We are the manifest thoughts of the Great Mind,
Momentary pieces of the Eternal Now.
We are instances of existence, whose quiet insistence
Demand the degradation of the Mystery of which we are made.
We are blind to the maelstrom of matter and time,
To the galaxies of particles and energy of which we are comprised,
To the limitlessness of this swirl of heat and planets and light.
We are so unimaginably enormous, and so invisibly miniscule.

I never knew I’d have to learn these things. Did you tell me? Did anyone tell us that this was the way it would be?

I never knew what I was supposed to learn until it was too late, and I’ve had to learn everything just after I needed it. It seems that this is the way life works. We are placed in a position to learn to fill it, and we are tested to teach us what we were supposed to have known.

I never knew I’d struggle against myself so hard. I never knew my own sin. I thought that sins were things that we did…things like smoking and drinking and sex and cussing. In Sunday school we would occasionally be asked to examine ourselves, to verify our own sinfulness. I’d go through my life and assess my sins, looking for things like drugs or violence against others or blatant disrespect. It seemed far too foreign to me to suspect myself of being capable of having sex or drinking alcohol or sharing needles or whatever else we were told we’d be tempted by. I’d look around my life looking for dirty spots, and usually I’d satisfy my own need for guilt by telling myself that surely I was guilty of the pride that comes with thinking oneself otherwise sinless.

I can’t remember if I wasn’t told the truth or if I simply couldn’t hear it. I don’t remember hearing that I’d have far more grievous things to deal with, things more sinister and far more addictive than opiates or sensuality. I don’t remember hearing that my heart would yearn for everything it thought might heal it, and that it would drive me insane with the fruitlessness of my search. I’d been told that one day I might find myself tempted to wallow in filth and the vileness we saw in rated R movies, and I learned that going to church regularly and reading my Bible every day would prevent me from these sins that would ensnare the less religious. And I learned that this idea always ought to be followed by a footnote explaining that my faith and God’s grace were really what was saving me, even if it didn’t seem that way.

I can’t remember being told how I’d have to wrestle with myself, how I’d fight--my mind against my heart and my heart always winning. I can’t remember being told that I’d need so desperately…that the very same madness that drove evil people to kill and hate and be vile would afflict me just the same, and would drive me to tear myself apart at every failure, every personal slight, every time I’m not loved in the way that I know I need but I’m not sure I deserve.

I never knew I’d have to learn to turn this engine of desperation, love, and need heavenward, or that there was even Someone who was supposed to make it run. I never knew I’d be driven by it to begin with. I guess life was too simple for that much need back then. I walk through life every day and see all these people who are driven by the same thing, and maybe they don’t look at themselves closely enough to even know what they are doing. They’ll fuel it with little earthly things that can get them through a day, and I suppose maybe that works. It works like the Greek myth of Tantalus, who was punished by being made to forever stand in a pool of water under the branches of a fruit tree, and the water would recede whenever he bent down to drink, and the branches lifted every time he reached for a fruit. And so many of us live, ever bending to drink water that we cannot get, reaching for fruit that is just beyond our grasp. Too many of us content ourselves in the pursuit of these unattainable satisfactions, and that hope--- the hope of one day achieving what we secretly know we cannot reach--forms the motivation that carries us one day at a time until our days are spent.

I never knew that my intentions could feel so innocent and my actions seem so normal, while my heart could struggle so desperately. I didn’t know it could look like waiting for a phone call from a friend, like opening a birthday present, like a hug or several words spoken in kindness. It can be a fragile secret, shared in confidence. It can be the desire to be trusted or needed. I had no idea that my desperation could seek to be satisfied by such good and pure things as true friendships or honest pursuits; and that these things, as the objects of my affections, would distort into sources of pain and discontent when they inevitably fail to be everything I need.

I never knew that each thing I thought I needed from people, I really needed from God. I had no idea that this truth would be so all-inclusive. Each thing I think I need from people, I really need it from God. I didn’t know that this truth is most important when it seems most impractical—in those moments where God and his love seem to be the last thing that could solve the situation. Where you are tempted to feel, This is real life. This is not the time to talk about vague theological concepts like love and grace and God. This is here and now, what I need and what I’m not getting. Save God for when times are good, after I get this settled, that is when this truth is most vital. I didn’t know God was supposed to meet my needs every day.

But most importantly, I didn’t know that salvation came so quickly. I didn’t know that an understanding of God’s perfect love for me could set everything aright so fast. All it takes is for me to remember that God loves me. GOD loves me. God LOVES me. God loves ME. His heart aches when mine does. His soul glories in my joy. He waits for me to call, and calls when I need to be needed. He pursued me in my worthlessness and gave me value. Not some value, as all earthly values are. Not comparable value, or measurable worth, but infinite value. To be wanted by God is to be more than perfectly esteemed, for what can perfection want but something more than perfection? I am far more than OK. Far better than enough. The most beautiful part of this whole thing is this: that the deeper my need and the hungrier my desperation, the greater the joy in it’s fulfillment. What infinite joy is mine, that so desperate a person should be faced with such a source of infinite satisfaction! I am like a starving man who is seated at a feast who is blessed to forever desire for what sits right in front of him, and to endlessly be satisfied by what he desires most.

All that I’m about to express is something ugly to me. It is something I wish weren’t true of myself. I wish I could mature past the point of having to deal with these little personal battles that seem to plague me from time to time. But I haven’t, and maybe no one really does.

I manufacture my own personal tragedies. My mind, like a prosecutor before a judge, builds a case against myself, as if I wanted to be weighed in the balance and find myself lacking. I remember when I was about 15 or 16 years old, lying in my bed at night, recounting the day. I would weigh my social successes against my failures-- did someone think I was funny today? One point. Did I say something stupid? Subtract one. Did someone else seem interested in me? Add a point. It wasn’t actually a literal point system, but I would essentially stack up my pros against my cons for the day, and that was how I determined if it was a good day or not. That was how I decided whether or not the day had been worth the effort.

Now I know these things are meaningless. When I come to the end, and I’m looking back over the years of my life, these stupid questions will seem so ridiculous. Standing on the edge of life and whatever comes next, these social games and little systems for determining worth will seem so frail and empty.

But I still do this. I still continue my case against myself. I look around me and find that I’m incredibly unspectacular. I can specifically pick up each aspect of my person, examine it, and determine it unsatisfactory. I can do that right now: I speak some Spanish, but I have friends who do it much better. Plus, having spent so much time away from Mexico, I’m losing my accent and fluency. I play the guitar, but nowhere near as well as my roommate Jonathan or my 15 or so other friends who play (and sing) much better than I do. I look in the mirror and see a body and a face that doesn’t reflect who I am. In this game of comparisons, I always fall short of someone else. I’d like to think of myself as a gifted writer, but I reread my own work and it always sounds childish and overwrought. I read Faulkner or Steinbeck and realize that I could never write on the level of those authors I admire. I sometimes have a sense of humor, sometimes seem interesting, sometimes seem intelligent. But every little victory I ever win feels so slight, and every failure is so devastating in this game of who thinks I’m valuable. Who can ever win in this contest where the bar is set at perfection?

Most of us will spend our lives fashioning an idol, an icon created to commemorate ourselves. We’ll shape it and shine it, build it up and support it and tell all our friends about it. We hope that by the end of our lives, we’ve studied enough so that our self-idols are smart enough, we’ve lived and thought enough so that they are wise enough, exercised until they are strong, practiced wit until they are liked, worked until they are rich. But could it ever be enough?

What a hunger we all feel! Do you feel it? I think it may drive everything we do. I think every goal that is scored, test that is passed, every cigarette smoked or girl kissed, I think this need to prove to ourselves and to others that we are valuable can drive everything we do. We are such desperate people.

And so what is it? What is the satisfaction to this hunger? If I say that our hunger is simply a craving for someone to recognize the value inherent to our souls, then I think I am simply saying our hunger is for Love. After all, isn’t that what love is-- two people who wordlessly feel the value of the other? It’s a feeling like Faith; a somewhat irrational belief that there is value and kinship there in some other person. That beneath the mess of skin and bones and personality and thoughts there lies a soul very much like our own. All of this is almost too delicate to say. What is the stuff of that blind Faith which is Love? What is the name of that mysterious substance that we crave? Maybe it is far more accurate to leave it nameless. Haven’t I described it already? It is that Faith, and it is Love. It is the Mystery and it is Good. It is the Meaning that would fill our lives, the perfect thing that our idols imitate.

1 John 4:8

And how is this? We drift in air that’s bioluminescent
Like fireflies in plankton skies that glow under soft moon’s crescent,
They wake to light the silent sands—the waves break incandescent.

What place is this? Here in the stars, like galaxies and crashing cars;
Collide and crash, we burst aflame—we light the night, then dark again.
We burn aloud, fill void with sound; fill space with joy and life and pain.

Distill the tears of heaven’s joy to turn the curse that fills the world
It poisons that which damns the earth and brings to life a baby girl.

June
By Evan Altes

.I.

One of the most amazing things I can think is the infinite number of worlds that surrounds us. That’s why there will always be more stories to tell. It’s all a matter of how close you look, how closely you focus your lens. There is the world of business, of governments and wars. There is another world in a family, another in an anthill, a dozen more in a tide pool. A small town is a world of its own with distinct players and rules. On this hot, late spring afternoon, June sat in a rough wooden chair on a dock that began on the hard grass and broken shell sand and went out over the brown water of Rose Bay. She was watching the world of the salt marsh.

June Williams was not a deep thinker and had anything but refined thoughts, but she stared wisely at the world of fiddler crabs rolling balls of muck outside their holes, listening to their small, hard bodies click and rustle with movement. She watched a large one with a big, mean claw and blue and red face threatening inferior specimens away from his hole, menacing powerfully with his unwieldy weapon. She thought of his pride that he might take in his claw. She wondered if the others felt fear or respect for him. Or why they waded into the water and what it was they plucked with the smaller, more useful pincher and chewed on while their vacant, lidless eyes stared straight ahead. They scurried among forests of marsh grasses and reeds. One paused under the full fronds of a glasswort before diving into its hole, only to emerge again for a moment and then back into the darkness. What inspired these creatures to act and move the way they did, she thought. Eating, I guess.

She looked up and saw the sun settling into the clouds above Rose Bay. She saw little threads that ran through all things, and sometimes she couldn’t see differences between them that would be plain as day to anyone else. For example, she saw fish and birds as nearly the same thing. Feathers are like scales, fins are like wings. Birds swim in the air, fish fly in the water. Sometimes she forgot that fish and birds are two different things. As she watched the sun and the clouds, she saw some more of those little invisible threads between things; she almost forgot that clouds weren’t just big islands in the sky. Rose Bay isn’t so different than the sky, both reflected in each other. And likewise, clouds weren’t so different from islands. When the sun starts getting low like it was and it starts burning up the sky with red and orange, it gets to looking quite a bit more like the bay, which also burns orange. The islands are dark spots in the flames, just like the clouds. The only difference is a horizon that draws a halfway line between the two. It’s about this time that the glass minnows ruffle the surface of the water in little pods all around and the little biting flies swarm around the bank and land on June’s face. She picked up her big, fake-straw hat and used it to fan the little gnats away from her face.

At that moment, the cork bobbed as some submarine creature tested the baited hook, and June’s hands went to the cane pole that was lying on the wood of the dock. Her heartbeat quickened a little, even though she knew it was nothing good. A snapper takes the bait with confidence and rage, nearly tearing off its lips in its fury. A pinfish will try it a couple times, then put up a pitiful struggle before allowing itself to be lifted out of the water. A sheepshead, which is what June expected and hoped for, touches and tests the bait as delicately as a surgeon prepares for a surgery, and usually finds some way to slip the bait off the hook without June even noticing. She watched the ripples spread and then fade as the cork settled back into its undisturbed state. Might have even been a crab pulling on the dead shrimp, June thought. She remembered the crab trap and pulling herself out of her little wooden chair, she walked to the dock, went to the side, and pulled up the wire trap. She saw a big one still outside the trap, clinging to the side as she pulled it up and a little one inside, so she let it back down to give the crab more time to find the entrance. Funny how they trap themselves, she thought. Just crawl right in there and can’t figure out how to get back out. June didn’t feel sorry for them, though. Blue crabs are the angriest, meanest, most irritable creatures on earth. They are all bad, the entire race of them. June had no vein of cruelty running through her, but she never felt bad about tossing one of those obstinately irascible devils into a pot of boiling water.

She settled back into her little chair to watch the cork and think again. It wasn’t fishing that June enjoyed so much as just thinking about things, and when you fish you are forced to think about things. Sometimes she repeated words over and over in her head, thousands and thousands of times, singing them in her mind, then saying them quietly, then speaking them to somebody else, but always the same string of words, over and over. She didn’t like that so much, but sometimes it happens and it’s really hard to stop once you start it.

June’s eyes settled on a marble that lay caught between two boards on the dock. It was amber colored and perfect, like a little jewel pulled up from the waters of Rose Bay that carried its tint, brown as fine whiskey. There are not many things in the world that are perfect, but that marble was one of them. Caleb, her son, probably lost it there on the dock and never got it out. June leaned over in her chair and broke a splinter off the edge of the dock, using it to pull the marble out of the crack. Picking it up, she thought, I could be happy if this was the only thing I had. The only thing in the world. Because it was perfect indeed; round and clear, solid and sure. She held it up and squinted at the bay through it, wrinkling up her face in the attempt. When her eyes focused on it through her glasses, she saw the bay upside down. The water was where the sky was supposed to be, and the clouds found themselves on the bottom, and everything cast in that delicious amber brown. She was sure she could be satisfied with nothing else in the world but that little marble, because when you have something perfect what else could you want? Her mind continued in that train of thought. What if there was a place where everyone, when you were born, received one marble and that was all the money you ever got. That marble was what you would use for monetary exchanges for the rest of your life. It would be a strange community, no doubt, but I wonder if it would be better? One man would catch fish, and if someone wanted a fish, they’d give him their marble and he’d give them the fish. Of course, if he already had a marble then he’d just give them the fish, saying, “Thank you, but I already have one. Thanks anyway.” And another woman would garden leeks, and if one wished to make a soup, you’d go to that lady and give her your marble and she’d give you some leeks, saying, “Oh this is wonderful. You see, I gave my marble away this morning for a handful of licorice sticks at the post office. You know how fond the General is of his licorice.” And if you had want of a thing, you need but give up your marble for it. And if someone wished something of you, a single marble would be all the payment you could want. And if you already had a marble, then you’d do it anyway because one marble as much anyone would ever need, being priceless as they’d be.

She put it away in the oversized mesh bag beside her chair which served as a purse. By the sun, June guessed that Isaiah and Caleb would be getting home soon. She leaned forward and turned her head back towards the house, her eyes following the dirt path into the live oaks and palmettos that hid the house just out of view. No sign of their arrival yet. Besides, the dog would of barked or something, she thought. June used the rail that made a side on the dock to pull herself out of the chair, and collecting her mesh bag and the bucket of the day’s snappers, pinfish, and angry blue crabs she started back to the house to get dinner started.

.II.

Where does the air come from? When you boil water, big pockets of air collect from somewhere the pot and bubble to the top in a burst of steam. Where does the air come from? When you heat up water, apparently some of it turns to air. But if you were half an inch tall and submersible, June wondered, what would it look like down there at the bottom of that pot? Maybe you would look around the bottom edge and you’d see water lift off the sides, bending light in a swirl of heat and air, and it would fly off the bottom and shoot towards the top, and it would do this all over the place. Surely it would be nothing short of frightful to watch the seething and exploding from inside it.

June slid the boiling pot over to the side of the charred stovetop so the water wouldn’t boil so strong and added a few spices for the crabs. The boiling slowed, and the size of the bubbles flying towards the surface became smaller, about pea-sized. The steam rising off the water carried the scent of the cayenne pepper, bay leaves, lemon, and various other ingredients with it. She had learned this recipe from her grandmother Janice who came to Florida all the way from Louisiana. Janice and her husband Jonathan were both second-generation emancipated slaves, and their parents had both belonged to the same wealthy politician. This politician had a predilection for smoking opium while Jonathan’s father played sad songs on the fiddle, and in this way they had built a more informal relationship than was common between slaves and slave-owners. As this was the case, when Jonathan’s parents found themselves emancipated by order of the federal government, the politician gave them a large and expensive piece of property near his own. Jonathan inherited the property when both parents expired in a barn-fire, and he promptly married Janice, sold the land, and moved himself and his newly-wed wife to Florida. June remembered her grandmother from this smell, the smell that was tied up in the steam that swirled towards the gray wooden rafters of the house.

Something punched the window the next room over, and the window rattled in its pane from the impact. June’s eyes reacted quickly enough to glimpse a little bird drop form view. Oh Lord no, she whispered. They always do that. I hate it when they do this. June hurried to the window, pushing a dining room chair out of her way she could get to the window. The dove was squirming painfully down in the grass below her window. Can’t they figure it out? Lord I hate it when they do this. The glass was dark and shiny and had the wooden frame right through the middle; it was easy to see. There was even a white curtain that hung down right inside the window. The dove picked itself up lamely and flew painfully to a nearby pine. It hurts me every time they do this. Why can’t they learn? Last time, the dove had broken its neck on the window. It broke its own neck! How can a thing kill itself? Doesn’t life beget life? How can something alive bring itself to death? It is a matter of life and death, that the doves learn to see the window; why can’t they learn? If I could tell them, I would. June’s eyes were filled with pain. She wished she could explain the danger, what glass is, and what it’s for, and how to see windows. That was the hardest part, that she had to sit behind the glass and watch them break their necks on it, and there was nothing she could do to make them stop. She wished she could open the window and shout to those doves that they are just killing themselves and ought to be careful what things they throw themselves at so confidently. She wished she would never again have to look down and see that mess of awkward brown and cream-colored wings and black spots writhing in the grass. I’d save them if I could. I’d save each one if it was my place, thought June.

She stepped back over to the stove and looked at the steam rising of the turbulent water. Isaiah and Caleb should be home soon.

.III.

How long have I been waiting? Time gets expanded when you are waiting on it to pass. June sat in the quiet house next to the front window. She held as still as she could so her wooden chair wouldn’t creak and break the silence. It’s a frightful thing to break a perfect silence, and June felt this. And tonight was one of those silences. It was sometime in the very early morning, when all the crickets and frogs and cicadas had gone to sleep, and even the wind had stilled. Half of a moon lit the sky blue in an opening in the trees outside the window, and pale light fell through the window onto the wood floor at June’s feet. Quietly, June waited in the darkness. She watched patiently out the window, sometimes counting down from ten in her mind, sometimes searching the sky for a hint of morning.

So much of life is like this. Life is a watched pot that just won’t boil. It’s an interminable night with a morning that just won’t come. It’s the dark figure of a loved one that just won’t appear around the bend.

The clock on the mantle had stopped at some point earlier that night. When you wait for time to pass and you speed it with your will, it resists--or so it seems. It slows until it only creeps along, and then it stops altogether. The ticking clock had measured seconds in with a solid acoustic click that gave the room a heartbeat. It marked the seconds that June waited out by the window, and when the seconds slowed she pushed them with her mind, but the harder she pushed the slower they become. Then they stopped, and the blue night looked to stretch on limitlessly.

June wondered what she ought to do. What was there to do? She looked around the small room—a stove, a table, a rifle standing in the corner, a basket of yarn by a chair. She glanced back out the window. Maybe the sky looked a little lighter…was that a movement behind that oak tree? No. The sky was just as dark, and still nobody appeared around the bend.

She thought of the amber marble. Where was it? In the bag, probably. June lifted herself out of the chair which creaked terribly at the movement. She felt stiff and numb from her waist down to her feet. Shuffling into the adjoining room, she lifted her bag from the floor onto the bed. In a bottom corner of the bag she found the marble, and closing her hand on it, she made her way back to the window. The chair moaned again as she sat down on it again. Holding the marble up in front of the moon, it shone clear and clean as a glass of iced tea.

Somehow, at that moment, everything changed again. The clock didn’t start again, but she felt time take a step forward. She could feel seconds ticking away again. I got it all right here; right here in my hand. She didn’t need to wait for Isaiah and Caleb anymore. June had that marble; she held perfection in her hand, and she lacked nothing.

.IV.

There in the darkness, for a moment June Williams felt her eyelids pressing on the tops of her eyes. They held them and sheltered them. The eyelids were umbrellas over her head, huge fleshy rooftops keeping the rain from her eyes. She looked out from under them.

She stood under the roof which was supported by for posts, one in each corner. The shelter was entirely surrounded by woods. Oak trees made a canopy over the low palmettos, stretching as far as she could see through the heavy downpour. All the wood was alive; each leaf and frond jumped with every raindrop that hit it, so that everything was in motion. And yet it was somehow peaceful. The rain roared softly, and yet the whole scene was calm. Everything was still, and yet everything moved a little all the time.

The rain ran off the corner of the roof in a little stream. June reached out and let it splash in her hand, and it smacked and splattered all over. The little stream collected in the sand in a little depression, then flowed in a small rivulet out into the woods. June was walking beside this little creek, following it downstream. A small path ran beside the creek as it twisted around dark trees. The water ran through the bottom of a little ravine, about four or five feet across and about two feet deep. Roots stretched out over the stream where it collected in black pools. In several places, trees had fallen and lay across the ravine, and June saw banana spiders had made webs across the width of the ravine under the fallen trees. She continued walking, and saw in the distance a break in the trees. The stream ran black in the bottom of the gully. Raindrops cast rapidly expanding circles all over the surface, which crossed each other in ephemeral criss-crossed patterns.

June had come to the end, where the stream met the bay. It ran out into the open water, as gray as the sky above. She stood on a dirt ledge, the rounded corner where the stream met the bay. Over her head hung the boughs of a huge magnolia tree that was all in bloom. Pods with bright red seeds littered the ground among the brown fallen leaves. She looked up at the branches. Creamy magnolia blossoms filled the tree like white doves among the deep green, glossy leaves. They were falling...the big flowers came fluttering down, falling into the water. The air filled with the sweet fragrance of the falling blossoms. June watched as they sank slowly, drifting out into the bay. One by one, they succumbed to the dark water. Brown water rose over the petals, and they looked dark and spoiled as they disappeared into the bay.

It broke her heart to see these pure blossoms, these creamy white doves fall and flutter into the water, drift away and disappear. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she wanted to cry out. What injustice that dark water smothers such fragrance, that white petals are stained so cruelly brown! She looked at the sky as if to pray, and the clouds were gone, and the sun shone bright and huge. June Williams looked down at the water, looked behind her at the tree, then pitched herself over the edge, into the water among the drowning blossoms. She sank with them, and as the water closed over her head, she looked up again and saw the sun through the stained water. It glowed with the soft, clear amber of Rose Bay. Everything was right again. She sank with the beauties, in water filled with the scent of magnolia flowers. All around her, the flowers floated, suspended, and everything cast in that amber brown, in the filtered sunlight. She filled her lungs with the sweet water, floating there in the center of her marble. And then she awoke.

June opened her eyes to a bright morning. Sunlight streamed in through the window and fell across her knees. She had fallen asleep in the chair, holding the marble in her right hand. Mockingbirds called crazily across the yard, and they day was bright yellow and green. She sat there a while, letting the dream fade slowly and taking the day in sips like hot tea. Slowly, her eyes adjusted and her mind accepted the reality of the morning over the dream. With one hand on the dining table and the other on the window sill, June Williams lifted herself out of her chair. She was sore and stiff from sitting, so she just stood and watched morning happening outside her window.

I bet heaven’s like that, she thought. She always heard that with death came rest, that dying was like falling asleep. June never believed that, and now less than ever. Surely when a person expires, they draw a last earthly breath, close their earthly eyes, and in an instant, they awake to something more real. They draw their first wakeful breath, and their eyes adjust to the brightness of the new morning. And gradually, their mind will accept that their earthly life was less real; it was just a passing dream, and they will accept the new, bright morning. A new kind of mockingbird will call out in the yard, a lovelier sun will cast life and light upon the earth, and this life of dark waters and falling flowers will seem dreamlike and distant in the new light.

I’ll tell Isaiah about that dream if he comes home today, June decided. He should be coming home soon.

Circle
At the core of everything we know and everything that is, there is some central, unknowable mystery. Every piece of knowledge I gain is based on a series of facts which are based on a series of assumptions which are made in an attempt to understand the world. For example, last night, I sat across a table from my brother. I sat there, wondering how it was that I knew I sat across from him. There is his face, which I have learned belongs to him. But what am I actually experiencing? I do not actually see him; electricity, generated in a plant, is piped into the restaurant, where it is run through a filament that glows. It causes light to reflect off his face and hit my eyes, which then send an electrical impulse to my brain, which in turn interprets the electrical signals into a “visual” interpretation. I do not “see” him. My mind produces an image based on light reflecting off of some undefinable, invisible “essence” that is my brother.

Think of life as a room with screens displaying news stories, biographies, and just general information about the world. Imagine you were born in that room, and you never left it. All you ever knew came through those screens; all language, science, relational skills, etc. all came through those screens. You can think of your mind’s conception of the world like that room, where the screens are the senses. All of the information that you gain is made through assumptions and connections based on what you have learned from those screens, your senses. And although you have likely come to somewhat accurate conclusions as to the nature of your surroundings, you have no real evidence that what you have concluded is an accurate representation of absolute reality. And no such evidence is possible. What follows from this point of view is not a futile, solipsistic view, but rather an appreciation for and an acceptance of whatever mystery ties our consciousness to reality.

I believe this mystery pervades everything, from this invisible force that ties us to our reality to something more visible. I believe it is the inexplicable personal magnetism of love; there is no biological reason for selfless love. There is no reason why two people should be tied together or why they should feel they are extensions of one another. The same force that ties our being to reality ties one person to another. This central mystery is in everything. It’s what holds the nucleus of an atom from flying apart. It is the wordless oneness of marriage; it is that the impossible injustice of forgiveness is the greatest justice; or that death begets life.

I believe that this central mystery of the universe becomes even more evident in our everyday lives. I believe that the circle is the symbol of this mystery. The circle is the symbol of perfection; it is indicative of completion, wholeness, oneness, and self-sufficiency. The circle is the basis of all technology and mechanics. Cars, computers, and every other technological advance is based on the circle. Calculus, geometry, astronomy, biology, even history; every area of knowledge has at its core cycles and circles. It is reflected in every planet, star and moon. Every drop of water forms a circle as it falls. Every angle is defined as some degree of a full circle. Despite the ubiquity of the circle, we cannot even measure it. Pi, the central measurement of the central shape that pervades the universe is impossible to completely define. Again, we find that at the center of everything we know and all of our life, resides this untouchable mystery.

I believe that the circle is the symbol, or even the embodiment, of that mystery. That mystery is the Truth. It is the perfections of all things; the perfection of love is the same as perfect truth. Perfect justice becomes perfect love. When all these things are extrapolated unto their perfection, they all become the same thing. Love is truth, is justice, is logic, is joy, is beauty, is goodness. And all of these things are that Mystery. They are all the same thing, and they are what the whole universe and everything else is all about. They are the universe and everything else, and they are what it is made for.

I believe that these things I just mentioned; love, justice, joy, beauty, logic, goodness, perfection, and glory are all the same thing in the end, and that that one thing is something nameless, and any name that it is given serves only to limit it. “Love” limits this thing to only the aspect of it that is interpersonal and involves emotions. “Justice” limits this thing to those matters of fairness and law. I believe that all these are descriptors for different aspects of this thing, this thing that is embodied in the fullness and wholeness of the circle. I believe most people call this thing “God”.

The dark birds woke me early this morning, all squabbling and bantering before the sun had peeked above the eastern mountains. They bounced ridiculously on the flimsy banana tree leaves outside my room, beating their noisy wings in an attempt to maintain their perch. The birds come every morning, but today they are early.

I step out of my room, closing the rusted metal door quietly behind me, and sit on my chair under the overhanging roof. Save for the dark birds, the whole world is draped in a sleepy silence. It is that wonderful pearly hour between dawn and sunrise. The white buildings, muddy roads, all the little houses fields are cast in that pearly blue that makes every green thing seem to glow.

As I stand up and brush through the banana leaves, the dew splashes on me and all around like rain. It smells a little like rain, too—which is not to say that it has any definite scent, but rather that it tinges the air in such a way that vaguely evokes the idea. It smells cold and wet and earthy, but mostly it smells pure as earth, free of evils and pollutants. The grassy field between the bananas and the orange grove glows softly in the dim light, and each delicate strand is bowed over to hold its droplet of water. With every step, the cuffs of my pant legs become increasingly splattered with dew and grass seeds until they are soaked and feel heavy on my ankles.

The moment I step into the orange grove, I find myself in an entirely different place. Wading through knee-high grasses, I stand among round and stately orange trees on every side, everywhere I look. Each one is huge and still, heavy-laden with fruit. I move past these toward the back of the grove, where the bigger oranges grow on smaller trees. Here, I come to a tree no taller than I am. I reach inside and pluck out its heart, a round, unblemished orange big enough for a meal. I peel the rind off carefully and toss it under the tree. As I bite into the orange, I hear God speak.

Oh, what undiminished joy is mine! What purity of beauty is shown to me this morning, and to me alone! This is the voice of God—this life and this truth. It is no spoken word, no replica of life. It is life itself—the green of the grass, the marble-blue sky, the crystal dew and quiet trees—are these not pieces of God Himself?

I was made to walk in a garden like this and eat oranges all morning. I could do that for the rest of my life and only enjoy it more every day. This part of the world is too pure to be tainted by the fall of man. Nothing has to be killed. No one is cheated. An orange grove knows neither greed nor malice. Everything is easy, beautiful, and healthy here. The very air is a fragrance laced with orange blossoms, and the sky more artful than any artists’ imaginings. Surely no purer earthly joy than this exists, to walk through the orange grove on a quiet morning. God is in the oranges.

Too many people pretend that life’s just a party; that nothing matters because we are always somewhere between sober and inebriated; that we don’t know anything because nothing is really knowable, and we’ll figure it out when we get there. Life’s not a party, but it’s no funeral either. It’s not a contest, a masquerade, or a bullfight. There’s no place for personal advancement and selfishness, false faces or machismo. It’ll all end too fast, and we are all too insignificant for any of these things to be meaningful.

Every burning anger was ignited by a spark of pain. Every cruel action is the result of a deep or personal hurt. There are no mean people in the world, only people who were damaged and their method of fixing the hurt damages others.

Love is the greatest mystery in the world. There is no scientific explanation for it and no definition of it. I would argue that there is nothing in the world for which the demand is higher and the apparent supply is lower, making love the most valuable thing in the world.

Sometimes, two opposites are so extremely opposite they begin to look the same. Someting that is -100º F will burn your hand the same as something that’s 300º. A lot of people couldn’t tell the difference between facism and communism, which are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Sometimes pain and beauty break your heart just the same way. East meets West on the opposite side of the world from wherever you are.

Racism is based on imagined, non-existent cultural diffences. And these imagined differences, when confirmed in the minds of the masses, convert themselves into real differences. But in the end, all people have the same wants and needs; each culture is smart and stupid and efficient and wasteful in its own way. You’ll find every kind of people everywhere you go. Whatever kind of people you know right now, you’d find that kind of people wherever you might go.

The best a man can do is to enjoy his work, to find and appreciate the beautiful and happy things, to live honestly and to live with integrity.

It wasn’t sudden or startling, but it was a gradual, creeping thing; a dawning realization. I was looking out of my eyes and my head buzzed as with alcohol. My teeth were set and my jaw sore from clenching my teeth, and I don’t know why. I slowly began to realize that I had no idea where I was or what I was doing there. I looked out of my eyes and saw that I had my left hand on the steering wheel of my car, and my right was on the shifter. It was in park.

I made no attempt to remember where I was, what the day was, what I was supposed to be doing. I just took a moment to enjoy the novelty of the situation. Heated air blew into my face, across my ears and across my hands. The cold air outside the car touched my face or hand in the irregularities of the heater, and I just sat. My head hummed comfortably, my vision moved and refocused as it does when the mind is exhausted, and I was warm in my thick poncho. My hands felt like they were in warm water, and nothing crossed my mind.

A big red SUV pulled up next to me and fell silent as three men stepped out. They watched me, and I them, as they crossed into the lighted building to my left. The third man walked slower, preoccupied with removing a beige-tipped cigarette from the box. Big windows cast big, distorted squares in orange light on the pavement in front of the building. Darkened areas in the squares that represented the three men moved and then faded as they moved away from the front of the building.

“Jactar. Jactar. Jactando. Jacto.” The word kept running through my mind, like the sound of a dripping faucet. I was whispering it out loud. “Why am I saying this word?” I thought, as my mouth continued speaking the word. What does it mean? It’s when you do something that you are proud of, and you tell somebody about it. I couldn’t remember what the other word was, if there was such a word. Then it occurred to me, “to brag.” Now why was I repeating the word for “brag”?

I wondered how long I had sat there. I still hadn’t moved a muscle except for my eyes and my mouth.. My eyes now moved to the clock, which read 10:46. What was I doing, parked in front of this building at almost 11 o’clock? The thought occurred to me that the universe had just begun. Maybe, the universe was created just seconds ago, and I was created sitting in a car in front of a building at night with the heated air blowing on my face, repeating the word "jactar. Maybe I was created with memories that would unlock as soon as something sparked them, and over time I would come to believe that the universe really had existed for all of time, not just for three minutes. I was mulling over this possibility, that I was created just moments ago, when I was interrupted.

A man with a round head, wearing a dirty apron hurriedly stalked out of the building and passed to my driver side window. I recognized the man. He triggered a memory: I had ordered food from him not 10 minutes before. He explained that they were out of tortas, but he could make me tacos if I wanted. I told him that would be fine. Another memory occurred: I was speaking Spanish. The man was speaking Spanish. I am in Mexico, and I live in an apartment in Arteaga. Piece by piece, my world began to come together. I lived in Florida. I have friends that go to UF. I have homework tonight, which is why I’m out getting dinner at this hour. I’m going home in two weeks. I had looked up a word called “jactar” earlier today, after reading it in a book.

The adjoining building, which was slightly behind me, was covered in shadow. But in the cracks around the door, the hole near the roof, and all the apertures of the building, white light burst out. It flickered and flashed, solid shafts that jutted out of the cracks, bright and quick as lightning. It looked like all of a thunderstorm’s fury packed into one room, trying to burst out the seams. But no noise emanated from the building, only silent light. Again the man with the round head and rushed gait appeared and walked toward my car. This time he had two white bags.

He brought me my tacos, and I paid him and pulled out in front of a car that honked at me and swerved. “This is ridiculous. Doesn’t he know that two minutes ago, he didn’t exist?” I recognized the intersection, and chose the correct road. In my mind, I traced in my memory the road home: past the college, over two speed bumps, past the section where the road narrows, around two curves, one more light, a low spot, a median, the plaza, a shadowy tree by a white outdoor light, my house. And when I walked in the door, I sat down and wrote this.

Language is the translation of one's thoughts, ideas, and feelings into sounds or written words, which are then translated by the listener back into thoughts, ideas and feelings. The problem of language lies in that there are these two translations that take place every time language is used, and each individual person learned differently and individually which thoughts, feelings, and ideas are represented by which sounds and words. Problems arise from this first unguided learning process and then are compounded by one's life experiences. For example, the word "beat" inspires certain ideas and feelings in a professional musician, and completely different feelings and ideas in a woman who has lived with an abusive husband for 10 years. And while I discuss the problems of this "morass" of words, thoughts, and ideas, someone might think I just said a dirty word; although it inspires in me a mental image of a sticky swamp and to me simply means "a confusing mess". The same goes for grammatical structures. Inspire certain obvious associations to the Star Wars generation, the inversion of sentences will. And though that may be, a valid sentence will the poetry scholar hear. To me, "love" is not a word to be tossed around lightly, but read someone's Myspace comments and you'll see that it obviously means something completely different to the great majority of my generation. I say all these things to mean this: when I speak a word, it is because to me that word represents a certain abstract idea. When the person to whom I am speaking hears that word, it is translated into what the hearer has learned the word to represent. It is nigh impossible that the to person to whom I am speaking, the word represents exactly the same thing as it does to me, because we learned separately and independently and our life experiences have further altered the associations we make with the given word. That is the fundamental shortcoming of language. The purpose of language is to try to bring the hearer's translation of a word as close as possible to the original intention; that the idea translated from the word is as close as possible to the idea that inspired the word.

Once I was translating something from English to Spanish, and somebody who knew a little Spanish was also listening in. This person knew only enough Spanish to make a nuisance of herself, because she still had the idea that a non-literal translation was an incorrect translation. She noted this to me, and I hadn't the time to inform her and explain exactly why attempting a literal translation of anything not only requires a misunderstanding of the aforementioned fundamental purpose of language, but is also quite an impossible pursuit. I will now address why literal translations into another language are not simply difficult, but non-existent.


Take this sentence: "Right off the bat, before I got a chance to stop him, he started singing at the top of his lungs...". 


Now, this sentence is very easy to understand of any native English-speaker. But there are a few difficult points for anyone not familiar with English slang: "right off the bat", if translated, would make absolutely no sense. "Got a chance" is also another difficult point, because "got" literally would be translated "obtained", and "got a chance" wouldn't make sense. The same with "at the top of his lungs". To translate this sentence such that it could be understood, I would have to change it to the following:


"Immediately, before I had an opportunity to stop him, he began to sing as loud as he could." 


This sentence means, in terms of denotation, exactly the same thing. However, "right off the bat" is very informal and gives the line a humorous connotation. "Before I got a chance" implies that the speaker was actively trying to shut this guy up but was unable to do so, while "had an opportunity" sounds very passive. "As loud as he could" doesn't carry quite the mental picture as "at the top of his lungs", again connoting humor. Now, if there existed an idiomatic expression for "right off the bat", I would use it, assuming it carried the same connotation and denotation. It would be the most accurate and useful translation, but would not be literal. Unfortunately, no such expression exists, so you have to go with the denoted meaning. This is my first point: both formal and informal speech in any language is so filled with untranslatable idiomatic expressions, that only a non-literal equivalent will most accurately suffice.


 Furthermore, the textbook translations most often are inaccurate. My Spanish book taught me that "to forget" translates "olvidar". For example, if I wanted to say, "I forgot that it was your birthday", I would say, "Se me olvidó que era tu cumpleaños." However, in the Spanish translation, the subject is an implied "it", "that it was your birthday" is the direct object, and the reflexive pronoun "me" makes the speaker the indirect object. Another reflexive "se" turns the action of the verb "olvidó" back onto the subject "(implied) it". The verb is the third person singular past tense...meaning a literal translation from Spanish back to English would be something like this: 


"It forgot itself to me that it was your birthday."


"It (implied) forgot itself (Se...olvidó ) to me (me) that it was your birthday (que era tu cumpleaños.)."

Obviously, "forgot" cannot be correctly used in this way. A better English translation would be "It escaped me...", but that carries obvious incorrect connotations. As you can see, a literal translation is impossible, simply because no such word exists in Spanish.

Similar difficulties are presented in nearly every sentence, especially because in Spanish the reflexive pronoun is so prevalent, while it is absent in English. Another difficulty is even words that translate fairly literally, like "to take" and "llevar", are not always used similarly. If you take a pill, you use "tomar". If you take a turn in a car, you use "dar una vuelta" ("to give a turn"). You use "llevar" as "to wear" when discussing clothing, "to have" when discussing things like accent marks, age differences, etc. The word "feo" which literally translates "ugly" is commonly used to describe weather, health, situations, music, or anything for which in English we would use "bad". I could go on and on, because the examples are as numerous all the words in the languages.

Every single word carries connotations: jokes based on the words, similarity in sound or form to other words, common usages for the purpose of humor, offense, vulgarity, etc., and life experiences all change the meaning of each word for each person. When you say a word, it will inspire slightly different ideas and feelings in anybody else, and therefore it means something different to everybody else. The best we can do is take our differences into consideration, and choose words and phrasing such that, in our best judgment, the hearer as closely as possible understands the ideas and feelings that the words are trying to express. Not only is it impractical to attempt to translate "literally", but it is also impossible two completely understand the intended meaning between to native speakers of a single language.

I could hear the waves thundering and crashing on the beach not fifty yards away, but I could not yet see the ocean. I pushed on through the thick Costa Rican flora, parrying vines and elbowing through the dense greenery. Stepping over little, fist-sized holes, I could see chitinous bodies within, pale blue and leggy. They scurried deeper into the darkness as I moved over, making little rustling noises like big spiders. Sometimes I saw a crab that had strayed too far from its hole. They were beautiful things, all sky blue, fading into a sunset pink in the center of the carapace. Periscope eyes set on stalks watched me as I fought through the impossibly thick growth, and they folded down flat when the stranded crab lodged itself under a log to escape me. The crashing was closer now, and through the trees I caught a glimpse of open sky. The jungle was thinning and was mostly just huge trees with thick bark. Iguanas scratched and scraped up the trees, dodging the huge thorns that grew out of the trunks. I walked quietly over dark seaweed that washed up during a time of high water, probably during the hurricane. Flies buzzed over the dark masses. It smelled musty and salty. I stood a moment on the seaweed to look at the beach. The shoreline stretched out in front of me, the water clear as blue glass over the dark grey sand. The ocean breathed; it sounded like a breath of air as little waves exhaled onto the sand, tumbling shells and debris in froth. It drew back into itself, rose a little bit, and exhaled again. I stepped forward into the sand...

“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!” My hand pounded the top of my alarm clock and curse words immediately leapt into my mind. I wanted to break it. I tried to open my eyes but they burned and watered like they do when I don’t get enough sleep. It was dark in my room, but through the spaces in the blinds I could see a hint of blue beginning to seep into the sky. I was angry at everything. I wanted to stay sleeping, and I promised myself I’d sleep through ever period and then take a nap after school. I only got three hours of sleep anyway, and that was the fault of Mr. Crile who obviously doesn’t know how much is too much homework. I didn’t do it anyway, but I did stay up until 3:00 because I thought about doing it.

I have a problem with reality. When I am asleep, the idea that there is a reality more real than the current one is ridiculous. It doesn’t even enter my mind most of the time. When I am awake, I believe that the dream world was not real. Two minutes ago, I fully believed that I was in Costa Rica. Now, I fully believe I am at home and quickly becoming late for school. So how do I know which is true? Today, I choose to believe that my awake world isn’t real. I prefer my dream world.

But I cannot fully convince myself that my awake world is just my imagination, so I’ll play along. I begrudgingly put a different shirt on. I take off my jeans, smell them, decide they are still clean, and then put them back on. They have lasted more than a week. I must be really clean or something. I put some water on my hair and get a piece of gum from my pocket. Walking out into the living room, I see that Kaitlin and Kyle are both ready and waiting to go, so we all get into my white Subaru. It smells like the seaweed, except a little worse. I’m seriously sick of this smell. It reminds me of school. Pulling out, I turn on the hot air to clear the windshield, and wave good-bye to Mom.

No one is talking, but I’m still in a bad mood so I don’t put on any music or news radio. Something in me wants Kaitlin and Kyle to have to suffer a little bit, too. The car ride is uneventful, and I am so tired I don’t remember anything of it by the time we arrive at school. We are late, and nobody is talking outside. It is all empty, and makes me regret even more that I will be spending the next seven and a half hours inside under fluorescent lights, doing things I’ll forget about within a year. Over the roof of the school, the dawn sky is the pink I saw on the crab shell. The woods on the other side of the parking lot are bathed in a pale light and I imagine how much I would rather spend all day sitting in those woods than in school. Patches of fog drift over the street in front of the trees, and I swear at the school under my breath. Saying swear words to myself helps me deal with things I hate.

The palm of my hand punches into the wired glass in the window of the entrance door and it swings open. The whole entrance is painted an obnoxious orange, and the floors are ugly, once-white tiles with black marks that look like scuffs from shoes. I find my way to my history class and push the door open. “Hello, Mr. Altes”, Mr. Crile greets me and all eyes flash my direction.

“Morning”, I respond. I really like Mr. Crile. He is one of my favorite teacher and he’s a good guy to have first period. All of the eyes follow me to my desk at the back of the room, where they leave me and go back to their desks. Mr. Crile is talking about the Cold War and a Russian name that probably should hold some significance to me. He turns on the slide projector and goes to turn out the lights. Bad idea, Mr. Crile. As soon as the darkness fills the classroom, I fold my arms on my desk and lay my head down. I’m going back to my dreams. I hear Mr. Crile remind the class that we are having a test on this information this Friday. I figure that means it’s important enough to remember, so I dog-ear the page. But it won’t stay folded, and the dog-ear keeps righting itself. On the page, the picture in the middle is Mr. Crile standing in the darkness in front of his projector. As he speaks, the words are typed onto the page, which is by now almost full. I keep trying to dog-ear it, and the I have to turn the page. It still won’t stay down, so I just look at the page number, 33, and tell myself to remember it. I close the book and start towards the door, but the truck hits a bump and I drop all my books. The back of the moving truck is dark and stuffy, but it’s always fun because you get to lay on the couches and pretend like it’s all permanent. The truck begins to stop, and in a moment the garage-style door is opened.

“Well, git on out!” The mustachioed man drawls. As I step onto the ramp, my head and arms start to fall forward. My heart begins to race, and my whole body is starting to fall...

I catch myself just before my head hits my desk. My book is on the ground, the room is still dark, and Mr. Crile seems to be finishing. The blessed bell breaks the darkness and everybody starts putting books in bags and filing notes.

We all file out and I head to my car. I get in and I turn the ignition. I pull out so quickly that the wheels squeak, and I push towards the entrance. Nobody guards the gate until about half-way through second period, and I am confident that my day will be better spent elsewhere.

To be continued...

When I was a child, there was a sort of freedom that I found by myself, far away from everything. You touch reality out there, away from language and money and all the things that people need to live in community. I remember exploring streams in the woods. I’d find creatures and see things that even my parents couldn’t explain, and to me that meant that those things were unknowable. How do those bugs stand on top of the water? What makes the water push out of the spring and bubble the sand like that? Where do the fish sleep? I remember asking questions that produced no answers, and that meant that in this place, we were equals. If I didn’t know, no one did. When you grow up, you forget mystery.

For a long time I lamented killing mystery. I had learned about surface tension, aquifers, and “states of lesser consciousness”. I read the field guides and knew what animals I could expect to find and where to find them. And when I went to those places that once held so much mystery I found out that it was true; it was all written down and understood. When you bring something into understanding and you lay it down and draw it out, you kill the mystery; and when the mystery goes, there’s not much value left. Mystery is what makes the difference between something wonderful and something mundane.

I have a place that is mine alone, where no one else ever goes. I went their yesterday because I like the silence.

From a distance it looks like a wrinkle in the mountains, but from inside it is a series of ridges, sharp drops and canyons that break all the way through the mountain chain. My car will take me almost to the foothills, and from there I go on foot. The moment my engine stops and I open the door, I am enveloped in quiet. There are no trees to give voice to the breeze, and the scratchy bushes are all low and tough. They are thin and tight like messes of rusty barbed-wire, and quite nearly as prickly. My trail starts down into a little canyon that probably fills with water when the rains pour down on the mountains. The bottom is made of gray rocks that sound like pool balls clacking together when I kick them. I follow a little goat-trail out of the canyon and continue along the far side side where the ground begins to slope towards the ravine. There are plants that resemble aloes that have points so sharp, they will go through my jeans and leather boots at the slightest touch. The ground is covered with these and little tufts of brown grass that can hold a footprint for days. The round grasses will stay crushed or bent long enough for me to find my own path again for as long as a week. Little thorny bushes are scattered around, often housing grasshoppers and marking jackrabbit hide-outs. Two Joshua trees stand side-by-side in the distance and I use these as markers. From where I begin, I can draw a straight line through those Joshua trees to the top of the first significant hill.

Before I get to the Joshua trees, I have to cross several deeper gullies. Low areas hold thickets of head-high thorn bushes that tore my t-shirt apart the first time I came here, so now I wear my denim jacket. After this series of ravines and thickets and flat land, I come to the Joshua trees. They stand on the base of the hill the turns into a ridge running the entire length of the “wrinkle” through the mountains. This ridge cuts what would be a single valley through the mountain chain into two smaller valleys which fall off sharply on both sides. The first time I came here, I went into the valley on the east side of the ridge, and tried to make my way up the side of the ridge but it was impossible. It was just too steep.

The slope up to the top of the ridge is long and tiring. The grade is gradual enough to allow me to ascend without any climbing, but it is wearing. It is about a mile from the Joshua trees to the top, or maybe a little more. When I had just about got to the top, I sat down on a flat rock to eat the strawberries and sandwich that I had brought. The loudest, most audacious flies I have ever known buzzed in circles around me, landing every once in a while on my food or on my face. I slapped myself pretty severely several times. I tossed a piece of bread to the side and piled the strawberry tops on it and the flies found that and left me alone. From where I sat, I could identify a large building within a block of my house. I could see my entire town, and I could follow the highway from my town all the way into Saltillo, past San Isidro and then where it connected with the highway that runs out to Monterrey. Near my feet a highway of ants ran from a clump of moss that puffed out a hole in my rock to another crack several inches away. It occurred to me that right now, that line of ants is more relevant to me than the highway. I gave them a bruised strawberry and got up. I was almost to the top of the ridge. At my first step, a brown bird that looked like a whippoorwill exploded out from the base of a barrel cactus in a frenzy of flapping and beating wings, startling me considerably. It whirred as it beat its wings and dropped over the side of the ridge, into the canyon. I walked to the cactus and found a little nest of dirt dug against the leeward side. The floor was littered with yellow butterfly wings.

I reached the top of the ridge, and was greeted by the freezing wind from the other side of the mountain. I found a place where I could put my back against a rock wall, and a short tree with green leaves made a roof. The ground was a single, solid piece of rock, and the tree was growing straight out of it. I collected the half-leaves of dead Joshua trees for fire starters, and made a little fire to stay warm. The sun was going down in a display of dark clouds set over a red orange glow, and I collected more fuel for my fire. The air was getting colder as quickly as it was getting darker. I listened to coyotes make their wild cries in the valleys as the orange lights in the city began to come on.

Before long, darkness had covered the valley in which the city sat, and the thousands of points of light shone piercingly and sharp. From up here, it is a whole sea of lights that flows and moves. White stars above me were reflected in the sea of lights below me. The moon began to rise and cast the whole scene in a pale light. It lit a halo of clouds on the east horizon, proving that they had not left with the sun.

But I could not bring myself to take a picture of any of it. If I did, I would have killed something; if I had documented it, I would have killed the mystery.

I am blinded as the two points of light approach me with increasing speed. They become audible as a swirling, windy sound that is building every moment. They come are brighter and more blinding, louder and closer, until in a mess of wind and diesel exhaust, the old bus rushes and rumbles past.

The freezing air fills my lungs in raspy breaths while my feet struggle against my bicycle pedals. I have never understood why cold air always causes my breathing to sound so harsh like this. It makes it hurt, too. It feels like I am overfilling my lungs like balloons filled too much, stretched too thin.

The night is so dark. It’s so cold and clear, I’d love to be sitting somewhere with a jacket, drinking something hot or in a car driving with the windows down and heater roaring. But I’m struggling up a hill in a t-shirt, and I’m shivering despite the physical exertion. And my breath is raspy and painful, and I hate that feeling. It reminds me of my track class when we used to have to run so far on those cold days and my lungs burned like this back then, too.

In my head I make plans for the night. I want to eat something really good, and tonight I’m willing to pay for the expensive tacos. I’ll go to Checo’s. I need to find some money somewhere, because I think I’m out. I want to listen to music too and put a jacket on. And then I’ll read a John Steinbeck book. I also need groceries and chapstick, but it’s almost 11 and I don’t remember if the grocery store is open this late. I realize that this is far too much to begin at 11. I’ll see what I feel like doing when I get home.

I have almost reached the top of the hill. It’s leveling out now and the strokes of my pedals are increasingly lighter. Across the street in the plaza a young girl is walking arm in arm with a man who I take to be her father. She’s probably about 10 years old. The father isn’t walking quite right…it takes me a moment to realize that he is blind. An even younger child of less than 5 years of age follows behind the pair. As they pass under the yellow streetlight, the man’s foot finds a spot where a brick in the sidewalk is missing, and he stumbles. He falls to his knees and then falls on his side. His face wears an expression that you don’t see often in everyday life. It is lit and by the light above him, and the man looks scared. His brow is furrowed in something like disappointment or anger, but there is pain there too. I move towards them as the child is futilely pulling on his arm. He lives his whole life like this, I realize. This isn’t just tonight. Not just today, or this week. This is his life.

My bike clatters to the curb, and the smallest child startles. I apologized for scaring her as her wide eyes searched me, and I asked the older daughter to excuse my interruption of her efforts. She stepped back, also staring at me with obvious surprise that looked more like fear. The man moved on the ground but could not lift himself. I hate looking so different, that everyone I speak to is left speechless. Why can’t they see that I’m just the same? I place my arms under the blind man’s, and count to three. On three I lift him to his feet, but all of his meager weight is still on my arms. I hold him there and wait as he finds his feet under him. The daughters watch in awe or fright, on the edge of where the light falls. The man takes his weight upon his feet, while he turns slowly towards me. I am still holding him steady, and he moves with every movement I make with my arms. He still isn’t balancing on his own. With both hands, he holds my arm as his clouded eyes search in their darkness for my face. He is maybe 40 or 50 years old, but I am looking into an old man’s eyes. He is worn and tired; this life has used him up too fast.

I ask if he is alright, and as he replies that he is the daughter comes and takes his arm again. She turns him, watching me still with something like suspicion as they slowly begin to walk away. I return to the darkness where my bike lay on the curb, and as lift it I hear an old man’s voice weakly break the silence: “Dios le bendiga.”

Standing in the bed of a pickup truck, the wind howls in your ears and deafens you. With your head in the wind it feels like you are submerging your head in a fast-flowing river, and the air tastes like water.

We watched as clouds rolled over the eternal mountains and poured rain down on the distant slopes. The setting sun through the rain and the clouds bloomed into a fiery sunset before night overtook us. It was solemn and beautiful. The word “timeless” kept coming to mind. We watched it in silence. The Olmecs had watched the same thing unfold when they lived in this jungle, and it inspired their pyramids. I don’t care what reasons scientists and anthropologists may give us for as to why they made those impossible feats of manpower and engineering. They made them because they saw those mountains; they saw the timelessness in them. The pyramids are a race’s reaching for immortality, and they got close.

After the smoldering sun had sunk below the farthest mountain, the jungle began to speak. Everywhere I have been there is a different noise at night, whether it is crickets, or the silence broken by the crashing of ocean waves, or even just the way cars sound when they pass. But here, the jungle screams at you. It is all of the animals, all at once, shouting just as loud as they can. It is overwhelming. You fly by sections where insects scratch a rhythm into the air, or other times you pass parts where you hear mostly whistling birds or screaming cats. I haven’t any idea what made most of the noises. But it was the soundtrack to our ride, and it made it wild. The truck weaved through the winding roads, dodging the vines that reached down and snatched at us. We shouted as kamikaze beetles ruptured on our faces. The air through which we passed was not the clear, thin substance that we are used to. It had a color, and it had weight. It was opaque, jet black and thick with humidity and various flying insects. Standing in the bed with our hands steadying us on the cab, the only thing that pierced the black air was the light of the headlights, and even that was choked out and smothered by darkness before it got 25 feet from the car.

When we got closer into the city and the driver slowed down, the wind and jungle also became quieter. We began to pass stores and houses. Aaron and I whistled at the groups of kids talking in the cones of yellow light under street-lamps. Sometimes they shouting things at us and we shouted back but we didn’t know what they were saying.

It is easy to point to the evils done in other generations while we sit behind our history books pointing with an accusing finger, shouting "Shame!" It is too easy not to disassociate ourselves from it, not to think that we are better. "Surely I would have stood up for what I know is right," we assure one another. "Surely I would have taken a bullet for my beliefs."

But would you? We can all say "Yes", and we can all believe that we would, but so could the Germans of that age if they had our place. If the generations were switched, and the German youth of 1920's and 30's were my generation and my generation grew up in the 20's and 30's in that defeated country, seething in pain and looking for an outlet, I don't believe anything would be any different. Me and my friends would be the Nazis, and they would be living now, reading about our atrocities in their history classes, shaking their heads in disapproval. My generation is not above being equally as deceived. My generation is not above depravity. Neither am I. I am capable of any evil that any other human is capable of. There is the same bent in all of us.

It's so easy to deny; it's so easy to say, "Evan, you are wrong here. I wouldn't rape somebody. I wouldn't kill an innocent person." If you experienced what the rapist had experienced and had grown up in his place, I daresay you'd do the same thing. If you had grown up in the place of whatever murderer; if you were tormented by the same demons and suffered the same abuses, if you felt the same needs, you would have been the murderer. I am in no way calling for our sympathy towards murderers and rapists. I am in no way saying that these things are permissible or forgivable because it could have been any one of us. No, I'm condemning the whole lot of us. We cannot save us from ourselves.

I am the Nazi holding a machine gun to a mother's head. I am the Roman soldier pounding nails into the Heretic's hands. I am the fanatic who ran a passenger jet into the World Trade Center. I am Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. I am a human, and if God can forgive these evils of which I am capable and responsible, it's certainly not because I deserve it.



After the Fall, by Arthur Miller
Act One

Quentin: [Considering a concentration camp] This is not some crazy aberration of human nature to me. I can easily see the perfectly normal contractors and their cigars, the carpenters, plumbers, sitting at ease over their lunch pails; I can see them laying the pipes to run the blood out of this mansion; good fathers, devoted sons, grateful that someone else will die, not they, and how can one understand that, if one is innocent? If somewhere in one's soul there is no accomplice-of that joy, that joy, that joy when a burden dies...and leaves you safe?"

I want smoothies. I like smoothies, and so today I went to the grocery store and bought a cheap blender, some bananas and various fruits, some yogurt, and various other smoothie ingredients. I gave Luis my bag boy 10 pesos for working his bagging art on my groceries. Surely Luis has turned his mundane job into an art form that is intelligent, skillful, and graceful. His hands fly among my purchases, matching cold items with each other, dairy-based products together, soft breads and breakable chips together. He even puts my Milky Way bar with the bag that contains the lighters I purchased, demonstrating his foresight that I might use one of both items on my drive home. He handles delicate or squishy items with the care of a doctor handling newborns. He is a marvel among bag boys. Luis followed me out towards my car. I call him Lucho because I like to. When we got to the door, we saw that the rain had begun to fall like it had an appointment and was running late. He asked, "¿Quieres un paraguas?"

"N'ombre...paraguas son para mujeres." I responded, pouring as much jocularity into the statement as I could so he knew it was a joke. I put one foot on the bar below the basket of my cart. I am confident that there is only one purpose for that bar, and that purpose is the one for which I was about to use it. I stood with one foot on that bar and kicked down the ramp of into the parking lot, pushing along skateboard-style, hooting like a madman. I sailed down the ramp and splashed into a puddle, barely skating between two cars that were passing in front of the store. The car in front of whom I passed honked, either because he wished he could join in my fun or because he wanted to make me aware of my recklessness. I felt cold water creeping into my shoes and through my socks. The cart flew, its wheels clattering raucously on the pavement. In an instant my shirt was soaked and clung to my skin. Water dripped from my hair and ran down my nose and off my chin. I could hear the small crowd that had gathered under the overhang of the grocery for fear of the rain laughing behind me. I was quickly approaching my car, and I put a foot down and the cart slid into a 180 turn, stopping right behind my car. I looked like a professional cart-rider. I put my groceries in my trunk and walked back to the store, because I forgot to buy vanilla extract. Lucho met me at the door and informed me that I was insane.

After I had got the vanilla I returned to my car. I pulled out of the parking lot onto Echeverría, which is the periférico. The rain had brought a river down from the mountains and it ran through the street, maybe about a foot deep and flowing fast enough to cause rapids around the turns and over speed bumps. I drove along in this, and I came around a turn and saw that the river deepened. The several cars that were behind me were obviously depending on my judgement for as to whether or not we could ford it. I am a go-getter. I went for it.

I saw where the water came to on the telephone pole, and I knew it was probably a stupid thing to do. But I was having a good time and nothing could dampen my spirits. The water continued rising, and my car was having trouble breathing. Two of the cars behind me had stopped. I was still going as fast as my car could, but that speed was quickly diminishing. My car choked. "Come on, man. Don't leave me here...don't leave me like this!" I pretended I was in a movie and my car was my dying father. "Come on! You can make it!" I said through clenched teeth. I am a good actor and my body believed the feigned emotions, and a tear came to my eye. But it was to no avail. My car choked again, and breathed its last. In its dying breath it filled its lungs with the muddy water, and I felt its spirit pass. It was gone.

I tried the ignition like a defibrillator. The shock made its body jump and choke, but I could not bring it back. I released the key, my battery kicked the CD player back on, and Aaron Weiss sang my favorite line, "We're like two pennies on the train track, the train crushed into one." A semi truck barreled down the street towards me, and it hit the puddle hard. It