usual.

It is in those little events that I find it possible to consider a caring presence that might actually be thinking of me. My God loves to play hide and seek. I see His presence only in fleeting glances, like a movement in the corner of your eye that when you turn to look there is nothing there. Or footprints tracked across snow that slowly blur into the pervasive whiteness of the landscape as they are filled in by new fallen snow.

# An Immensity of Design

I walked out this morning at about 5:30 a.m. Orion's Belt was working its way across the southern sky. Turning around, I quickly found the Big Dipper and let my eye follow its pointer to the North Star.

For some reason I got to thinking about the monkey and the typewriter. The idea is that if you give the monkey enough time, sooner or later it will replicate everything that had ever been written or that ever would be written.

I thought again about the billions of stars out there in the universe and the patterns they form in our night sky, some so strikingly familiar we give them names. Ursa Minor. Orion. The Seven Sisters. The Big Dipper. What if in those endless permutations of stars there by chance appears a scrap of information coded in some sort of Braille for the Gods?

The Big Dipper just happens to match perfectly one of the archetypal shapes of mankind, the gourd ladle. It just happens to point precisely to a star that sits at true north. Earth just happens to be at precisely the right angle to see this alignment.

This is not something you can prove. But whenever I walk out in the early morning and look up at the night sky I _feel_ the presence of an immensity of design. Maybe the message isn't for me, but that doesn't mean I can't eavesdrop.

# Winter Comes

The cold wind blows in over the mountains. Leaves scuttle down the street like rats deserting a sinking ship. The setting sun reaches the line that divides earth from sky and back lights the topmost row of bare trees, giving them the look of a giant comb flowing along the back of the ridge. To the south, a fiery red sky beckons to the geese honking their way to warmer climes.

Winter is coming.

# Catalog Day

Ancient man marked the passage of the seasons on the equinoxes and the solstices. These were important days for societies rooted in agriculture. It guided the planting and harvesting of the crops. It is no coincidence that all of the traditional religious holidays cluster around one of those events.

In the modern era, we have evolved to the point where there are other things more worthy of note than when to plant the corn. Our seasons reflect more contemporary concerns.

November 1 marks the onset of one of these new seasons, the "Holiday Buying Season." From this day forward, let November 1 be known as "Catalog Day," for on this day begins the annual onslaught of catalogs that will overload our mailboxes from now until Christmas.

The next week or two will see a dramatic upsurge in the volume of catalogs shipped. Land's End and L.L. Bean and Lilian Vernon will all be waiting for you when you get home. Between now and New Year's, the average middle class homeowner will receive dozens of catalogs, many from the same company. Land's End must have a catalog for every conceivable demographic.

And even that doesn't tell the whole story. Anyone who recycles newspapers has learned to hate the next couple of months. In our area, we have to separate the newsprint from the glossy ads that come stuffed between the sections. (The fellow who invented the little wrapper that encircles the funny pages ought to get his own circle in Hell.)

For most of the year, this is a simple task. But from now until the end of the year, the volume of ads will quadruple. This means it takes longer to sort the recyclables into their respective piles. Those of us with chronic lower back pain face an increased risk of injury. All that extra work, and most of the time the ads aren't even read.

That's okay, I guess, because if there is one thing that defines the "Holiday Buying Season" it is the wasted gesture. We pore through catalogs we never wanted, we buy useless gifts for people we don't even talk to half the time, and then we all immediately exchange whatever it is we got for something we really wanted. Another cycle is complete.

# Fathers and Sons

Today is my son's birthday. Hard to believe he is turning 25. Although my son moved out of the house several years ago, reminders of him are everywhere, mostly in the form of stuff he left behind. This thing of being a permanent temporary warehouse is a part of parenting that doesn't get mentioned often enough. In some ways it is good because everywhere I go in the house I see bits and pieces of my kids, but there are days when I wish there weren't quite so many bits and pieces, especially in the garage and basement.

But not everything lies around gathering dust. My grandson puts what toys of my son that he can find to good use. Right now we are big on blocks. When my kids were his age, I made them each a set of pine blocks, now worn smooth by years of rubbing against each other in the box I keep them in. They are still to be found in the basement, each block marked with the initial of one or the other of my kids.

The other day I came home from work and picked up my grandson, who was tired and complained of a headache from listening to the other kids screaming in the gym. After ministering to him with tea and cinnamon toast, his spirits were noticeably improved, but I thought some quiet play might be in order. So off we went the basement to build ourselves a castle.

He carefully guided me thorough the intricacies of working with blocks, cautioning me to provide plenty of detail. I was at once reminded of my son, a gifted artist who sees the world in a level of detail that eludes me. Every once in a while we would stop and admire our handiwork. After a while, we had exhausted our supply of regular blocks so we added some alphabet blocks, useful for building walls with special secret codes.

Eventually we had to go upstairs to eat dinner, but we left our castle standing. Maybe next week we will work on more detail, or perhaps we will just tear the whole thing down and start all over again. Meanwhile Christmas is near, and I'm thinking maybe a new set of blocks would make a nice present under the tree for my grandson.

Happy birthday, son. See you in a couple of weeks. I may have a little job for you, some light carpentry.

# The Nutcracker

One of the pleasures of the season is cracking nuts. For the Thanksgiving holiday, I brought home a mixed selection, consisting of walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, and Brazil nuts.

My grandson grew quickly infatuated with the nutcracker and had soon laid waste to most of the walnuts, which were pretty easy pickings. The hazelnuts proved to be more of a challenge. His little hands would place a hazelnut in the jaws of the nutcracker and then he would squeeze as hard as he could on the handles of the nutcracker. When the shell finally gave way, it did so with a sudden snap, launching bits of shell in every direction with the explosive force of shrapnel from a grenade.

What fun we had, just he and I. Memories like this a grandparent buries deep away. I thought of the squirrels I saw running playfully after each other in our garden the other day. Pals.

# Mouse Traps

Autumn is the season of the mouse. The first bitter night sends them scurrying for warmth. Taking advantage of the tiniest of gaps in my defenses, a few hardy mice always manage to penetrate into the inner sanctum of my home.

Using the pipes as a highway, they soon make their way into the kitchen. Twice now they have reached the holy of holies, our pantry. Their presence is soon apparent in the litterings of tiny dark mouse droppings and bright bits of shredded packaging strewn all over the shelves like confetti left over from a ticker tape parade.

Our latest arrival came a day or so after Thanksgiving. Now I am generally a peaceable man, but a mouse in the house is a violation of the natural order that unfortunately has only one sure remedy. We are talking body count here.

For several days, the mouse and I were locked in battle, my Victor traps pitted against the mouse's cunning wiles and lightning swift reflexes. After three days, the mouse was clearly ahead of the game, and I was out a fair amount of cheese and peanut butter.

My grandson finally showed me a way out of the impasse. Instead of the usual Victor traps, he suggested, why not try these newfangled glue traps? Well, I thought to myself, what does a 6-year old know about trapping mice?

Quite a lot, apparently. We got home, and I opened the pantry door to get something, and there was the mouse, perched atop an oatmeal box, right at eye level. He sat there unmoving, his black beady eyes seeming to look right through me.

It was at that moment that I steeled myself and deployed the new ordinance. Within five minutes it was game, set, match. I must confess to a little queasiness as I picked up the trap and saw the mouse's tail twitching out the end of the box. Fortunately it was trash night and the whole affair was quickly consigned to the ash heap of history on our curbside.

My grandson and I spent the rest of the evening regaling the women folk with tales of our victory over the dreaded mouse invader. The hot chocolate flowed like water. All in all, a glorious chapter in the annals of man against the dark forces of nature.

# The Wind

Some sounds soothe. Water lapping against the shore or plinking over pebbles in a brook. Brain waves instinctively fall in synch with these rhythmic repetitions, and we relax.

Wind is not like that. It rises and falls in unpredictable ululations that disquiet rather than calm. The roar of the wind merges seamlessly into the howling of wolves carried across some long forgotten steppe, the memory of which remains in the deepest folds of our brain.

Last night the wind blew in from the west, rattling our windows as it sped on past, taunting us with its howls. "I could get in you know. Don't think that little bit of glass would keep me out if I decided to cut loose. I am the big bad wolf, and I really can blow your house down."

I don't like the wind. It makes me uneasy. My sleep is disturbed by its mad witches' ravings.

Last night's wind brought with it several more inches of snow. For a while it looked as if we would have no snow at all this winter season. Now it comes at us in waves, first from the Ohio Valley, then a coastal storm turned unexpectedly to landward.

Predicting weather remains a difficult occupation. In a world of fewer and fewer mysteries, this is somehow reassuring. Man prides himself on solving problems. Yet a part of us yearns for mysteries that can't be solved, as if this might be some sort of convoluted proof that there are powers beyond our ken.

Do we believe in magic? Do we believe in a world where meaning is still hidden in the fold of a rose's petals? Or in the soft death of a winter's snow? I am still looking, and that says something, doesn't it?

# The Lot

Trees are a natural haven for birds and children. The dense canopy of leaves provides shelter for birds and the prospect of a hidden world for children. The crook where limb meets trunk is made for a small foot to wedge itself in for that thrust upward into the dark tangle of branches and twigs.

My grandson is at that age where he wants to climb everything he can get hands and feet around. The small dogwood has already been conquered. Next I suppose will be the bigger pear trees, at least until his grandmother gets wind of things.

Growing up, I lived across the street from a vacant lot ... a small plateau with a gentle slope on our side, except for an area where there was a small ledge, occupied by a very old lilac bush. At the other end of the plateau, there was a fairly sharp drop overlooking a small plot owned by the Henry's, who lived on the other side of the street.

Standing at their end of the plateau, you could see the harbor and the yacht club where Tiger Taylor was when his boat engine blew up. I remember seeing him walk unsteadily up the hill to our house, his face smudged with black streaks of burnt engine oil, his hair flying in all directions, sneakers flapping around his feet, shirt torn into shreds, his eyes staring off into the distance.

The level area on top was marked by the remains of a stone foundation and several very old pine trees. Now, to climb an oak or maple tree is one thing. Tackling a pine tree is quite another. It is almost impossible to do anything but scale the trunk, bristling with small sharp little sticks and needles that poked me in the face, and smeared with white streaks of dried sap that would get all over my clothes, much to my mother's unending dismay.

My favorite perch was on the small ledge, hidden behind the lilac bush. In the spring the scent from the blooms filled the air with its sweet perfume. On the near side slope, we would play cowboys and Indians, rolling down the hill in exaggerated twitches and tumblings, doing our best imitations of the "real" cowboys we watched on the Saturday morning Westerns.

This was during the first heyday of the Western. Hopalong Cassidy. Roy Rogers. Lash Larue. Gene Autry. Unlike today's more complicated world, we all had our cap guns, and we would begin each weekend by strapping on our holsters and making for the great expanse of prairie that beckoned to us from across the street.

I remember the first time I drove past the old house as an adult. I was shocked at how small the lot across the street was. My hundred-acre wood was more like a hundred yards. The difference between then and later was the capacity for my imagination to expand that little plot into a universe big enough to hold all of my dreams.

Which eroded the most over the years, my imagination or my dreams? Or both? Maybe that's why I stick close to my grandson, hoping a little of his might rub off on me, giving the illusion of putting off childhood's end for just a little while longer.

# Super Tuesday

Standing by the bank of our local creek, it comes to me that the water spirit is a collector. It gathers up our debris and carries it to the sea for a final burial. Gliding along the creek's glassy surface is a small flotilla of flotsam and jetsam -- sticks and branches and petals fallen from the trees that overhang the banks, soggy pieces of bread and Cheezits flung by excited children at the imperturbable mallards, a sizzle of tiny insects dancing out their brief lives on the water's surface.

Ripples on still water. They form a bull's-eye where just before there had been a fly that dawdled overly long, enticing one of the small carp that cruised quietly below the water's surface to loom quietly up from the bottom and strike with that swift efficiency that marks the predator. The fish, hungry after a long winter, are kept busy by this afternoon's hatching, their presence marked only by a sudden splash of gold against the dull green of the water.

Today was Super Tuesday, the pivotal point in this season's presidential campaign. Due to the voting, the schools were closed, and I was left in charge of my grandson for the day. We decided to take advantage of the early spring weather, so we packed a picnic lunch—turkey and cheese sandwiches, tortilla chips, and Oreo cookies, a Sprite to wash it all down—and went to the big park that cuts though the center of our small city.

The place was jammed with strollers and joggers and inline skaters and oversized boys on undersized bikes and giggling gaggles of teenagers all vying for territory on the paved path that winds its way alongside the creek. Small children run back and forth between the playground and the banks of the creek.

Like all those other kids, my grandson was drawn to the creekside, first by the ducks and then by the prospect of catching a real fish. He flayed at the water with a dead reed, hoping to somehow draw one of those fish close enough to ... well, that part of the plan was still a bit vague.

I stood there watching over him, making tentative feints whenever he looked like he might be getting too close to the water's edge for my comfort, but mostly just leaving him alone to explore the wonderful little world that lay before his eyes as he crouched at water's edge, staring intently through the water. A breeze came up and the surface of the creek exploded in hundreds of tiny flashes of light that reflected from the tips of tiny wavelets pushed by the wind as it passed over the water's surface.

Finally it was time to go. We walked across the iron bridge that swayed ominously with each foot fall, stopping only long enough to drop a stick over the side to watch how far it would float in the current. Then up the long steps to the car, a last minute side trip to the Snow White Grille for an _aprés_ park ice cream, where we sat on stools at the counter, the old fashioned kind that you could spin around on, and then home at last.

# Hiding In Plain Sight

By the front door to our house there is a Nelly Stevens holly. This year a family of robins have decided to build a nest there. Robins go about this business with the cunning of a second story burglar. First, our little guy hops around the backyard gathering an improbably large load of dried plant stems and other vegetative debris. By the time the robin is done it looks like my grandson with a full load of spaghetti hanging from his mouth.

Then the robin heads towards the nest. Here's where they get cute. They never fly directly to the nest. Oh no. That might give things away to the predator birds -- blue jays, crows, grackles -- just waiting for a succulent feast of freshly hatched egg, leaving only a pale blue shell split in half on your front lawn.

So our little robin hops first to one tree, then to another in an ever-tightening circle. At each stop he pauses and tries to look nonchalant, just standing on a corner whistling a tune.

"Those twigs in my mouth?" he seems to say, "Oh those aren't anything. I'm just hanging around, with no particular place to go." Finally, after several false stops, he will dart quickly into the tree to deposit his load.

Here's the problem. Invariably, a robin will build its nest in a location that is hidden on three sides and totally exposed on the fourth side. So he's thinking he's got it made, when in reality his nest is there for all the world to see. That explains the empty shells.

No matter. Soon there will be eggs, and with a little luck some will hatch. And the best part is I have a front row seat from my living room window.

# Magnum Force

Spent a few hours yesterday watching the Magnum Marathon. I know what you're thinking. What a dumb way to spend an afternoon.

Well, first of all, the weather was awful all weekend so there wasn't anything to do outside. Second of all, what better way to spend a rainy afternoon than to vicariously visit Hawaii? So my son and I settled in with Tom and Rick and T.C. and Higgy-baby. The shows we saw all dealt with Vietnam related episodes, probably in deference to Memorial Day.

Magnum PI was among the earliest—if not the earliest—mainstream television series to incorporate the Vietnam War and its veterans into its ongoing story line. In retrospect, considering when these shows were made, which was well before Vietnam was cool, the writers of the series had a clear sense of the issues that would come to dominate the postwar debates over Vietnam and its veterans.

The Vietnam veterans on Magnum PI had acted with honor as individuals, but they were troubled by the seeming futility of the outcome and by the collective actions of their country. Not so bad for a dumb detective show.

Besides, who needs an excuse to settle back and enjoy the company of old friends?

# Living in the City Makes You Hard

Yesterday, coming out of the subway, I saw a young girl standing at the bottom of the escalator, leaning against the wall. Just standing there, a small bag at her feet, a square patch made of what appeared to be duct tape on her left cheek. I should have gone over and asked her if she was all right ... if she was hungry. Instead, I walked on.

This morning, at a corner near my office, I saw a tiny old woman hunched under the weight of a large knapsack, pulling one of these suitcases with the little wheels across the street. A quick glance you might think she was an early tourist. I knew better. I wondered what fate in life had brought her to this. I walked on.

Everyday, going to the subway I pass the same men on the same corner shaking the same styrofoam cups. I pass a woman dressed in a neat black business suit, standing against the wall, holding the telltale cup. I pass men hunched into corners between buildings. I walk on.

Living in the city makes you hard.

# Fireflies

Nothing evokes the magic of a summer evening like fireflies. On this summer's eve, my backyard twinkles with tiny constellations of lazily drifting stars. My grandson chases after a slowly moving firefly that somehow manages to stay just beyond reach until he manages a perfect coincidence of timing and motion and catches it. He runs excitedly over to show us.

His carefully cupped hands glow intermittently with a phosphorescent green. The firefly makes no attempt to escape, perhaps somehow knowing that we mean it no harm.

I once many years ago knew of a man who had devoted his entire scientific career to trying to find the fuel that fired the firefly's glow. If he succeeded, the secret probably lies trapped in the tightly cupped hands of Pentagon security.

No matter. The magic is in the pure enjoyment of the effect, not the cause. My grandson eventually grows tired of chasing through the garden. The fireflies eventually drift away to other gardens and fields, or perhaps they too just tire of the chase. Darkness rings down its curtain on the stage, drawing another summer's eve to a close.

# Instinct Awry

We are brought up to believe in the unerring accuracy of nature's internal compass, what we call instinct. Everything from the architecture of a bee's hive to the flight path of migrating geese is dictated by instinct. It is the underlying principle that brings order to the natural world. So it is more than a little disconcerting when instinct goes awry.

Outside our kitchen window is a small hanging bird feeder that rests on an arm attached to the side of our house. For the last two days a small female goldfinch has persisted in flying from the perch straight into our kitchen window. Hour after hour, she flutters against our window.

What it is that her eyes alone see is a mystery. Clearly, something in this bird has gone haywire and it has become obsessed with our window and whatever it sees beyond it. Beyond that there is a more general uneasiness, as if we are witnessing a strange form of mental illness, something we don't usually associate with the animal world.

I just wish it would go away.

PostScript: The little goldfinch banged away at our window all day Saturday and Sunday. Finally, my wife undertook defensive measures that seem to have worked. Oh, by the way, on the day the goldfinch appeared, a member of our immediate family was seriously injured in a fall and ended up hospitalized. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

# Stumped

In gardening, yesterday's hope often becomes today's disappointment. This was the situation that confronted me as I studied the remnants of an old lilac bush that had lost out to the spruce tree in our plans to thin out the plantings in our side yard. I had already spent a couple of hours clearing away the tangle of the older limbs and the thin whippets of new growth. That left only the stump.

But those roots so tenderly protected at planting had grown into tough and wily foes, weaving a dense plait among the soil and rocks. After a half hour or so of poking and prodding and slashing at the roots under a cloudless Indian summer sky, the stump shows no intention of going anywhere.

Another half hour of slash and rest, chop and rest, dig and rest. Arms and back grow weary. The sun moves from behind the house, taking the shade with it. The stump seems to draw renewed determination from the bright glare of the afternoon sun.

Gnats swirl around my eyes that itch from grit carried down the slope of my forehead by swiftly gathering rivulets of sweat. At last, there is the slightest quiver when shovel strikes root. Heartened, I continue my assault on the root, each jab of the shovel tearing through yet another outer ring of roots, growing ever closer to the central mass. Finally, with the help of a neighbor, the root ball is dislodged. It takes two of us to drag it from the hole.

Standing there, resting on my shovel, gazing absently at the now deposed root, I inventory the aches and pains and try to brush them aside in the way that middle-aged men do in order to continue to believe that they can still work as hard as they did 30 years ago. But deep down I worry that I have spent too much time sitting at a desk pushing a mouse around. I wonder if I could ever be as strong again as I was even 5 years ago.

Another autumn of doubts.

# Nature's Revenge

While we slumbered fitfully through a long winter's night, snow tumbled from out of the sky. By morning, the storm had passed, leaving in its wake a robin's egg, clear except for the last few high-flying cirrus clouds that had swept the snow further east. The branches of our pine trees drooped gracefully to the ground under the weight of large clots of creamy snow.

The weak winter sun, perched low in the southern horizon, labored to extend its reach over a landscape that had lost its edges. The cold air condensed the sunlight into sheets of gold leaf that came to rest atop snow covered branches, transforming the trees and bushes into glistening cathedrals, with the wind adding a chorus to complete the winter paean.

Turning to the north, where the long shadows of the house would keep the snow on the ground for weeks to come, a far less inviting vista greeted us: the driveway. Few stronger territorial imperatives exist among suburban-dwelling males than that which decrees that one's driveway must be cleared of all traces of snow, preferably before any other neighbor has even stirred from bed. And so it was that I found myself shoveling snow to clear a path for a car that I had no intention of taking anywhere anytime soon.

As mists of powdery snow bit into my face with each thrown shovelful of snow, I thought about a sheepherder who had been caught in the fierce 3-day blizzard that roared across Inner Mongolia earlier this month. Herdsman Chaoketu left his house at the height of the storm to check on his flock of sheep and his father, who lived about 200 yards away.

Almost immediately he became completely disoriented in the swirling snow and was unable to find his way back home. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to just keep walking in a straight line. A day and a half later he walked into the side of a neighboring herdsman's home. The blizzard left 39 people and hundreds of thousands of sheep dead.

The fierce storm was the most recent in a series of natural disasters: a drought, a plague of locusts, and winds strong enough to level homes and toss small goats into the air. The overgrazed soil was so bare that the snow turned yellow from dust churned up by the blizzard as it moved across the prairie, something never before seen by the herdsmen.

"It's as if nature is taking revenge on us," said one herdsman. "We're not scientists, but we've never seen anything like this. ... I think it has to do with whatever we've done to the environment."

Something to think about.

# The Big Empty

The human genome consists of 23 pairs of chromosomes twisted together in the familiar double-helix structure. They come two to a cell, but don't worry about the neighborhood becoming overcrowded. Each genome is about one-fifth the size of the smallest piece of dust you could see. If you could unwind the strand of DNA that makes up the genome, it would stretch out to about 6 feet. Out of that six-foot long strand, which contains over three billion separate pieces of genetic code, only about one inch contains everything that makes us human. The rest is mostly just genetic gibberish.

Within that inch of genetic material that makes us human, there are about 30,000 genes. That sounds like a lot compared to, say yeast, which only has about 6,000 genes. But the common fruit fly has 13,000 genes, and plants have 23,000 genes. Given where humans stand _vis-a-vis_ the tomato on the evolutionary ladder, you might expect a bigger gap in the number of genes. Not so. In fact, when you compare our genes with those found in a mouse, we only have 300 genes that aren't found in mice. This despite the fact that men and mice went their separate genetic ways about 100,000,000 years ago.

Even more striking is the fact that humans are 99.9 percent genetically identical. There is no gene for race. Differences do exist between Caucasians and Asians and Hispanics and Africans, but these differences are found in the vast stretches of DNA that don't seem to do anything. This is perhaps the most startling find ... that about 99 percent of our DNA has nothing to do with what makes us human.

The human genome is best described as a long stretch of empty road, the kind you encounter when driving through states like Texas or Nebraska. The road goes for miles and miles and there is nothing at all but maybe some old billboards advertising long discontinued products. Every hundred miles or so you come across a gas station and maybe a diner, someplace where you can go to the bathroom, buy a Coke, gas up, and move on. Not long after that you reach a major city where you can satisfy a broader range of your needs.

The human genome is for the most part empty road. Scattered here and there along the 6 feet or so of genetic material are small bits and pieces of genetic material that are leftover from bacteria that took root in our DNA hundreds of millions of years ago. They don't contribute a damn thing, even though they account for almost half of the total genetic material found in the human genome. They are freeloaders who hooked on to our DNA and have been enjoying a free ride ever since.

Some of these bacteria do actually make themselves useful by helping essential genes do their work, but they tend to be located nearer to the main centers of genetic activity, just like those gas stations you find on the outskirts of cities. But in the end, it is those 30,000 genes that taken together only comprise about an inch of genetic highway that make the difference between man and mouse or fruit fly or tomato.

On a cosmic scale, we know that space is mostly empty. On the subatomic scale, we know that atoms are mostly empty, the distance between subatomic particles being equivalent in scale to the distance between galaxies in outer space. Now we find out that human DNA is mostly empty, that it contains vast stretches of meaningless genetic material punctuated by isolated clumps of functioning genes.

What does it mean, this profligacy of emptiness that all creation, both large and small, both animate and inanimate, has at its core? What does it mean, this emptiness that binds all creation together? Perhaps it is in this emptiness that we should look for the first real sign of the Creator's method and meaning.

# Doing what Comes Naturally

Folk singer Arlo Guthrie was asked what he planned to do when he retired, and he replied that he wasn't going to do anything at all ... nothing. He allowed as how doing absolutely nothing was something that seemed to come easily to him. For most Americans, doing nothing is not something that comes naturally.

When my wife and I were in Paris, our hotel was near the Luxembourg Gardens, which we liked to visit to wind down a little from sightseeing. The thing that strikes you when you get there is that it is obvious that some people have been there for hours, just sitting in a chair, doing nothing. The longest my wife and I could hack doing nothing was about 45 minutes. Then we felt like we just had to get up and do something.

The importance of doing nothing is not understood or accepted by most folks, but that might change if they read the latest findings of German researcher Peter Axt, a former marathon runner, who was the subject of a recent piece in the Times of London. He begins by noting, "No top sportsman has lived to a very advanced age," citing the example of jogging evangelist Jim Fixx, who died at the age of 52.

Axt maintains that excessive exercise shortens your life span, using up our allotted share of energy at a too-rapid pace. We literally wear ourselves down and out through the strain placed on the body by exercise. He then gave the example of an Italian village where centenarians are commonplace and where the chief activity is playing chess in the town square, with schmoozing and snoozing running a close second.

Dr. Axt's theories are based on a belief that we have only so much energy in our bodies. Burn both ends of the candle and your flame goes out sooner than if you take it easy. Animals that hibernate live longer, and the animals that live the longest are those that spend most of their time basking in the sun.

Okay, sure there those diehard fitness nuts who insist that Dr. Axt is totally off base. There have even been some studies that show that joggers live up to 7 years longer than non-joggers. Maybe it's because I'm Italian, but if you asked me which would I rather do, spend hours sitting in a chair in the village square schmoozing with my home boys under a warming Mediterranean Sun or go jogging, ... well, tell you what, you can go jogging and then come back and sit with me and tell me all about that runners high thing you get.

# Migratory Seasons

We seem stuck between the seasons, trapped under a heavy mountain of cold damp air that refuses to be swept away by the lighter tropical breezes that by now have normally pushed their way northward. Last week was as cold as any we have had all winter. The reward for our patience was a couple of days of damp drizzly weather, broken up by the occasional downpour. Rainy weather is generally miserable, but when it is cold and rainy, the misery seems to settle even deeper into the bones.

If nothing else, this spate of bad weather proves conclusively that birds don't rely on air temperature to make the migratory decisions. The activity in our backyard has quickened over the last couple of weeks, despite the lingering winter weather.

Robins and grackles and finches and sparrows and juncos and cardinals have been scouring the garden for seeds and nest building materials. A rabbit has been busily gathering up dead leaves, carrying them off to a secluded spot underneath the barberry hedge, where it no doubt intends to take up housekeeping. The squirrels seem especially befuddled, alternating between digging up nuts stored last fall and reburying other nuts, apparently in the belief that winter is not going anywhere soon.

The big news this year has been the arrival of a flock of cedar waxwings. They appeared suddenly, the way migrating flocks do, ravishing a tall juniper bush, greedily consuming its last remaining trove of green berries the color of the salt water that washes over the Atlantic beaches I grew up on.

Normally, these migrating flocks depart as suddenly as they arrive, never to be seen again. So we were pleasantly surprised to see a male waxwing a couple of days later in the plum tree, a long piece of plastic dangling from its beak, a sure sign of nest building activity.

We have lived in this house now for over 20 years. The builder left us with barren subsoil, devoid of all life except for a couple of scrawny maple trees that were quickly replaced with the first in a long succession of trees and bushes and perennials that weren't always so perennial. Over the years we have planted and lost, planted and lost some more, slowly expanding the greenery, and in the process creating a haven for all manner of birds and insects and small mammals.

The tall shrubs now harbor vast colonies of birds who fill the air with their insistent calls, the ground roils with earthworms, branches tremble under the scampering feet of squirrels and chipmunks, and the wings of a butterfly send shockwaves outward that may eventually build up enough force to move that cold air out and finally let spring in.
.

# A Visit to the Boneyard

I was visiting back home. It was sometime during May, and my mother wanted to go to the cemetery so she could check on some new plantings she had put in last fall. My father is buried there along with two of his children. My older brother—the first-born—drowned. My younger sister died from an infection when she was still an infant.

There is room in the plot for my mother, myself, and my three sisters, should we choose to do so. I am firmly committed to cremation, so I don't figure to be taking up much space. My mother isn't happy about that, but she has come to terms with it. She did ask me for a portion of my ashes so she could have them at the family plot. I figure, what the hell, I won't be in any position to object one way or the other, so I had no trouble agreeing to her request.

So anyway, we finished what we needed to do, and we just started walking around the cemetery, looking at the headstones. The cemetery is divided into an old part and a new part. Our plot is located in the older section, where the headstones go back into the 1800's. My mother knew just about every family name and gave me a running history of their fortunes and follies as we ambled past each generation.

Eventually, we wandered over to the new section, which is closer to the road, definitely a less desirable location. The gravesites had a rawness to them. There hadn't been time for weathering to soften the edges or dull the bright colors of the polished granite.

The chiseled letters of each name still stood out clear and crisp, not yet smoothed by the centuries of winters and nor' easters to come. Lichen had not yet had time to mottle the granite with the gray green concentric circles that would soon start spreading inexorably across the face of the rock, obscuring the names. Soon enough the wind and rain would eat slowly away at the stone like the cancer that doubtless brought many of the current residents to this, their final resting place. But for now, the flowers were still fresh, the earth not yet settled.

We were walking back to our car when I saw a couple off in the distance. I couldn't make them out but I could tell the man was much younger than the woman. As we got closer to where we were parked, I was surprised to hear my name called out. Turning to look, I saw that they were people I knew. It was David W. and his mother.

David and I had been next-door neighbors until I moved away when I was 12 years old. He was the bold one ... the first to smoke, the first to drink, the first to learn about girls. We went our separate ways after high school. I would see him from time to time when I came back home for visits. He had been married a couple of times that I knew of and had kids somewhere, although I wasn't sure how many.

Standing there talking to David and his mother, I couldn't help noticing his fingernails. They were black and brittle and curling. I remember thinking at the time that I had read somewhere that doctors could tell a great deal about your health just from examining your fingernails. I wondered what a doctor would have made of David's.

I asked if he and his mother had come by to visit his father's grave. No. They wouldn't drive across the street to visit the old bastard. I remembered that his father had been a drinker. My older sister told me that David's younger brothers had it pretty rough. So nobody was too broken up when he finally died.

Somehow we got to talking about what kind of funeral we wanted, and I stated my preference for cremation. David also wanted to be cremated. He loved the ocean and that is where he wanted his ashes scattered. Personally, I shudder at the idea of being buried at sea. I want to stay connected with the land. Get back into production right away. Maybe end up in a tree limb or as part of a rose petal. The ocean was endless and dark and empty. Not my kind of place. But that is what David wanted.

We talked a little more and then said our good-byes. I asked my mother on the way home, what are the odds of me being home for a couple of days, of us going to the cemetery, and me running in to my old boyhood friend David.

A couple of weeks later my mother called me. She told me that David had died. Liver cancer. I thought about those black fingernails. My mother and I were both a little freaked out by the whole thing.

I have come to believe that David and I were given a last chance to talk, to say good-bye, standing there amidst those tombstones. Call it coincidence if that makes you feel more comfortable. I think of it as just one more sign that there is a benevolence at work and that once in a while it arranges for us special moments of grace, moments that are meant just for us. I can live with that.

# Ghost Story

Stanley Kubrick once said that if we are afraid of ghosts then we must believe in them. Well, I have had a moment or two when I felt my skin tighten in an atavistic reaction to something that wasn't there.

The first time it happened, my wife and I were out looking at houses. We arrived at this particular house in the late afternoon. We found the lock box, a small metal container affixed to the door frame that could be opened by a key given to us by the realtor and that had inside it the key to the house.

Only I couldn't feel any key inside the lock box, which was no more than three fingers wide and one knuckle deep. Puzzled, we walked around the house, and then for some reason I tried the lock box again and, lo and behold, there was the key. We went in and looked around what turned out to be a deceptively small house.

All the while I had this sense of unease, a feeling I can only describe as one of unhappiness and anger. My wife and I met in the living room to leave, and we both agreed that the place was creepy, and we were more than ready to go, but now the door was stuck, and it would not open. By now I was more than a bit anxious, and I tugged hard at the obstinate door, but it still would not budge.

I looked around and saw a log that had been left near the fireplace. I picked it up, fully prepared to smash the window, such was my determination to not spend another minute in that house. I gave the door knob one last try, and it opened. My wife and I stepped out into the gathering dusk and looked at each other and then at the house. We put the key back in the lock box and got out of there.

The only other time I had such a strong sense of something closing in on me, suffocating me with a density of emotion, was at a local restaurant. My wife and I were there with a group of neighbors, and we both needed to go to the bathroom, which was upstairs on the second floor of what had been a sanitarium many decades ago, the sort of place one sent Aunt Agatha when she had gone rather around the bend. I finished before my wife and was waiting in an open area outside the rest rooms when I noticed a corridor that I had missed seeing because it was to my back when I came up the stairs.

For some reason, I began walking down this corridor, which was lit only by the light from the area near the rest rooms. I noticed that it was lined on each side with doors, like you might have found in an old-fashioned rooming house. As I wandered further down the corridor, I studied the doors and I noticed that on each side of the door there was a small piece of metal bent in a half-moon shape and screwed tightly to the door frame. It gave me a chill when I realized that they were intended to hold a bar that could be placed across the door after the residents were safely tucked in.

Call it the power of suggestion, call it whatever you want, but I felt the air thickening around me, while at the same time I had the eerie sensation of the corridor stretching out endlessly into the deepening gloom before me. I knew that I had to get back to where I had been right now.

When I got to where my wife was now waiting, I had this sensation of stepping back into normal from somewhere else. It was the same feeling I had when my wife and I got out of that dreadful house and looked up and saw the trees and stars. It was as though time had slipped a gear or had somehow been stretched out.

Not every experience has been unpleasant. The house we finally ended up buying was also the result of an early evening visit. The interior was painted this hideous shade of green, which made the interior very gloomy. Yet when I walked in I got a strong sensation of happiness, of shared lives well lived. The other house was a very sad place. I had the distinct impression of someone growing old and dying there, alone and afraid and very angry.

How does one explain these experiences? Well, the closest I can come to it is radio waves. We spend all day every day moving through a swarm of radio signals that can't be heard unless you have a receiver and even then the receiver has to be tuned to the proper frequency. _(What's the frequency, Kenneth?)_

I believe that our minds retain the ability to sporadically receive signals on bandwidths that are now outside the normal range but that can be picked up if you happen to be at the right place and in the right frame of mind to pick up signals that have somehow managed to persist through time and space long after the senders are dead.

Such things are not confined to exchanges between the living and the dead. You meet somebody and feel an instant connection. We've all had that happen. Or sometimes you discover an unexpected connection in your life with someone else's life, a connection that you never knew existed but that once revealed seems to have been inevitable.

Every day we are weaving what will become our own ghost stories, strands of thought that trail behind us and before us, lingering in the air and occasionally becoming entangled with other minds, both living and dead, at some unexpected moment when we wander to close to the edge.

# I've Got Dreams To Remember

I live in a part of the country that still clings closely to an agricultural tradition that is in fact rapidly fading into the sunset, as field after field is plowed under for a final spring crop of new houses that will stretch out in rows as neatly planted as any farmer's garden.

The cultural center of that agrarian lifestyle is the county fair grounds, where the annual rite of harvest is still celebrated with a week-long celebration of homespun skills that have been passed down from generation to generation since the late 1700's.

My visit always begins with the animal barns. You are greeted by a pungent collection of smells and sounds coming from cows and goats and sheep and pigs and lambs, each carefully groomed for the judges, who will award ribbons for best of show to eager-eyed young kids who don't know they are already fading into a future they will never share with their parents.

The next stop after the barns is the amusement park, a temporary village presided over by unsavory looking grifters where folks can catch a little glimpse of what used to pass for life on the wild side in an unwired world. In the middle is a tall Ferris Wheel that spins you high above the fair grounds where you can look down on it all with the detached perspective of ancient gods who have long since taken the last train for the coast.

Then come the buildings where homemakers from around the county have put on display their crafts and cooking skills. Crowds mill past tables piled high with jars of preserved fruits and vegetables vying for attention with colorful quilts and row after row of pies and the local specialty, red velvet cakes, all waiting patiently to be crowned with a coveted blue ribbon.

The final stop is the poultry barns, where a cacophony of clucking and crowing emanates from row after row of cages filled with hens and roosters and other assorted fowls of every description imaginable. Somewhere in the room there is sure to be a small table filled with baby chicks or rabbits, surrounded by children pushing and shoving to get a closer look.

Of course, there are more things going on at the fairgrounds than the county fair in the fall. The annual home-builders show is held in the late spring. If the fall county fair is for the farmers, the spring home show is for the folks who have bought all those houses on all those farms that were sold to developers.

The set-up is somewhat the same, although the livestock barns and the amusement area are empty. The rest of the fairgrounds will be occupied by contractors and suppliers anxious to meet the needs of the hundreds of families who have spent the winter planning the next addition to the house.

Some years ago my wife and I attended one of these home shows. I can't remember what project we had in mind, but we dutifully strolled past all the booths and tables, collecting business cards and pamphlets as we went along. Someone would usually have a plastic bag to put it all in, freebies being an important part of such shows.

After a couple of hours of this, I was ready to set a spell and work my way through a funnel cake, a twisted tangle of fried dough topped with near lethal quantities of powdered sugar.

As I was sitting there on a bench, hunched over against a still brisk spring breeze, contentedly chewing my funnel cake, I noticed an elderly couple leaving the fair grounds. They walked in that shoulder-stooped shuffle that really old folks tend to adopt as the joints stiffen and the back curves under the weight of all those years.

They were walking slowly away from me, the man's one hand hooked around his wife's elbow while his other hand clutched a plastic bag that was no doubt filled with the same brochures and pamphlets that filled the bag lying between my feet. Looking at them, I couldn't help but wonder if when I got to be that old would I still have things I wanted to do.

Would I still spend the winter poring over home improvement magazines looking for just the right design, laying out rough sketches of the shelves or bookcases or whatever it was I had in mind, charting the lumber I would need, laying out the cuts to make, the finish I would use, the new tools I might need? Would I feel that same eagerness when I walked into hardware store and looked at all those aisles and contemplated the possibilities contained within? Or would I by then have reached a point where I stopped dreaming, where I had settled for what I had? Would I give up on making something new or fixing something to make it better?

All I knew as I watched the old man and his wife walk away was that those two hadn't quit. They still had dreams to remember, dreams to bring to life in the quickening air of a new season of hope. Many years later, as I sit here poised on the edge of another spring, I survey my field of dreams and ask the same old questions. Do I have the heart to go out for one more season?

About The Author

G.J. Lau lives in a small city just far enough away from Washington DC to be somewhere else. After a long career in government, he has settled into the world of working retirement that awaits most people these days.

Visit the author's home page at <http://www.windroot.com/> or the blog at <http://www.windroot.blogspot.com/>

If you enjoyed reading this, consider these other books by G. J. Lau:

_The Magpie's Secret_ at <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36482>

_Sitrep Negative: A Year In Vietnam_ at <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49814>

_Fifty Years of Global Warming_ at <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/56573>

