Songs of the Dead Page 18

  “You really don’t remember this?”

  “You’re confusing me with someone else. Please stop.” She pauses. “What’s the name of the cemetery? I’ve probably never even been there.”

  I hesitate. I don’t remember. That’s odd. Everything else is so clear.

  She says, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know the name. I don’t want to make the connection.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry.”

  Memories live in places. They live in trees, stones, soil, water, birds, mice, insects, air. They live in us.

  When I put my face to the ground, and when I keep it there long enough, I can feel the memories moving from my bones to the soil’s, and from the soil’s bones into mine.

  When I put my face into the wind, I can feel the memories move back and forth between us, too, only this time the memories are different.

  Memories are living beings, like salamanders, like snakes, like stones, like storms, like flowers, like flames, like breaths of wind, like mice, only different.

  Memories are spiderwebs, shining, delicate, translucent, sticky, binding grass to grass. They are stones, solid, buried or exposed, worn away by water and wind. They are water, and they are wind. They are droplets. They are hurricanes.

  They are as alive as you or me. Put your face to the ground. Leave it there. Feel the memories move bone to bone, yours to theirs, theirs to yours.

  I lie face down in a small patch of forest behind our home. A fire swept through maybe a dozen years before we moved in, and the new trees have grown tall in the time since. I smell small plants, and soil, and the calming brown smell of duff. I feel plants on my face, and a small stone against my cheek. I shift slightly so it doesn’t poke me.

  Almost immediately—literally within two or three seconds— I have to fight an almost frantic boredom. For all I’ve written about a relationship with the land, and for all I’ve tried to live in relationship with the land where I live, I still feel an overwhelming urge to get away, to do anything but stay where I am, to do anything but touch the ground. I want to go back to the house, play some poker online, check my e-mail, call a friend. I think about the sound of distant cars on the interstate. I think about the phone bill I need to pay. I think about the celery I need to buy (my prostate is pretty much fine by now, thanks to Doctor Lu, the miracle-working Chinese herbalist, and part of the maintenance program is that I’m supposed to drink a fair amount of celery tea and eat lots of watermelon).

  I am anywhere but where I am.

  It shouldn’t be so hard to stay where I am, but it is. What am I afraid of?

  I try to bring myself back. I’m not trying to meditate: I’ve never really liked meditation as such. People ask me if I meditate, if I sit silently with my breath and try to still my mind, and I always tell them I live with trees and butterflies, and I like to sit with them.

  That’s true enough, so far as it goes, but all of my time touching trees now seems superficial to me, as though I was looking at them and even seeing them as well as I could, but still not seeing them at all.

  Lying here, I realize how very scared I am. My frantic boredom is not really boredom, but fear. Of what?

  I hear a voice. Not Allison’s, but the voice I heard in the forest when I first fell through time. The voice says the same thing it said then: “Don’t fight it.”

  I want to feel Allison’s belly against my back, her warmth and wetness against my hip. She doesn’t have to move. I just want to feel that skin to skin contact.

  The voice says, “Come closer.”

  I want to feel my face tight against her skin, buried anywhere she can wrap around me, between her neck and shoulders, her arm and chest, her breasts, her thighs. I want to feel my cheek against her belly.

  “Come.”

  I know what’s wrong. I don’t know what’s right, only what’s wrong. I remove my clothes, lie flat on my stomach. I hold my arms and legs tight to keep my weight from fully pressing on the rough surface of the ground and the sharp pine needles.

  “Come closer.”

  I do. I open my arms and open my legs. I press down my hips, no differently, no less gently, no less intimately, no less invitingly, than I would with Allison.

  If I am expecting some miracle, it doesn’t come. I merely feel myself flat against the ground.

  But I do begin to relax, starting with my shoulders, then my arms, then my back, hips, belly. I’m less stiff, more smooth.

  I smell the soil, I smell the old needles, I smell the plants. And now mixed with all that are the intimate smells from between my legs, front, back.

  And then? Nothing. Not yet.

  I see the sun glinting off the torn leaf of some plant whose name I don’t know, and hovering near my face I see a tiny gnat whose name I also don’t know. I see a fly crawling on a rotting log not far away, and farther off I see a chipmunk take three lightning steps, then stop, tail flicking, then take three more, then stop.

  I relax more. My face falls into the ground. I open my legs further.

  It’s quiet. I hear a blue jay calling as it flies overhead. In the far distance a hawk. In the small slice of sky I can see without moving my head, I see two crows dancing with each other.

  I close my eyes. I don’t know if I sleep.

  When I open them I see a snake. It is maybe five feet from me. It is a garter snake. It doesn’t move.

  I watch it for a while, then close my eyes again. When I open them the snake is gone.

  Finally I know what I need to say to the land. I say, softly, yet out loud, “Tell me.”

  It doesn’t. I know it doesn’t yet trust me that much.

  I don’t blame it.

  I go back every day. Every day I see more, every day I presume more sees me. Every day I lie body pressed flat against the earth, and every day I say, “Tell me. Tell me who you are.”

  Why should the land trust any of us?

  To be honest, anytime I walk through a forest, or walk anywhere, really, I feel like a Nazi. All I need are the jackboots. And when I lie down naked here in this copse, I feel what I’d imagine I’d feel if I were a Nazi visiting a concentration camp rape factory (sometimes called a brothel). I know myself well enough to know that if I were a Nazi, I’d be a really nice Nazi. But that wouldn’t alter the fact that I’d be a Nazi.

  Think about it.

  We hear lots of talk about the Nazi belief in a master race, but who perceives themselves to be the master culture of the master species? Who perceives this so deeply that we don’t even need to discuss it?

  The Holocaust of the Jews was conceptually, numerically, and in many other ways a small undertaking compared to the destruction of the indigenous of Europe, Africa, the Americas, Oceania, Asia. The destruction of the indigenous is small scale compared to the destruction of life on this planet. Just yesterday I read that there is essentially no phytoplankton off the coast of California or Oregon this year, in great measure because the ocean there is eleven—elev- en—degrees warmer than normal. Say hello to anthropogenic global warming. Say good-bye to the oceans.

  If you were wild, would you trust a civilized human?

  Pretend for a moment you’re a tree. Would you trust members of a society that is systematically cutting down all your relations? Pretend you’re a river. Would you trust members of a society that is entombing you and all your relations in concrete?

  What is the fundamental relationship between members of the dominant culture and the wild? If you are wild, what would it take for you to start to trust?

  Pretend aliens invaded from outer space. Pretend they began killing or enslaving everyone you knew. Pretend they perpetrated atrocity after atrocity, holocaust after holocaust. Pretend they were insatiable in their appetite for atrocity. Pretend their destructive behavior was so deeply rationalized that most of them utterly failed to perceive it as anything other than entirely normal and entirely desirable behavior. How much would you fear and hate these invaders? And pretend one of these aliens ap
proached you, told you how much she or he hates the other aliens, tells you she or he will do whatever it takes to stop them. What would it take for you to begin to believe this other?

  I finally have a chance to do something tangible to help the land. It would be more dramatic and far more interesting for this story if I rushed in with a sword and singlehandedly saved the land from timber barons, or if I took matches from madmen who were going to light fires for reasons only they understood, but the truth is much less dramatic, with far less danger to me and far more to the land.

  I walk to the corner to get the mail, and the carrier happens to be there. She says I’m a lucky guy. I ask why. She says she heard the gravel road that goes to my house is going to be paved. I ask why. She says they’re going to put in a subdivision just beyond my place, which, though she doesn’t know it, is the forest where I walk. I ask why. She looks at me like I don’t speak English.

  I get home, call a friend who happens to be a realtor and also a local politician. I ask him if this is true. I wait while he looks on his computer. He says it just sold. He says he has even worse news.

  “I can’t imagine what that would be,” I say.

  “The realtor handling it is Mike Stremburg. He sold it to his developer buddy.”

  “Stremburg doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “The guy is a sleaze. He’s a liar and a cheat. I won’t have anything to do with him.”

  I thank my friend, get off the phone. I go to my two closest neighbors. They are as appalled as I am. They’re the only neighbors I know. I’ve never spoken with the ones beyond. I write a lot about community, but the truth is that I’m not very social. I’d like to say that my community consists of the nonhumans who live near me, but while I know them better than I know most humans, I fear I don’t know them all that well either. I go to visit the third neighbor. His name’s Marvin. I tell him they’re going to put in a subdivision behind us.

  He says, “Good.”

  I don’t say anything for a moment. Finally, “You don’t mind?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It will kill the forest.”

  He asks, “How long have you been here?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “I grew up here. Mine was the first house in this area. When I was a kid I used to see thousands of quail. Used to hunt them. I used to hunt bear here, too, and cougars. Now they’re all gone, except a few bears and coyotes. It used to be paradise.”

  I don’t see his point. “If it was paradise, why won’t you fight for it? That’s exactly why we need to protect this forest. We can help those animals come back.”

  He says, “The city has to grow or die.”

  I suddenly understand the reason I didn’t see his point: he didn’t have one. He’s not thinking. To make sure, I ask, “What does that mean?”

  He just looks at me. I can tell he has no idea what my question means. I can tell he has no idea what his last statement means. I can tell he is repeating something he heard on the radio. I can tell he doesn’t much like me. That’s okay, I don’t like him either.

  “If a city grows,” I say, “by destroying the land on which it depends, how long will it last?”

  “I’ll be dead by then,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.”

  A ridiculous politeness prevents me from saying or doing what I want.

  He says, “If you don’t like the city growing, move back where you came from. You’re a part of the growth.”

  “I moved from the last place because there were too many people.”

  “There’s too many people everywhere, but what are you going to do about it? I’m a realist. You can’t fight progress. And also, I’m not selfish. I have no right to keep others from pursuing their dream of moving into a new home. And you don’t have that right either.”

  I tell him that one third of all new homes are either second homes or built for investment. I tell him that the homes to be built here are all in the latter category. He tells me again that if I don’t like it, I should go back where I came from.

  Now you know why I don’t talk to my neighbors.

  “So,” I say, “you don’t oppose the subdivision?”

  “Not only that,” he responds, “if you oppose the subdivision, I will oppose you.”

  I go to the next neighbor, and the neighbor after that, and after that. With the exception of Marvin, we’re unanimous.

  Now this is where the timber baron or madman scenarios would be more exciting. They would involve bravery, cunning, drama, danger, lots of fighting, and probably some sex in order to garner the coveted R rating. Instead, I take a bunch of remarkably dull trips to the planning department, hold meetings with the neighbors (crisis works wonders for creating community), and comment at public hearings.

  It ends up that Mike Stremburg, years before, had “slimed”— to use their word—several members of the planning commission in separate financial transactions. The members of the planning commission are only too eager to find any reason to turn Stremburg down flat.

  In this case the (very small) forest is saved, for now, because we spoke up. And we persevered. In this case, that was all it took.

  It’s the day after the planning commission’s decision. I walk into the forest. A small bird suddenly flies from the nearby underbrush directly toward me, only turning at the last moment. It flies so close that I feel its wing brush my chest.

  It’s the day after that. Walking through the forest I see a toad the size of a small dinner plate. It doesn’t move.

  It’s one more day later. Today I see the biggest pile of bear poop I have ever seen.

  I know what this is: it is the forest saying thank you.

  I’m lying on my back in the forest. I’m naked. My knees are bent, my feet are flat on the ground. I’m looking at the tops of trees, and beyond them clouds, and beyond them the pale blue sky.

  By now I’m no longer afraid to feel the ground on my skin. I like it. It feels good.

  But I guess I should be explicit. Although we’ve shared much skin to soil contact, we haven’t made love in any more active sense. I turn over, rest my cheek against the duff.

  The day is warm, almost hot. I close my eyes. I say, “Tell me about yourself.”

  If I’m expecting the land to miraculously open up to me, give me some marvelous vision simply because I took some trips to the planning department, I’m disappointed. Not much happens.

  I think about the fact that often when I’m stuck writing, it’s because I’m asking the wrong question. The same is often true with Allison: if we’re stuck in some argument, we sometimes step back and see if the problem is that we’re asking ourselves and each other the wrong questions. More often than not, new questions appear, and we find that asking the right questions resolves the conflict, or at least opens it—and us—to more meaningful communication.

  I wonder if that’s part of my problem (presuming I even have a problem: it seems ungracious to consider myself as having any problems when I’m lying naked in a forest on a sunny summer afternoon). I search for a different question, and one strikes me almost immediately with the power of a fist. It’s a question I’ve never before asked anyone, nor has anyone ever asked me. I’ve never even asked Allison. It is immediately clear to me that it is the fundamental question to be asked by anyone who wants to be in any sort of relationship with anyone else. The question is very simple, and the desire to have someone ask it of me almost brings tears to my eyes. I ask the forest, “What is it like to be you?”

  Still, no miracle comes. No bolts of lightning cross the palest blue sky I’ve ever seen. No trees fall, then swerve at the last moment. No dragons fly away farting.

  But I do see a bumblebee walking floret to floret on a sweet clover. The stalk hangs heavy under her weight. I see small solitary bees buzzing the tops of yellow flowers, and I see the flowers themselves moving ever-so-slightly in a breeze they feel far better than I. I see a long-legged spider walking leg over leg across air betwee
n two plants. I feel a tickling on my arm, and look over to see a tiny inchworm—maybe a quarterinchworm—making his way across my forearm. I lean up close to the long, slender stalk of some grass, and the worm quarterinches his way from me to a plant.

  What is it like to be a forest? It is to be alive. It is to be filled with aliveness, to be ablaze with aliveness. It is to be rooted in place, like a tree, and it is to move, like bees, like bears, like spiders who throw out webs as sails and travel around the world. It is to be connected one to the others in spiderwebs of memories, parasites, nutrients, hitchhikers, neighborly and nonneighborly relationships, time, joys, sorrows, regrets, anticipations, deaths, births, hatchings, germinations, eatings, sex, dreams. It is to be living the same blazing, burning, comforting, joyful, exhilarating, calming dream. It is to carry all these lives and all these deaths and all this sun and soil and decomposition and growth and disease and all these memories in one’s bones, and in the marrow of one’s bones, and in the woody fiber of one’s bones, and in the nectar of one’s bones, and in the breath of wind of one’s bones, and in the dragonfly-red pigment of one’s bones. It is the marriage of hitchhiker and hitchhiker and bone and blood and memory and wood and soil.

  That’s the barest start.

  I see a white crab spider sit motionless on a white flower, waiting to bring death to some bee who lands here, waiting to feed. I see two ants carry a dead grub presumably toward their home. I see a leaf fall from a bush, and I see another bush bright and bulbous with galls. I see wood dust from boring beetles, and somewhere in the distance I hear the rapid rapping of a woodpecker searching for a meal.

  I’m as surrounded by death as I am by life, and suddenly I’m having trouble seeing where one begins and the other ends. I even start to think that one may not be so different from the other, but then I reach to scratch a tickling on my leg and accidentally come away with a dead spider on my hand. This brings me right back to knowing that there is a stark difference between life and death: moments before, the spider was alive, and now she is irrevocably dead.

  To be a forest, I think—or feel, or am told—is to realize, to be, that contradiction: of life and death melting together on one hand, and separated by a chasm on the other. And of course it’s not just life and death that are both miscible and immiscible. The same is true for everything: where does the bee start and the wind end? Where does the tree start and the boring beetle end? Where do the bush, the gall wasp, and the gall each begin and end? To be a bee, or spider, or tree, or woodpecker, or wild human being, is to have entirely different relationships with life and death and each other than all of those relationships I have learned. Life and death—and all others—are partners with whom we dance from beginning to end and back to beginning.