by Paul Nachbar
And who is really there who is fully competent to judge anyone for anything?
And with what transcendent, time honored, elite or democratic
Credentials or expertise or authority are they capable of objectively and fairly doing such in and place and time?
Somebody's mother, somebody's father?
Somebody's wife, somebody's husband
Somebody's mistress gigolo sex slave whore fiancee spouse
Somebody's daughter , somebody's son?
Somebody's granddaughter or somebody's grandson?
Somebody's great grand daughter or somebody's great grandson?
Somebody's brother somebody's sister
Somebody's uncle or aunt or great uncle or aunt
Somebody's niece or nephew
Somebody's cousins first, second or beyond that, however much removed.
Somebody with zero shares of stock in The Company or perhaps
Somebody with a hundred million shares of stock in The Company?
Somebody's boss, somebody's manager, somebody's caretaker,
Somebody's doctor, somebody's nurse, somebody's therapist,...
Somebody's "friend" or friend? Somebody's teacher, somebody's
Superior officer, somebody's advisor......somebody's co worker,
Somebody's attorney, somebody's subordinate..
Somebody who is a carbon based life form or somebody who is a silicon
based life form a mixture or the two or other?
A medical doctor or scientist of any merit could trace this one back or forward in space and time with virtuousity
Emphasizing the uracil and guanine and adenine and thiamine
And ignoring the emotionality and sentimentality
What people imagined, feared, hoped for, dreamed, read about,
Considered, acted upon, believed, said and thought
Or whatever shards or shreds we have for what was said or thought or felt
Or done. and how that was evaluated.
The battles from the smallest to the largest which were fought about
The different evidence, points of view
What at times they lived and died for.
Although despite all seeming imperfections you may see in me, and the trillion trillion
Trillion trillion trillion that I also find in myself - I was honored
By my cousin Phillip back in the early 1980's with the title of godfather
To his baby daughter who since then has grown and become a woman
A teacher a person in her own right.
No contract written down you understand, just a promise:
If anything happened, i would take care of the daughter
Or should I say in some measure the daughters and the sons...?
I will honor that.
Paul the Godfather
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Idealism so called Revisited
by Paul Nachbar
What are their ways?
The ways of the households?
You can talk true justice for a half an hour
And everybody knows that
But then you get exhausted from the strain
Of being too much yourself and too little them.
You get the barracks ways
You get the henhouse ways
You want much more than that?
You get the jealous ways
And then you get exhausted from the strain.
Of seeking something higher than that in the emotional range.
You get such and such a barracks
Which hates or loves such and such another barracks
Or hates or loves such and such another henhouse
And such and such a henhouse with its communal perceptions
And traditional ways of assessing who gets what down to the
Tiniest reward or punishment
This is the way it is anywhere you go
This is the way it was anywhere you went
Maybe this is the way it will be anywhere you go
If with luck and work and nature and nurture i am
A centimeter taller than the others, they can easily drag you back down
All the way down to the vast majority, perhaps, however they really feel about you
This is what it is all built upon:
The gangs, the fraternities, the faculties, the staffs,the clubs
The businesses the households, the institutions, the laws
And local customs whether they are sane and good or insane and bad
Since I am way way too exhausted to say more I will just grin a tired
Idiotic grin and curl up, lay down, doze off to never someday land.
What are their ways?
The ways of the households?
You can talk true justice for a half an hour
And everybody knows that
But then you get exhausted from the strain
Of being too much yourself and too little them.
You get the barracks ways
You get the henhouse ways
You want much more than that?
You get the jealous ways
And then you get exhausted from the strain.
Of seeking something higher than that in the emotional range.
You get such and such a barracks
Which hates or loves such and such another barracks
Or hates or loves such and such another henhouse
And such and such a henhouse with its communal perceptions
And traditional ways of assessing who gets what down to the
Tiniest reward or punishment
This is the way it is anywhere you go
This is the way it was anywhere you went
Maybe this is the way it will be anywhere you go
If with luck and work and nature and nurture i am
A centimeter taller than the others, they can easily drag you back down
All the way down to the vast majority, perhaps, however they really feel about you
This is what it is all built upon:
The gangs, the fraternities, the faculties, the staffs,the clubs
The businesses the households, the institutions, the laws
And local customs whether they are sane and good or insane and bad
Since I am way way too exhausted to say more I will just grin a tired
Idiotic grin and curl up, lay down, doze off to never someday land.
Untitled
by Dedra Keller
We are all vulnerable to the wastes of time
Susceptible to the influences of stress
Regardless of breadth, depth,
Intelligence of person
We are all vulnerable
We are all vulnerable to the wastes of time
Susceptible to the influences of stress
Regardless of breadth, depth,
Intelligence of person
We are all vulnerable
Today
by Sonja Aiken Struthers
Today I stand in the shower and watch the water
Run down the wreckage that is my body
A body that four months ago was still me
Today I do not know the person in the mirror
There is nothing left there that I recognize
Today I sit to dry what is left of my hair
And wonder why…
The drugs and my Moriarty will take this as well
Today I look at the face of my husband and I am torn between overwhelming guilt and gratitude
So pale…dark shadows beneath his eyes; belying the cheerful voice and fear I know fills his heart
Trying to do everything while assuring me it is not too much, the cost not too high
I weep because I know that it is
Today I went outside into my garden to trim the dead flowers from my roses
Desperate for a sense of normalcy
Hoping I will see them bloom again
Today my beautiful dogs lay their noble heads in my lap to comfort me
My steadfast guardians
They lick the tears from my face and know I am still Mom
Today I consider my options
Hope is elsewhere
Today, I am not brave
©Sonja L. Struthers 7.29.13
Today I stand in the shower and watch the water
Run down the wreckage that is my body
A body that four months ago was still me
Today I do not know the person in the mirror
There is nothing left there that I recognize
Today I sit to dry what is left of my hair
And wonder why…
The drugs and my Moriarty will take this as well
Today I look at the face of my husband and I am torn between overwhelming guilt and gratitude
So pale…dark shadows beneath his eyes; belying the cheerful voice and fear I know fills his heart
Trying to do everything while assuring me it is not too much, the cost not too high
I weep because I know that it is
Today I went outside into my garden to trim the dead flowers from my roses
Desperate for a sense of normalcy
Hoping I will see them bloom again
Today my beautiful dogs lay their noble heads in my lap to comfort me
My steadfast guardians
They lick the tears from my face and know I am still Mom
Today I consider my options
Hope is elsewhere
Today, I am not brave
©Sonja L. Struthers 7.29.13
Untitled
by Mike Zielinski
The streams run wild.
It is flood season.
The streams overflow
their banks rearranging
eveything. Nothing is safe.
Houses,cars, mailboxes, and
train tracks, all get moved.
But then I call you at night
And the sound of your voice
Helps the waters recede
And the streams are in
their banks once again
House,cars, and train tracks
Are put back up,
In different places,
Perhaps better places.
The streams run wild.
It is flood season.
The streams overflow
their banks rearranging
eveything. Nothing is safe.
Houses,cars, mailboxes, and
train tracks, all get moved.
But then I call you at night
And the sound of your voice
Helps the waters recede
And the streams are in
their banks once again
House,cars, and train tracks
Are put back up,
In different places,
Perhaps better places.
A Life of War
by Jacquelinne White
My father lived through WW1. He was in the British trenches that famous Christmas when the Germans, in their own trenches only yards away, threw sausages over to the British and the British sent them back plum puddings. Daddy was one of the men who danced on no-man's-land that Christmas Eve. Young and beautiful German men and the young and beautiful Canadians and other British men danced together until each side was called back and told to continue trying to kill one another. My father lived long enough in the trenches to see the hands of the men they had buried in the walls fling off the dirt and stretch out those hands so their still- alive fellow soldiers could shake them going by and send them greetings. He lived through being buried alive for three days, buried under the earth piled up by a bursting bomb. His fellow soldiers found him when there was a "lull", still breathing, talking but not responding to them. Over and over he said," It is Wednesday to-day. It is Wednesday to-day." He had been buried on a Wednesday and tried to keep his sanity by repeating that sentence.
It was one of the first sentences I ever heard and only partially understood. My sisters were one and two years younger than I. We, too young to fully understand, realized Daddy sat down and gripped the arms of his chair when he was under stress. So when we were sad or disappointed we too sat in our chairs, our small chairs, grabbed the seat beneath our bottoms and repeated, "It is Wednesday to-day." We were of course corrected by the maids, our mother, and our much older siblings. When we were a little older and had been trained not express ourselves in that manner we would still hear Daddy so we would hit him on his hands or his knees and say, "No, Daddy. It is not Wednesday," and he would come out of his trance. We did that all through our childhood and our teens and our early twenties, until we left home, and even when we came back to visit we sometimes brought him back to the present by tapping him, stroking his head, being more gentle than we had been as children when we did not fully understand.
He "talked to himself," but it was not really talking to himself. He talked to Alfie. He always said the same thing. " Your mother is coming Alfie. It is going to be fine. Your mother is coming." I questioned him about that when I was perhaps three years old. We lived on a Cree Indian reserve in Saskatchewan. It was a short walk from our home to his office. The walk was on a narrow dirt path through a little poplar woods, beside a willow-rimmed pond, across a little meadow, over a style into the cow yard, across that yard and through a gate to his office in the middle of another meadow. I used to follow, every chance I got, padding along silently behind him, listening to him. I always turned back just before the style because I was afraid of the milling cows. One day when we were almost to the style I startled him by asking, " Who is Alfie?" We sat down on the steps of the style and he told me about Alfie. Nothing he told me made much sense to me but I pondered and I remembered. Before he started he said something about it not being necessary to tell Momma. We were used to having secrets from our mother and we understood why. There might be trouble if she knew our secrets. He then told me about Alfie. He said, "Jacquelinne, he was only sixteen years old. He was wounded and going to die and he kept calling for his mother. He was only sixteen. I thought it would comfort him to think his mother was coming. He was only sixteen when he died, Jacquelinne."
At the age of three or four I could not comprehend sixteen years. Sixteen seemed very very old, maybe about the same as ninety. I think I must have been in my middle teens before I properly understood. Alfie had slipped by the recruiters and had been sent to the trenches with men eighteen years old.
It seems to me I have always known war. I was nineteen in September 1939. Still young when Korea came along. Not old during the Vietnam war, fearful they would draft my grandson in the Gulf War. Now there is war again and others living through the horrors and even worse than the generations before them, unspeakable though those wars were.
Thousands and thousands all over the world are marching and protesting but I also hear people saying, " Turn off the news. Do not think about it. We cannot do anything so why think about it." I have no response for them. I do not criticize them. But it is in me to remember and to cry out. I need to paint it, to write it as artists and writers for all time have done. Guernica. On two magazine covers, The New Yorker and Harpers. Picasso's Guernica. We remember the Spanish artist of 200 hundred years ago who was so explicit in what war looked like. I am so grieved I cannot bring up his name. Most of you know his name I am sure and I too shall in a few moments. I am too stunned to think clearly.
The man's name was Goya. Remember the woman with a bayonet, with a baby in her arms. Remember her victim.
Daddy told another tale: He was sitting, alone, under the only tree left in what had been a small wood. The tree was shorn of leaves, blasted off by the same ammunition that had felled the other trees. It was moonlight. A nightingale flew over and dropped onto one of few branches left on the tree, threw back its head and sang to him.
It was one of the first sentences I ever heard and only partially understood. My sisters were one and two years younger than I. We, too young to fully understand, realized Daddy sat down and gripped the arms of his chair when he was under stress. So when we were sad or disappointed we too sat in our chairs, our small chairs, grabbed the seat beneath our bottoms and repeated, "It is Wednesday to-day." We were of course corrected by the maids, our mother, and our much older siblings. When we were a little older and had been trained not express ourselves in that manner we would still hear Daddy so we would hit him on his hands or his knees and say, "No, Daddy. It is not Wednesday," and he would come out of his trance. We did that all through our childhood and our teens and our early twenties, until we left home, and even when we came back to visit we sometimes brought him back to the present by tapping him, stroking his head, being more gentle than we had been as children when we did not fully understand.
He "talked to himself," but it was not really talking to himself. He talked to Alfie. He always said the same thing. " Your mother is coming Alfie. It is going to be fine. Your mother is coming." I questioned him about that when I was perhaps three years old. We lived on a Cree Indian reserve in Saskatchewan. It was a short walk from our home to his office. The walk was on a narrow dirt path through a little poplar woods, beside a willow-rimmed pond, across a little meadow, over a style into the cow yard, across that yard and through a gate to his office in the middle of another meadow. I used to follow, every chance I got, padding along silently behind him, listening to him. I always turned back just before the style because I was afraid of the milling cows. One day when we were almost to the style I startled him by asking, " Who is Alfie?" We sat down on the steps of the style and he told me about Alfie. Nothing he told me made much sense to me but I pondered and I remembered. Before he started he said something about it not being necessary to tell Momma. We were used to having secrets from our mother and we understood why. There might be trouble if she knew our secrets. He then told me about Alfie. He said, "Jacquelinne, he was only sixteen years old. He was wounded and going to die and he kept calling for his mother. He was only sixteen. I thought it would comfort him to think his mother was coming. He was only sixteen when he died, Jacquelinne."
At the age of three or four I could not comprehend sixteen years. Sixteen seemed very very old, maybe about the same as ninety. I think I must have been in my middle teens before I properly understood. Alfie had slipped by the recruiters and had been sent to the trenches with men eighteen years old.
It seems to me I have always known war. I was nineteen in September 1939. Still young when Korea came along. Not old during the Vietnam war, fearful they would draft my grandson in the Gulf War. Now there is war again and others living through the horrors and even worse than the generations before them, unspeakable though those wars were.
Thousands and thousands all over the world are marching and protesting but I also hear people saying, " Turn off the news. Do not think about it. We cannot do anything so why think about it." I have no response for them. I do not criticize them. But it is in me to remember and to cry out. I need to paint it, to write it as artists and writers for all time have done. Guernica. On two magazine covers, The New Yorker and Harpers. Picasso's Guernica. We remember the Spanish artist of 200 hundred years ago who was so explicit in what war looked like. I am so grieved I cannot bring up his name. Most of you know his name I am sure and I too shall in a few moments. I am too stunned to think clearly.
The man's name was Goya. Remember the woman with a bayonet, with a baby in her arms. Remember her victim.
Daddy told another tale: He was sitting, alone, under the only tree left in what had been a small wood. The tree was shorn of leaves, blasted off by the same ammunition that had felled the other trees. It was moonlight. A nightingale flew over and dropped onto one of few branches left on the tree, threw back its head and sang to him.
Keynote
by Paul Maxim
Albinone wrote fifty-three operas,
none of which survived,
while Beethoven wrote only one,
all of which survived,
including four overtures,
three entr'actes, two intermezzi,
and one horrendous climax,
in which a caste of singers clambers back onstage,
and helps extract the tenor from his queasy cage.
But Rossini, nimble tunesmith,
outdid them all
by writing only half an opera
- called Semiramide* -
about an ancient Babylonian Princess
(or maybe she was just a Quean)
who thought she could reshape the course of history -
but why she thought so still remains a mystery.
Now, had that tunester only written
one whole Ramide
- it might have seemed a trifle overlong,
- it might have lacked a dance to fleshify its song,
but still most likely it would not have made him smirk
(as rumor swears he did):
"Half an opera she is better than none,
and mine have coined more lira than yours
have ever done!'
Albinone wrote fifty-three operas,
none of which survived,
while Beethoven wrote only one,
all of which survived,
including four overtures,
three entr'actes, two intermezzi,
and one horrendous climax,
in which a caste of singers clambers back onstage,
and helps extract the tenor from his queasy cage.
But Rossini, nimble tunesmith,
outdid them all
by writing only half an opera
- called Semiramide* -
about an ancient Babylonian Princess
(or maybe she was just a Quean)
who thought she could reshape the course of history -
but why she thought so still remains a mystery.
Now, had that tunester only written
one whole Ramide
- it might have seemed a trifle overlong,
- it might have lacked a dance to fleshify its song,
but still most likely it would not have made him smirk
(as rumor swears he did):
"Half an opera she is better than none,
and mine have coined more lira than yours
have ever done!'
Da Capo
by Grady Towers
I wanted to know if it was possible to cross a human being with a chimpanzee and obtain a viable offspring. I knew of course that man has 46 chromosomes and the chimpanzee, like the other great apes, has 48. But I also knew that the horse has 64 chromosomes and the ass has 62 and they can still be crossed to produce a mule with 63. That implied that a difference in chromosome compliment might not be the barrier to breeding that it first appeared to be. I also knew that the DNA sequences of man and chimpanzee were identical at 99 out of 100 base pairs. The possibilities for a viable cross, therefore, looked reasonably good - good enough at any rate to justify spending some time in a library researching the matter.
At first I considered trying to find out if anyone had actually carried out such an experiment. Mankind's sexual propensities being what they are, I wouldn't have been surprised; there's a good reason for syphilis being named for a mythological shepherd. But I finally discarded this approach as unproductive; I found myself chasing rumors of Bigfoot and yeties, rather than securing information I could trust. So I eventually turned to experimental genetics for my data, and there I found the answer to my question. The answer came from an article titled "The Striking Resemblence of High-Resolution G-Banded Chromosomes of Man and Chimpanzee," written by Jorge J. Yunis, Jeffrey R. Sawyer and Kelly Dunham [Science, Vol 208, 6 June 1980, pp. 1145-8]. These investigators applied a new staining agent called giemsa to the chromosome compliments of man and chimpanzee and made a detailed comparison of their banding patterns. Their new stain was able to resolve more than a thousand bands in the chromosomes of each species, revealing a similarity so close that they found it difficult to account for the phenotypic differences. As part of their article, they provided a diagram of the chromosome comparisons, showing not only an astonishing similarity, but a number of interesting differences as well. Among these differences was the revelation of nine pericentric inversions. This observation provided the answer to my question. Chromosome inversions are known to result in semi-sterility when crosses are made to individuals without the inversion. Since there are nine of these, and since a cross with only one inversion results in semi-sterility, the answer must be: No, it's not possible to cross a human being with a chimpanzee and obtain a viable offspring.
Sometimes, however, when one is looking for an answer to a trivial question, one stumbles across the answer to a much more important one. That's what happened in this case. The diagram given in the article clearly reveals the exact genetic mechanism responsible for the evolution of genus Homo, and strongly suggests that this did not take place over hundreds of thousands of years, as is generally believed, but occurred within the span of only three generations.
The theory of evolution taught in school when I was an undergraduate anthropology major was called the Modern Synthesis, a term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942. It attempted to integrate the insights offered by Darwinian evolution with those of modern population biology and genetics. Essentially it said that point mutation within structural genes was the source of variability within species, that the emergence of a new species was the result of the accumulation of many mutations, and that the pace of evolution was slow. Moreover, it said that the direction of evolutionary change was the result of natural selection working small variations. The shape of an organism, in other words, was the result of its adaptation to a specific environment. In effect, the theory said that the origin of a new species (macroevolution) was due to exactly the same causes as changes within a species (microevolution). But above all, it said that change was gradual.
As time went by, however, geologists and paleontologists began to find the theory unsatisfactory. No one doubted that the overall record showed a steady increase in the diversity and complexity of species, but it was becoming embarrassingly obvious that the fossil record did not show a smooth transition from one form to another. Instead, the record that species typically remained unchanged for millions of years, and then were abruptly replaced by a new species that were substantially different in form though clearly related. Evolution apparently worked in a jerky fashion, rather than in the smooth, gradual manner postulated by the Modern Synthesis.
The new view of evolution as characteristically jerky, now called punctuated equilibrium, was given its present form by Steven Jay Gould of Harvard and Niles Elderidge of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They conceded that mutation and adaptation to specific environments, as postulated in the Modern Synthesis, applied to macroevolution as well as microevolution, but they also believed that another factor was at work in species formation. Among the most likely candidates for this factor was one called chromosome speciation. This theory, as proposed by Guy Bush of the University of Texas and Alan Wilson of Berkeley, says that a new species arises as a result of a re-arrangement of chromosome structure and not as a result of mutation. This proposal is a sound one. The connection between chromosome number and speciation is one kind of re-arrangement that is well known among plant breeders. They've known for a long time that by simply increasing the number of chromosomes typical of a species - a phenomenon called polyploidy - that it was possible to obtain a new variety with different characteristics. Many commercial plants, it turns out, were created in exactly this way; common bread wheat, for example, is a hexaploid, having three times as many chromosomes as its parent species, and some strawberries are octoploid, with four times the expected number.
But while polyploidy is fairly common among plant species, it's rarely found among animals, being observed mostly among those that reproduce asexually. Instead, the chromosome re-arrangement most often exhibited in animal species is translocation. This is when non-homologous chromosomes break and exchange parts: one of the two chromosomes in pair A exchange a part with one of the two chromosomes in pair B. If the break in the respective chromosomes occurs near their ends and the long parts are joined together, the short segments sometimes contain so little genetic information that they may be lost. This gives the appearance of two chromosomes having been fused together. This is what happened in our own ancestry, and is the mechanism responsible for the origin of man.
I have reproduced a small part of the diagram given in the article, showing the human second chromosome on the top, and two chimpanzee chromosomes on the bottom. It is patently obvious that the human second chromosome was created by translocation, or a fusion if you prefer, of two chimpanzee chromosomes. Or to be more precise, that the human second chromosome was created by a translocation of two chromosomes in an animal that was ancestor to both man and chimpanzee.
The sequence of events probably took place something like this. About five million years ago a translocation like that described above occurred in a pithecine male who was the controller of a harem of females. Rather than having 48 chromosomes, which was normal for his species, he had 47. When he mated with members of his harem, who possessed the usual number of chromosomes, half of his offspring would have had 48 chromosomes and half would have had 47. If some of those with 47 chromosomes mated among themselves, or were back-bred to their father, one quarter of their offspring would have had 48 chromosomes, one half would have had 47, and one quarter would have had 46. Those with 46 were the prototype of the new genus Homo. But at this stage they were not yet a new species. At most they can be thought of as a new chromosomal race., probably with great phenotypic difference from their fellows, but still not yet a new species. That had to wait for the appearance of one of the chromosome inversions discussed above. This inversion also probably occurred in a male with a harem and was transmitted in much the same way as the translocation. In this case, however, crosses between individuals with the inversion and those without produced only a few offspring, while matings between inverted chromosomes continued to be fertile, as did those without the inversion. This was the first step in breeding isolation. Suddenly, almost overnight, a new species came into existence.
I'm personally convinced that something like the scenario just presented really did take place. The exact details are almost certainly wrong, but the essentials ought to be correct. Still, it would be nice to have some experimental confirmation of the theory. Suppose we were to cut the human second chromosome in egg and sperm at exactly the same place it was originally fused together using recombinant DNA techniques. Could we back-breed man's pithecine ancestor? Could we recover "Lucy," the first member of our genus?
When this idea first occurred to me, I had a wonderful time working out the social and legal implications that would result if such an experiment could be carried out successfully. Unfortunately, the experiment won't work. Cutting the chromosome at the exact spot necessary is fairly simple in principle: one merely tailors the appropriate endonuclease for the point at which the cut is to be made. But the problem that can't be overcome is that only one of the two chromosome fragments would have a centromere, the indented part in the diagram. This is where the spindle fibers attach during cell reproduction, and without a centromere for every chromosome, the reproductive process fails. The cell dies.
On the other hand, another equally exciting experiment might well be possible. Suppose we applied DNA techniques to the chromosomes of chimpanzees. Suppose we attempt to fuse the same two chromosomes in chimpanzees that resulted in the origin of our own genus. Could we expect to get the same profound physical and mental changes that occurred in our own ancestry? And what are these changes likely to be? We know from Jane Goodall's work that chimpanzees are already tool users, and although scholars are bitterly divided on the subject, some believe chimps already have a rudimentary command of language. Furthermore, Arthur Jensen claims that the very brightest chimpanzees have the mental ability equivalent to that of the average nine or ten year old human [Bias in Mental Testing, p. 182]. Could an experiment like the one proposed tilt chimpanzees across the threshold into full intelligence?
Aside from possible mental changes that might result, we could also expect two important physical changes. One is an increase in neotony. Neotony means that the individual retains infant-like characteristics throughout its life span. When a human infant is compared to a chimpanzee or gorilla infant, their appearance turns out to be amazingly alike. But as each species matures, chimps and gorillas change greatly, whereas man continues to resemble his infant self.
The second physical change is likely to be more upright stature with the long human leg and striding walk. Much is made of man's opposing thumb, his stereoscopic color vision, his capacity for language, and so on; but his evolutionary success has been as much the result of his striding walk as all the more salient characteristics. If we were as short legged as chimps and gorillas - still knuckle-walkers - we would be confined to the continent of Africa. As it is, we spread over the entire face of the earth in a remarkably short time. Our chimpanzee protégés might be physically blessed in a similar way.
Could present DNA techniques really accomplish the fusion of two chromosomes? I admit that the outcome of such an experiment is far more problematical than simply cutting a chromosome in the right place. But if it is presently impossible, it soon won't be. A new engineering discipline called nano-technology will make the process child's play. The new technology is concerned with building microscopic machines and micromanipulators. Some of those working in the field believe that one day chemists may be able to physically manipulate individual atoms, to assemble and disassemble molecules as though they were tinker toys. If so, then the fusion of two chromosomes will be simple in comparison.
Very well, then, suppose the techniques work. Suppose that the experiment is tried and we do indeed obtain a viable, intelligent variety of chimp. Then what happens? Then the investigator applies for a patent. According to federal law, a new variety of life can be patented. Obviously, the law was intended to cover microbes that manufacture useful chemicals, or clean up oil spills. Obviously, it was not intended to cover the origin of a new, possibly intelligent species. Obviously, the case would go to the Supreme Court. One wonders how that court will deal with the hoary philosophical question of, "What is Man?"
Should such an experiment be carried out? For decades now, astronomers have been searching the heavens for signs of intelligent life. I submit that the reason for that search can be used as validly to justify the experiment I've proposed. Moreover, because they are our distant kin we have far more to learn from an intelligent race of chimps than we could ever hope to learn from some alien species in the stars: insights into intelligence, language, social organization and so on. But most of all, I would want to know if they had souls. The only way I can see to answer that question is to teach them one or more of the great religions and then to ask them. No matter what they might say, the answer is bound to be fascinating. Then I would ask them if they thought we had souls, too.
I wanted to know if it was possible to cross a human being with a chimpanzee and obtain a viable offspring. I knew of course that man has 46 chromosomes and the chimpanzee, like the other great apes, has 48. But I also knew that the horse has 64 chromosomes and the ass has 62 and they can still be crossed to produce a mule with 63. That implied that a difference in chromosome compliment might not be the barrier to breeding that it first appeared to be. I also knew that the DNA sequences of man and chimpanzee were identical at 99 out of 100 base pairs. The possibilities for a viable cross, therefore, looked reasonably good - good enough at any rate to justify spending some time in a library researching the matter.At first I considered trying to find out if anyone had actually carried out such an experiment. Mankind's sexual propensities being what they are, I wouldn't have been surprised; there's a good reason for syphilis being named for a mythological shepherd. But I finally discarded this approach as unproductive; I found myself chasing rumors of Bigfoot and yeties, rather than securing information I could trust. So I eventually turned to experimental genetics for my data, and there I found the answer to my question. The answer came from an article titled "The Striking Resemblence of High-Resolution G-Banded Chromosomes of Man and Chimpanzee," written by Jorge J. Yunis, Jeffrey R. Sawyer and Kelly Dunham [Science, Vol 208, 6 June 1980, pp. 1145-8]. These investigators applied a new staining agent called giemsa to the chromosome compliments of man and chimpanzee and made a detailed comparison of their banding patterns. Their new stain was able to resolve more than a thousand bands in the chromosomes of each species, revealing a similarity so close that they found it difficult to account for the phenotypic differences. As part of their article, they provided a diagram of the chromosome comparisons, showing not only an astonishing similarity, but a number of interesting differences as well. Among these differences was the revelation of nine pericentric inversions. This observation provided the answer to my question. Chromosome inversions are known to result in semi-sterility when crosses are made to individuals without the inversion. Since there are nine of these, and since a cross with only one inversion results in semi-sterility, the answer must be: No, it's not possible to cross a human being with a chimpanzee and obtain a viable offspring.
Sometimes, however, when one is looking for an answer to a trivial question, one stumbles across the answer to a much more important one. That's what happened in this case. The diagram given in the article clearly reveals the exact genetic mechanism responsible for the evolution of genus Homo, and strongly suggests that this did not take place over hundreds of thousands of years, as is generally believed, but occurred within the span of only three generations.
The theory of evolution taught in school when I was an undergraduate anthropology major was called the Modern Synthesis, a term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942. It attempted to integrate the insights offered by Darwinian evolution with those of modern population biology and genetics. Essentially it said that point mutation within structural genes was the source of variability within species, that the emergence of a new species was the result of the accumulation of many mutations, and that the pace of evolution was slow. Moreover, it said that the direction of evolutionary change was the result of natural selection working small variations. The shape of an organism, in other words, was the result of its adaptation to a specific environment. In effect, the theory said that the origin of a new species (macroevolution) was due to exactly the same causes as changes within a species (microevolution). But above all, it said that change was gradual.
As time went by, however, geologists and paleontologists began to find the theory unsatisfactory. No one doubted that the overall record showed a steady increase in the diversity and complexity of species, but it was becoming embarrassingly obvious that the fossil record did not show a smooth transition from one form to another. Instead, the record that species typically remained unchanged for millions of years, and then were abruptly replaced by a new species that were substantially different in form though clearly related. Evolution apparently worked in a jerky fashion, rather than in the smooth, gradual manner postulated by the Modern Synthesis.
The new view of evolution as characteristically jerky, now called punctuated equilibrium, was given its present form by Steven Jay Gould of Harvard and Niles Elderidge of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They conceded that mutation and adaptation to specific environments, as postulated in the Modern Synthesis, applied to macroevolution as well as microevolution, but they also believed that another factor was at work in species formation. Among the most likely candidates for this factor was one called chromosome speciation. This theory, as proposed by Guy Bush of the University of Texas and Alan Wilson of Berkeley, says that a new species arises as a result of a re-arrangement of chromosome structure and not as a result of mutation. This proposal is a sound one. The connection between chromosome number and speciation is one kind of re-arrangement that is well known among plant breeders. They've known for a long time that by simply increasing the number of chromosomes typical of a species - a phenomenon called polyploidy - that it was possible to obtain a new variety with different characteristics. Many commercial plants, it turns out, were created in exactly this way; common bread wheat, for example, is a hexaploid, having three times as many chromosomes as its parent species, and some strawberries are octoploid, with four times the expected number.
But while polyploidy is fairly common among plant species, it's rarely found among animals, being observed mostly among those that reproduce asexually. Instead, the chromosome re-arrangement most often exhibited in animal species is translocation. This is when non-homologous chromosomes break and exchange parts: one of the two chromosomes in pair A exchange a part with one of the two chromosomes in pair B. If the break in the respective chromosomes occurs near their ends and the long parts are joined together, the short segments sometimes contain so little genetic information that they may be lost. This gives the appearance of two chromosomes having been fused together. This is what happened in our own ancestry, and is the mechanism responsible for the origin of man.
I have reproduced a small part of the diagram given in the article, showing the human second chromosome on the top, and two chimpanzee chromosomes on the bottom. It is patently obvious that the human second chromosome was created by translocation, or a fusion if you prefer, of two chimpanzee chromosomes. Or to be more precise, that the human second chromosome was created by a translocation of two chromosomes in an animal that was ancestor to both man and chimpanzee.
The sequence of events probably took place something like this. About five million years ago a translocation like that described above occurred in a pithecine male who was the controller of a harem of females. Rather than having 48 chromosomes, which was normal for his species, he had 47. When he mated with members of his harem, who possessed the usual number of chromosomes, half of his offspring would have had 48 chromosomes and half would have had 47. If some of those with 47 chromosomes mated among themselves, or were back-bred to their father, one quarter of their offspring would have had 48 chromosomes, one half would have had 47, and one quarter would have had 46. Those with 46 were the prototype of the new genus Homo. But at this stage they were not yet a new species. At most they can be thought of as a new chromosomal race., probably with great phenotypic difference from their fellows, but still not yet a new species. That had to wait for the appearance of one of the chromosome inversions discussed above. This inversion also probably occurred in a male with a harem and was transmitted in much the same way as the translocation. In this case, however, crosses between individuals with the inversion and those without produced only a few offspring, while matings between inverted chromosomes continued to be fertile, as did those without the inversion. This was the first step in breeding isolation. Suddenly, almost overnight, a new species came into existence.
I'm personally convinced that something like the scenario just presented really did take place. The exact details are almost certainly wrong, but the essentials ought to be correct. Still, it would be nice to have some experimental confirmation of the theory. Suppose we were to cut the human second chromosome in egg and sperm at exactly the same place it was originally fused together using recombinant DNA techniques. Could we back-breed man's pithecine ancestor? Could we recover "Lucy," the first member of our genus?
When this idea first occurred to me, I had a wonderful time working out the social and legal implications that would result if such an experiment could be carried out successfully. Unfortunately, the experiment won't work. Cutting the chromosome at the exact spot necessary is fairly simple in principle: one merely tailors the appropriate endonuclease for the point at which the cut is to be made. But the problem that can't be overcome is that only one of the two chromosome fragments would have a centromere, the indented part in the diagram. This is where the spindle fibers attach during cell reproduction, and without a centromere for every chromosome, the reproductive process fails. The cell dies.
On the other hand, another equally exciting experiment might well be possible. Suppose we applied DNA techniques to the chromosomes of chimpanzees. Suppose we attempt to fuse the same two chromosomes in chimpanzees that resulted in the origin of our own genus. Could we expect to get the same profound physical and mental changes that occurred in our own ancestry? And what are these changes likely to be? We know from Jane Goodall's work that chimpanzees are already tool users, and although scholars are bitterly divided on the subject, some believe chimps already have a rudimentary command of language. Furthermore, Arthur Jensen claims that the very brightest chimpanzees have the mental ability equivalent to that of the average nine or ten year old human [Bias in Mental Testing, p. 182]. Could an experiment like the one proposed tilt chimpanzees across the threshold into full intelligence?
Aside from possible mental changes that might result, we could also expect two important physical changes. One is an increase in neotony. Neotony means that the individual retains infant-like characteristics throughout its life span. When a human infant is compared to a chimpanzee or gorilla infant, their appearance turns out to be amazingly alike. But as each species matures, chimps and gorillas change greatly, whereas man continues to resemble his infant self.
The second physical change is likely to be more upright stature with the long human leg and striding walk. Much is made of man's opposing thumb, his stereoscopic color vision, his capacity for language, and so on; but his evolutionary success has been as much the result of his striding walk as all the more salient characteristics. If we were as short legged as chimps and gorillas - still knuckle-walkers - we would be confined to the continent of Africa. As it is, we spread over the entire face of the earth in a remarkably short time. Our chimpanzee protégés might be physically blessed in a similar way.
Could present DNA techniques really accomplish the fusion of two chromosomes? I admit that the outcome of such an experiment is far more problematical than simply cutting a chromosome in the right place. But if it is presently impossible, it soon won't be. A new engineering discipline called nano-technology will make the process child's play. The new technology is concerned with building microscopic machines and micromanipulators. Some of those working in the field believe that one day chemists may be able to physically manipulate individual atoms, to assemble and disassemble molecules as though they were tinker toys. If so, then the fusion of two chromosomes will be simple in comparison.
Very well, then, suppose the techniques work. Suppose that the experiment is tried and we do indeed obtain a viable, intelligent variety of chimp. Then what happens? Then the investigator applies for a patent. According to federal law, a new variety of life can be patented. Obviously, the law was intended to cover microbes that manufacture useful chemicals, or clean up oil spills. Obviously, it was not intended to cover the origin of a new, possibly intelligent species. Obviously, the case would go to the Supreme Court. One wonders how that court will deal with the hoary philosophical question of, "What is Man?"
Should such an experiment be carried out? For decades now, astronomers have been searching the heavens for signs of intelligent life. I submit that the reason for that search can be used as validly to justify the experiment I've proposed. Moreover, because they are our distant kin we have far more to learn from an intelligent race of chimps than we could ever hope to learn from some alien species in the stars: insights into intelligence, language, social organization and so on. But most of all, I would want to know if they had souls. The only way I can see to answer that question is to teach them one or more of the great religions and then to ask them. No matter what they might say, the answer is bound to be fascinating. Then I would ask them if they thought we had souls, too.
Paul Stuart Nachbar's Headache Take One
by Paul Nachbar
Paul Stuart Nachbar's headache:
Some of course simply do not care
Many other folks get headaches too
And life itself is seldom fair..
Take an aspirin, smoke some weed
Do a good or a bad deed:
Help or hurt those folks in need
Really here our hearts dont bleed.
Oh they say I heard a rumor
That your headache was a brain tumor?
Or else some odd infection
Previously thought beyond detection.
Science and math will fix this up
Though some techniques make you throw up:
For each cure there is a cost:
Whine about it? Then get lost!
Psychology will do the trick
Or some psychiatrist we'll find
Be patient while we search for one
While we kick your fine behind.
Critics in the data pile
Will use some trick to find the Truth
Some evidence of scar or trauma
Inflicted or self inflicted in my youth
Teachers here will always see
There were not many folks like me:
They will make a thesis here
And upon conclusions might agree.
Politicians argue here
Rage is good or rage is bad:
They advise here what to do
All that 'rage' and "mom' and 'dad'
Bhuddists advocate for peace
And for love and other things:
But the Buddhists at the top
Seem to always live like kings
Here of course one can withdraw
Into fantasy or worse:
Some will say to have a mind
Is less blesing than a curse.
The good folks with common sense
And good manners nod and smile
"Clean your act up, pay the rent!:
Do not think of stuff that's vile"
The bad folks who hate the good
Folks who love to drag you down
Here will nod "Misunderstood"
And say "they make you their damned clown"
Well this list can go on and on
Mostly I feel black and blue
Although i have a few good friends:
This headache is most likely due to YOU.
Paul Stuart Nachbar's headache:
Some of course simply do not care
Many other folks get headaches too
And life itself is seldom fair..
Take an aspirin, smoke some weed
Do a good or a bad deed:
Help or hurt those folks in need
Really here our hearts dont bleed.
Oh they say I heard a rumor
That your headache was a brain tumor?
Or else some odd infection
Previously thought beyond detection.
Science and math will fix this up
Though some techniques make you throw up:
For each cure there is a cost:
Whine about it? Then get lost!
Psychology will do the trick
Or some psychiatrist we'll find
Be patient while we search for one
While we kick your fine behind.
Critics in the data pile
Will use some trick to find the Truth
Some evidence of scar or trauma
Inflicted or self inflicted in my youth
Teachers here will always see
There were not many folks like me:
They will make a thesis here
And upon conclusions might agree.
Politicians argue here
Rage is good or rage is bad:
They advise here what to do
All that 'rage' and "mom' and 'dad'
Bhuddists advocate for peace
And for love and other things:
But the Buddhists at the top
Seem to always live like kings
Here of course one can withdraw
Into fantasy or worse:
Some will say to have a mind
Is less blesing than a curse.
The good folks with common sense
And good manners nod and smile
"Clean your act up, pay the rent!:
Do not think of stuff that's vile"
The bad folks who hate the good
Folks who love to drag you down
Here will nod "Misunderstood"
And say "they make you their damned clown"
Well this list can go on and on
Mostly I feel black and blue
Although i have a few good friends:
This headache is most likely due to YOU.
Mean Stage Mommies, Mean Daddies Lurking in the Shadows, Weird Aunts and Uncles: Nothing is Perfect in this World I guess?
by Paul Nachbar
Should we use some science to cut through the fog
Should we use some art or science to illuminate the bog?
Should we use some artistry or pseudo science to eliminate or produce the smog?
Compared and contrasted with that hand clapping screaming shouting
Endlessly enthusiastic old time very old time and extremely old time religion with the dancing girls and clowns and singing preachers saying "do not worry for the now" but...but..but. but:
Again I fall into some several billion pieces
Cut up by the glass shards of imperfect faith or some not entirely
Humanistic thesis regarding man himself, his destiny, his life, his Future
His childhood's or his adolescence's end:
I should sit therelike a child far better eating Reese's pieces
The family 'talented' one (or idiot) far removed from their rituals
And the thick thick thick thick scientific, political theological family oriented artistic sports oriented and cultural theses...
Oh those nutty upwardly aspiring famiies all around the world!!
And the ones whom they provoked into spiralling down
They are educated and sophisticated and well reasoned and astute:
But almost none of them are ever in any sense remotely . cute.
Well not entirely true: resentful <bad me bad me bad us>
But dont' they tend to make an uncleanuppable mess of me and you?
Should we use some science to cut through the fog
Should we use some art or science to illuminate the bog?
Should we use some artistry or pseudo science to eliminate or produce the smog?
Compared and contrasted with that hand clapping screaming shouting
Endlessly enthusiastic old time very old time and extremely old time religion with the dancing girls and clowns and singing preachers saying "do not worry for the now" but...but..but. but:
Again I fall into some several billion pieces
Cut up by the glass shards of imperfect faith or some not entirely
Humanistic thesis regarding man himself, his destiny, his life, his Future
His childhood's or his adolescence's end:
I should sit therelike a child far better eating Reese's pieces
The family 'talented' one (or idiot) far removed from their rituals
And the thick thick thick thick scientific, political theological family oriented artistic sports oriented and cultural theses...
Oh those nutty upwardly aspiring famiies all around the world!!
And the ones whom they provoked into spiralling down
They are educated and sophisticated and well reasoned and astute:
But almost none of them are ever in any sense remotely . cute.
Well not entirely true: resentful <bad me bad me bad us>
But dont' they tend to make an uncleanuppable mess of me and you?
Revisit Crazy
by Dedra Keller
Mind's eye view
Insanity demonstrated through actions
Pull on, ebrillade
the crazy one
Ostentatiously no change
the raffish one goes on and rattles on
The chaos circle order
Disorder more dis than fit
Is this the norm for a hopeless
World?
Sounds black -is black
as burnt out core-less sun
Yet soul aspire to higher grounds
Just one small light defeats the dark
And as it grows it burns on bright
The Valkyrie a falcon
Quick swish push aside the curtain containing
Night wings
Strong for flight!
Mind's eye view
Insanity demonstrated through actions
Pull on, ebrillade
the crazy one
Ostentatiously no change
the raffish one goes on and rattles on
The chaos circle order
Disorder more dis than fit
Is this the norm for a hopeless
World?
Sounds black -is black
as burnt out core-less sun
Yet soul aspire to higher grounds
Just one small light defeats the dark
And as it grows it burns on bright
The Valkyrie a falcon
Quick swish push aside the curtain containing
Night wings
Strong for flight!
Her Sister Rebecca
by Quinn Tyler Jackson
Every Friday morning, Ella Donatello awoke before the rest of her family. It had been that way for the past five years. First, she would slide out of bed from her side—always the same side—put on her slippers, and tiptoe out over the hardwood floor of the bedroom into carpeted second floor hallway. Once in the hallway, she would slowly close the door behind her, but not enough to click the knob. Confident that she would not disturb anyone, she then walked to her right, to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, close the door, and, with the lights still not on, turn the sink taps until the temperature of the water was to her liking. She did not use soap, but instead only rinsed her face with the water, and when she finally felt refreshed enough to continue, with her fresh facecloth, she dried under her eyes, down the bridge of her nose, under her bottom lip, and behind each ear. She then put the facecloth aside, opened the door of the bathroom, and took fifteen careful steps to the stairs leading into the landing of the first floor of the house.
She had descended the staircase so many times without any light that she could do it with her eyes closed, a caprice she allowed herself on Friday mornings. Once at the bottom step, she opened her eyes, finding herself facing the front door of the house, standing on the checkered marble of the landing. The deadbolt was well-oiled and made no sound as she unlocked the door. At the foot of the door, on the rough but clean welcome mat was her Friday morning newspaper.
With her paper in hand, she closed the door, locked it, and went into the main living room. Above her easy chair was a chain, which she pulled to turn on the reading lamp. As she always had, she turned to the horoscopes, read her own, and then put the paper aside. She knew that her coffee maker would have a full carafe by the time she made it to the kitchen, since it was set to start on a timer.
On this particular Friday morning, however, when she arrived at the coffee maker, the display was blinking midnight and the coffee was not ready and waiting for her. For the first time in five years, Ella Donatello’s schedule had been disrupted. Her palms started to sweat so badly that the coffee cup she had fetched from the cupboard almost slipped from it. The water was still in the machine. The coffee grounds were still in the cone, dry.
“Damned power!” she said, putting her cup down on the kitchen counter so carelessly that it sounded as if it chipped. In five years the power had not gone out. It had not sounded particularly windy in the night. She noted that the clock on the stove also needed to be reset. Both clocks should have read six-thirty, but instead taunted her with midnight. She pressed the start button on the coffee maker; her routine had been disrupted, but she would bring regularity back to her in the form of a hot cup of coffee. Order must be restored.
When she opened the creamer carton, she immediately noticed the smell. It was off. Carl had bought an expired carton. In five years she had not had her coffee black. In five years she had not had the coffee waiting for her after her horoscope. Carl was always so careful about expiry dates on bread and dairy. Why had he missed the date. She looked at the numbers on the carton and realized that it was not past its date. Had the power been out long enough that everything in the refrigerator had gone off? She put her hand on the plastic wrapping of the cheddar. It was very cold. The cream carton itself, even though the cream had spoiled, was also cold. It had simply been bad. She wondered if Carl had put the grocery receipts in the usual utility drawer so she could take the carton to the store and get a new one without having to pay again.
As she was running her fingernail down the receipt to find the carton of cream, Ella suddenly thought of her sister, Rebecca. She did not often think of Rebecca, and the image of her sister’s face in her mind almost startled her. Had her Friday been so thrown into disarray that Rebecca came to mind?
* * *
“All I have is whitener,” Rebecca said as she poured the coffee.
“You know that stuff will kill you, right?”
Rebceca’s face went cold at her sister’s chiding. “Is anything ever good enough for you, Ella?”
“It’s just not healthy,” Ella retorted. “Anyway, two scoops of that is fine.”
Rebecca spooned the whitener into the cup, stirred it, and handed it to her with an almost shaky hand. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you. Greg’s been on my nerves, is all.” She sat across from the small kitchen table, lit up her cigarette, and with the hand her smoke was in, rubbed the muscles above her eyebrows.
Three children by two failed marriages, and the eldest had always been the source of Rebecca’s wrinkles.
“Hasn’t he sorted that all out by now?” Ella asked. The kitchen window was open, but her sister’s smoking still made her want to scream. Now was not the time to complain about another health matter; Rebecca was clearly already at the end of her rope.
“All what? I can’t even remember what it was last time we talked. It’s that crowd he has himself in.” When her eyes were closed and nearly bruised with worry, she was not Ella’s younger sister, she was almost her mother. “He owes—I don’t know if I should say it....”
“What is it?” Ella asked, careful to keep the tone of her voice non-judgmental.
Rebecca brushed her hair back in what was clearly an attempt to appear devil-may-care about what she was about to say, but her hands were still shaky. “It’s not like when we were young, Ellie. We smoked a bit of bliss … you know? Gas, grass, or ass, you know? Not like today, where they get into debt for ….”
It was then that a sister’s understanding finished Rebecca’s unspoken revelation about Greg’s situation for Ella.
* * *
The sound of the coffee finishing its brewing cycle—the gurgling last throes of the drip—suddenly filled the kitchen, and with that sound came the unmistakeable aroma of her usual Friday morning. She pushed Rebecca out of her mind, poured herself a cup of black coffee, and took her first sip. Although bitter, it was good enough to pretend this Friday was like every other Friday. The cost of a single small carton of spoiled cream no longer seemed to matter, and Ella resumed her routine.
She found an orange, cut it into slices, and chewed out the pulp. It was a horribly ungraceful way to eat an orange, she knew, but the bitterness of the coffee washed away and she forgave herself for not first slicing off the peel; her teeth would have to do for that. As she threw the first orange peel into the kitchen trash bin, she suddenly again thought of her sister Rebecca.
She realized that she wanted to go see her right away. That she was still in her nightgown did not matter. She had, after all, eaten her orange like a savage and had her coffee without cream. It was still early enough that she could drive in her night clothes and there would not be enough traffic on the way for it to make a difference. Driving with her slippers on, she would somehow manage. Within a minute of her desire to see her sister, she was out the front door, her purse over her shoulder.
The car started without effort and she was on her way.
* * *
“Where have you been dressed like that?” Carl asked when Ella returned home an hour later. He was already dressed for work and leaning over a plate of scrambled eggs he had made for himself. “I was worried to death.” He pushed his plate aside, tipped down his glasses, and blinked a few times at the sight of her.
Ella did not know what to say. She still had the fresh air of outside clinging to her night clothes. Autumn air had a way of sticking to one’s clothes when one first entered from having been out. Did Carl need to know she had been to see her sister Rebecca? Did he really need to know? He had managed to make himself breakfast for the first time in five years of Fridays. Every other Friday, his over easy eggs would have been waiting for him when he’d come downstairs. If he could make his own breakfast, he could survive without knowing where she had been.
“It’s nothing,” she replied.
At this, Carl tipped his glasses down even more. His expression was almost one of approval to her. Was that a smile on his mouth? “OK, then,” he finally said. He then took a sip from his coffee, and the act of putting his cup to his lips seemed to remind him of something. “Oh! The cream was off this morning! I didn’t notice it until I took my first sip.”
Had he noticed that all the clocks had reset to midnight?
“The power went out last night,” Ella replied, trying with the sound of her words to imply that the power’s going out and the cream’s being off were somehow one and the same thing.
Carl glanced at the clock on the stove. “Did you reset it, then?” he asked. “Looks like quarter to eight to me.”
Had she reset it? She looked at the time on the coffee machine, and it, too, read quarter to eight. She did remember pushing the button to start the coffee brewing cycle manually, but she did not remember resetting the two clocks to the proper time before heading out to see her sister Rebecca.
Ella Donatello felt the room spin and she put her hand on the kitchen counter to be sure not to fall over.
“You’re looking pale,” Carl noticed out loud. “Terribly cold to be out and about dressed in your night clothes, love. Do try to not catch cold, will you?” He began rinsing his breakfast plate in the sink, careful in his arm movements to avoid getting his cuffs wet from the tap.
“Perhaps I’m getting a flu,” she replied, still holding onto the kitchen counter to avoid a fall.
Her husband put his hand, now carefully dried at the dishcloth, on her right shoulder, and with the palm of it, sent his love into her shoulder. His touch had a way of reminding Ella how much he loved her; it was steady and real, and the mere brush of it reminded her that she was not alone. “Take care. Rest today. How about you and I go out for dinner tonight rather than eat in? I’ll pick a place.”
Ella nodded that, yes, that sounded like a good idea. It was Friday, after all, and a good night for the two of them to be getting out. She would rest all day and perhaps feel better by evening.
Twenty minutes later, Carl was off to work. Ella had sat in her easy chair with the light off, and closed her eyes. She remembered how the air had smelled at the cemetery earlier that morning. Autumn was such a wonderful month for clean air. Rebecca’s gravestone had been well kept by the groundskeeper; once there, she almost felt silly having worried about it for all the years she had not visited the grave. It was a clean, dignified place of rest.
But what about those clocks? Had she reset them? She could not remember. Carl had mentioned the cream’s being off, so she had not imagined all of the irregularities of the morning. Why hadn’t the coffee machine started brewing as it always had so many Fridays over so many years, then?
And why had her mind drifted to her sister Rebecca?
The swarm of uncertain thoughts in Ella Donatello’s head became too much for her, and she opened her eyes. Everything was there, right before her. The art on the walls, the vases in the corners, the light fixtures above her. Even the leather of the easy chair was as it had all been, every other Friday for the past five years. Normally, by this hour, she would have been properly dressed. That one thing was different about this particular Friday, but given all the other chaos that had transpired, it fit perfectly and did not alarm her.
She decided to let go of it, closed her eyes again, and drifted into sleep on the chair. Carl would take care of the rest. The groundskeeper would take care of her sister Rebecca. Next Thursday night, she had decided before falling completely into her sleep, she would not bother setting the automatic cycle on the coffee machine.
It would be good to wake up next Friday to black coffee, made on the spot, and to bite the orange out of the peel instead of taking the time and care to use a paring knife.
Every Friday morning, Ella Donatello awoke before the rest of her family. It had been that way for the past five years. First, she would slide out of bed from her side—always the same side—put on her slippers, and tiptoe out over the hardwood floor of the bedroom into carpeted second floor hallway. Once in the hallway, she would slowly close the door behind her, but not enough to click the knob. Confident that she would not disturb anyone, she then walked to her right, to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, close the door, and, with the lights still not on, turn the sink taps until the temperature of the water was to her liking. She did not use soap, but instead only rinsed her face with the water, and when she finally felt refreshed enough to continue, with her fresh facecloth, she dried under her eyes, down the bridge of her nose, under her bottom lip, and behind each ear. She then put the facecloth aside, opened the door of the bathroom, and took fifteen careful steps to the stairs leading into the landing of the first floor of the house.
She had descended the staircase so many times without any light that she could do it with her eyes closed, a caprice she allowed herself on Friday mornings. Once at the bottom step, she opened her eyes, finding herself facing the front door of the house, standing on the checkered marble of the landing. The deadbolt was well-oiled and made no sound as she unlocked the door. At the foot of the door, on the rough but clean welcome mat was her Friday morning newspaper.
With her paper in hand, she closed the door, locked it, and went into the main living room. Above her easy chair was a chain, which she pulled to turn on the reading lamp. As she always had, she turned to the horoscopes, read her own, and then put the paper aside. She knew that her coffee maker would have a full carafe by the time she made it to the kitchen, since it was set to start on a timer.
On this particular Friday morning, however, when she arrived at the coffee maker, the display was blinking midnight and the coffee was not ready and waiting for her. For the first time in five years, Ella Donatello’s schedule had been disrupted. Her palms started to sweat so badly that the coffee cup she had fetched from the cupboard almost slipped from it. The water was still in the machine. The coffee grounds were still in the cone, dry.
“Damned power!” she said, putting her cup down on the kitchen counter so carelessly that it sounded as if it chipped. In five years the power had not gone out. It had not sounded particularly windy in the night. She noted that the clock on the stove also needed to be reset. Both clocks should have read six-thirty, but instead taunted her with midnight. She pressed the start button on the coffee maker; her routine had been disrupted, but she would bring regularity back to her in the form of a hot cup of coffee. Order must be restored.
When she opened the creamer carton, she immediately noticed the smell. It was off. Carl had bought an expired carton. In five years she had not had her coffee black. In five years she had not had the coffee waiting for her after her horoscope. Carl was always so careful about expiry dates on bread and dairy. Why had he missed the date. She looked at the numbers on the carton and realized that it was not past its date. Had the power been out long enough that everything in the refrigerator had gone off? She put her hand on the plastic wrapping of the cheddar. It was very cold. The cream carton itself, even though the cream had spoiled, was also cold. It had simply been bad. She wondered if Carl had put the grocery receipts in the usual utility drawer so she could take the carton to the store and get a new one without having to pay again.
As she was running her fingernail down the receipt to find the carton of cream, Ella suddenly thought of her sister, Rebecca. She did not often think of Rebecca, and the image of her sister’s face in her mind almost startled her. Had her Friday been so thrown into disarray that Rebecca came to mind?
* * *
“All I have is whitener,” Rebecca said as she poured the coffee.
“You know that stuff will kill you, right?”
Rebceca’s face went cold at her sister’s chiding. “Is anything ever good enough for you, Ella?”
“It’s just not healthy,” Ella retorted. “Anyway, two scoops of that is fine.”
Rebecca spooned the whitener into the cup, stirred it, and handed it to her with an almost shaky hand. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you. Greg’s been on my nerves, is all.” She sat across from the small kitchen table, lit up her cigarette, and with the hand her smoke was in, rubbed the muscles above her eyebrows.
Three children by two failed marriages, and the eldest had always been the source of Rebecca’s wrinkles.
“Hasn’t he sorted that all out by now?” Ella asked. The kitchen window was open, but her sister’s smoking still made her want to scream. Now was not the time to complain about another health matter; Rebecca was clearly already at the end of her rope.
“All what? I can’t even remember what it was last time we talked. It’s that crowd he has himself in.” When her eyes were closed and nearly bruised with worry, she was not Ella’s younger sister, she was almost her mother. “He owes—I don’t know if I should say it....”
“What is it?” Ella asked, careful to keep the tone of her voice non-judgmental.
Rebecca brushed her hair back in what was clearly an attempt to appear devil-may-care about what she was about to say, but her hands were still shaky. “It’s not like when we were young, Ellie. We smoked a bit of bliss … you know? Gas, grass, or ass, you know? Not like today, where they get into debt for ….”
It was then that a sister’s understanding finished Rebecca’s unspoken revelation about Greg’s situation for Ella.
* * *
The sound of the coffee finishing its brewing cycle—the gurgling last throes of the drip—suddenly filled the kitchen, and with that sound came the unmistakeable aroma of her usual Friday morning. She pushed Rebecca out of her mind, poured herself a cup of black coffee, and took her first sip. Although bitter, it was good enough to pretend this Friday was like every other Friday. The cost of a single small carton of spoiled cream no longer seemed to matter, and Ella resumed her routine.
She found an orange, cut it into slices, and chewed out the pulp. It was a horribly ungraceful way to eat an orange, she knew, but the bitterness of the coffee washed away and she forgave herself for not first slicing off the peel; her teeth would have to do for that. As she threw the first orange peel into the kitchen trash bin, she suddenly again thought of her sister Rebecca.
She realized that she wanted to go see her right away. That she was still in her nightgown did not matter. She had, after all, eaten her orange like a savage and had her coffee without cream. It was still early enough that she could drive in her night clothes and there would not be enough traffic on the way for it to make a difference. Driving with her slippers on, she would somehow manage. Within a minute of her desire to see her sister, she was out the front door, her purse over her shoulder.
The car started without effort and she was on her way.
* * *
“Where have you been dressed like that?” Carl asked when Ella returned home an hour later. He was already dressed for work and leaning over a plate of scrambled eggs he had made for himself. “I was worried to death.” He pushed his plate aside, tipped down his glasses, and blinked a few times at the sight of her.
Ella did not know what to say. She still had the fresh air of outside clinging to her night clothes. Autumn air had a way of sticking to one’s clothes when one first entered from having been out. Did Carl need to know she had been to see her sister Rebecca? Did he really need to know? He had managed to make himself breakfast for the first time in five years of Fridays. Every other Friday, his over easy eggs would have been waiting for him when he’d come downstairs. If he could make his own breakfast, he could survive without knowing where she had been.
“It’s nothing,” she replied.
At this, Carl tipped his glasses down even more. His expression was almost one of approval to her. Was that a smile on his mouth? “OK, then,” he finally said. He then took a sip from his coffee, and the act of putting his cup to his lips seemed to remind him of something. “Oh! The cream was off this morning! I didn’t notice it until I took my first sip.”
Had he noticed that all the clocks had reset to midnight?
“The power went out last night,” Ella replied, trying with the sound of her words to imply that the power’s going out and the cream’s being off were somehow one and the same thing.
Carl glanced at the clock on the stove. “Did you reset it, then?” he asked. “Looks like quarter to eight to me.”
Had she reset it? She looked at the time on the coffee machine, and it, too, read quarter to eight. She did remember pushing the button to start the coffee brewing cycle manually, but she did not remember resetting the two clocks to the proper time before heading out to see her sister Rebecca.
Ella Donatello felt the room spin and she put her hand on the kitchen counter to be sure not to fall over.
“You’re looking pale,” Carl noticed out loud. “Terribly cold to be out and about dressed in your night clothes, love. Do try to not catch cold, will you?” He began rinsing his breakfast plate in the sink, careful in his arm movements to avoid getting his cuffs wet from the tap.
“Perhaps I’m getting a flu,” she replied, still holding onto the kitchen counter to avoid a fall.
Her husband put his hand, now carefully dried at the dishcloth, on her right shoulder, and with the palm of it, sent his love into her shoulder. His touch had a way of reminding Ella how much he loved her; it was steady and real, and the mere brush of it reminded her that she was not alone. “Take care. Rest today. How about you and I go out for dinner tonight rather than eat in? I’ll pick a place.”
Ella nodded that, yes, that sounded like a good idea. It was Friday, after all, and a good night for the two of them to be getting out. She would rest all day and perhaps feel better by evening.
Twenty minutes later, Carl was off to work. Ella had sat in her easy chair with the light off, and closed her eyes. She remembered how the air had smelled at the cemetery earlier that morning. Autumn was such a wonderful month for clean air. Rebecca’s gravestone had been well kept by the groundskeeper; once there, she almost felt silly having worried about it for all the years she had not visited the grave. It was a clean, dignified place of rest.
But what about those clocks? Had she reset them? She could not remember. Carl had mentioned the cream’s being off, so she had not imagined all of the irregularities of the morning. Why hadn’t the coffee machine started brewing as it always had so many Fridays over so many years, then?
And why had her mind drifted to her sister Rebecca?
The swarm of uncertain thoughts in Ella Donatello’s head became too much for her, and she opened her eyes. Everything was there, right before her. The art on the walls, the vases in the corners, the light fixtures above her. Even the leather of the easy chair was as it had all been, every other Friday for the past five years. Normally, by this hour, she would have been properly dressed. That one thing was different about this particular Friday, but given all the other chaos that had transpired, it fit perfectly and did not alarm her.
She decided to let go of it, closed her eyes again, and drifted into sleep on the chair. Carl would take care of the rest. The groundskeeper would take care of her sister Rebecca. Next Thursday night, she had decided before falling completely into her sleep, she would not bother setting the automatic cycle on the coffee machine.
It would be good to wake up next Friday to black coffee, made on the spot, and to bite the orange out of the peel instead of taking the time and care to use a paring knife.
Niki de Saint Phalle
by Jacquelinne White
Niki de Saint Phalle, the French artist and iconoclast, died in San Diego on May 21, 2002. She was 71 years old. I did not know she was a stunning beauty until I saw her photograph in the San Francisco Chronicle's obituary although I have known, and loved, her work for probably 45 years.
Niki de Saint Phalle was an artist and a woman after my own heart so when the American art magazines stopped having articles about her I missed them. In the past year I realized I had not seen anything about her for a long time -- years. She disappeared.
When I read the notice of her death I assumed I could just run down to any book store and get up-to-date material on her. No such thing. I had a hard time believing what I ran into. I telephoned every well-known bookstore in the San Francisco Bay area. I called many smaller stores. I even called the store at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Not a single store had anything on Niki de Saint Phalle but more distressing was that not a single person answering the phones including the store at the San Francscio MOMA knew who she was. I finally called the French Consulate in San Francisco which gave me the name and address of a bookstore in Paris. I did write to that store more or less a month ago but I have heard nothing from them. A friend, Martin Hunt, was able to find some welcome material for me by computer search. Later another friend was able to dig out some more pertinent information on a computer search. My search is not at an end. I want some great big picture books of her works, biographical books, and books with articles about her art work. I feel sure there must be something to my taste in Europe, probably in France or Germany if not other countries. I shall find them. In the meantime this is my salute to Niki de Saint Phalle, my farewell to someone who has been very important to me.
Niki de Saint Phalle was born in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on November 29, 1930. Her family moved to New York in 1937. She married at the age of 18 and shortly had two children. She and her husband, Harry Mathews, moved to France with their children some time in the 1950's. As a child she was near to being uncontrollable and managed to get herself expelled from at least two excellent schools. One was New York's Sacred Heart Convent. She painted the genital area of the holy statues, areas covered with fig leaves. She used red paint. She was expelled. Her parents must have been driven to the wall finding one school after the other for their exuberant and naughty child. It can come as no surprise to learn she had a nervous breakdown in her early twenties. After she recovered she put all her energies into being an artist. She had no training but she had the needed spirit and she had an instinct on which to lean in order to move forward. She must have been an enormously quick study because she had her first solo exhibition in 1956. She maintained she was highly influenced and inspired by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. You will remember Gaudi's wonderful great church in Barcelona and likely other of his works. It is the Barcelona church, that wonderful structure that seems to have grown rather than having been built that most fascinates me and more than likely it was that work or similar things that entranced Niki de Saint Phalle. I have always seen that church as being organic, something that grew like a magical plant-animal but only very recently I learned that in actual fact that is what happened. I am told Gaudi never made an architectural drawing or plan for it but invented it, with the help of the builders, as it went along. There was someone even more important in her life than Gaudi. She met the Swiss kinetic sculptor, Jean Tinquely, shortly after recovering from her mental illness. She lost little time in abandoning her husband and even her small children and moved in with Tinguely. They were living together at the time of the opening of her first show in Saint Gall, Switzerland and they married about 15 years later. The marriage was not an ordinary marriage. They did not live together all the time but they did maintain a close relationship until Tinquely died in 1991. They collaborated on the famous Stravinsky Fountain with its moving sculptures outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as being "whimsical" and it is, but it is much more than that. It is full fledged, a not to ever be forgotten work of art, a merry piece, a funny piece, a loving and lovable, adorable piece. I guarantee no child has ever, nor ever will, see that rollicking fountain without laughing, without jumping for joy. I have not been a child for a very long time but I know for certain I too would greet it with laughter and dance and I would probably embarrass any stade person who might be with me as I would most certainly reflect its colourful and outlandish presence. Even the pictures I have of it, recently found, move me greatly.
The first works done by Niki de Saint Phalle that I became aware of were her "nanas." I am told the word, nana, translates as something like the American word, "broad." It is not a compliment. They were large female sculptures made of papier mache, perhaps some plaster and almost anything else that came handy. They were painted in primary colours. They are boisterous. It is reported that her first inspiration for the nanas was Larry Rivers' pregnant wife, Claria Rivers. After that first inspiration she did many. The one that made the most lasting impression on me was her "She: A Cathedral" which was installed in Stockholm. It was a huge woman of course but bigger than the previous nanas. It was 80 feet long and 30 feet wide. It had rooms in it. There was a music room, a room for showing films, and a milk bar in one of the breasts. Visitors entered through the vagina. I remember how the USA art magazines reported on it. Blasé. It was as if one came across similar things quite often; interesting in a mild way as many new kinds of things happening in the arts were interesting. I think my memory is more than likely correct since at least people in my part of the world, the supposedly sophisticated San Francisco Bay Area, have forgotten she existed. There is something very goofy about that insofar as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is at present (2002) promoting a big retrospective of the work of Yoko Ono, John Lennon's widow, a woman who has hardly set the world on fire much as she would like to put up the pretense that she did just that.
The art critics, those we used to call "the establishment", categorized Niki de Saint Phalle as a Nouveau Realistes, a group that deliberately chose to undo the conventional notions of art, but in my opinion Niki de Saint Phalle belonged to no-one but herself. The woman was so big she kept on bursting out all over the place. Added to all this she was a knockout beauty. Even in her old age she was extraordinarily beautiful. She was an outrageous woman. She was a woman who raged. That gigantic installation in 1998 at Garavicchio in Tuscany must have been just about her last presentation, if it were not her very last. Her fantastic organic forms, her fairyland kind of humans, her nutty animals that sometimes were partly plants or plants that were partly animals had evolved into grotesque sculptures even more exaggerated than her former work. That wild and strange collection was based on the Tarot cards.
I need to include here something else I recently learned about Niki de Saint Phalle but I can merely mention the information I have because I have not been able to learn more. She had a strong relationship with Hanover in Germany and gave that city many of her works. I believe they made her an honorary citizen but I am not at all clear on what went on between Niki de Saint Phalle and Hanover except that the people there loved her, just loved her.
We lost a great one on May 21, 2002. We, especially women, lost a role model. She must have met the resistance from men all women who show giftedness experience but it did not slow her down. She danced high and happy over any obstacles, laughed riotously at least in a figurative sense, sang her own song and sang it good and loud. It hit a cord that rings bells in many of us who mourn.
Goodbye Niki. We love you. Your work will sustain us.
Niki de Saint Phalle, the French artist and iconoclast, died in San Diego on May 21, 2002. She was 71 years old. I did not know she was a stunning beauty until I saw her photograph in the San Francisco Chronicle's obituary although I have known, and loved, her work for probably 45 years.
Niki de Saint Phalle was an artist and a woman after my own heart so when the American art magazines stopped having articles about her I missed them. In the past year I realized I had not seen anything about her for a long time -- years. She disappeared.
When I read the notice of her death I assumed I could just run down to any book store and get up-to-date material on her. No such thing. I had a hard time believing what I ran into. I telephoned every well-known bookstore in the San Francisco Bay area. I called many smaller stores. I even called the store at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Not a single store had anything on Niki de Saint Phalle but more distressing was that not a single person answering the phones including the store at the San Francscio MOMA knew who she was. I finally called the French Consulate in San Francisco which gave me the name and address of a bookstore in Paris. I did write to that store more or less a month ago but I have heard nothing from them. A friend, Martin Hunt, was able to find some welcome material for me by computer search. Later another friend was able to dig out some more pertinent information on a computer search. My search is not at an end. I want some great big picture books of her works, biographical books, and books with articles about her art work. I feel sure there must be something to my taste in Europe, probably in France or Germany if not other countries. I shall find them. In the meantime this is my salute to Niki de Saint Phalle, my farewell to someone who has been very important to me.
Niki de Saint Phalle was born in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on November 29, 1930. Her family moved to New York in 1937. She married at the age of 18 and shortly had two children. She and her husband, Harry Mathews, moved to France with their children some time in the 1950's. As a child she was near to being uncontrollable and managed to get herself expelled from at least two excellent schools. One was New York's Sacred Heart Convent. She painted the genital area of the holy statues, areas covered with fig leaves. She used red paint. She was expelled. Her parents must have been driven to the wall finding one school after the other for their exuberant and naughty child. It can come as no surprise to learn she had a nervous breakdown in her early twenties. After she recovered she put all her energies into being an artist. She had no training but she had the needed spirit and she had an instinct on which to lean in order to move forward. She must have been an enormously quick study because she had her first solo exhibition in 1956. She maintained she was highly influenced and inspired by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. You will remember Gaudi's wonderful great church in Barcelona and likely other of his works. It is the Barcelona church, that wonderful structure that seems to have grown rather than having been built that most fascinates me and more than likely it was that work or similar things that entranced Niki de Saint Phalle. I have always seen that church as being organic, something that grew like a magical plant-animal but only very recently I learned that in actual fact that is what happened. I am told Gaudi never made an architectural drawing or plan for it but invented it, with the help of the builders, as it went along. There was someone even more important in her life than Gaudi. She met the Swiss kinetic sculptor, Jean Tinquely, shortly after recovering from her mental illness. She lost little time in abandoning her husband and even her small children and moved in with Tinguely. They were living together at the time of the opening of her first show in Saint Gall, Switzerland and they married about 15 years later. The marriage was not an ordinary marriage. They did not live together all the time but they did maintain a close relationship until Tinquely died in 1991. They collaborated on the famous Stravinsky Fountain with its moving sculptures outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as being "whimsical" and it is, but it is much more than that. It is full fledged, a not to ever be forgotten work of art, a merry piece, a funny piece, a loving and lovable, adorable piece. I guarantee no child has ever, nor ever will, see that rollicking fountain without laughing, without jumping for joy. I have not been a child for a very long time but I know for certain I too would greet it with laughter and dance and I would probably embarrass any stade person who might be with me as I would most certainly reflect its colourful and outlandish presence. Even the pictures I have of it, recently found, move me greatly.
The first works done by Niki de Saint Phalle that I became aware of were her "nanas." I am told the word, nana, translates as something like the American word, "broad." It is not a compliment. They were large female sculptures made of papier mache, perhaps some plaster and almost anything else that came handy. They were painted in primary colours. They are boisterous. It is reported that her first inspiration for the nanas was Larry Rivers' pregnant wife, Claria Rivers. After that first inspiration she did many. The one that made the most lasting impression on me was her "She: A Cathedral" which was installed in Stockholm. It was a huge woman of course but bigger than the previous nanas. It was 80 feet long and 30 feet wide. It had rooms in it. There was a music room, a room for showing films, and a milk bar in one of the breasts. Visitors entered through the vagina. I remember how the USA art magazines reported on it. Blasé. It was as if one came across similar things quite often; interesting in a mild way as many new kinds of things happening in the arts were interesting. I think my memory is more than likely correct since at least people in my part of the world, the supposedly sophisticated San Francisco Bay Area, have forgotten she existed. There is something very goofy about that insofar as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is at present (2002) promoting a big retrospective of the work of Yoko Ono, John Lennon's widow, a woman who has hardly set the world on fire much as she would like to put up the pretense that she did just that.
The art critics, those we used to call "the establishment", categorized Niki de Saint Phalle as a Nouveau Realistes, a group that deliberately chose to undo the conventional notions of art, but in my opinion Niki de Saint Phalle belonged to no-one but herself. The woman was so big she kept on bursting out all over the place. Added to all this she was a knockout beauty. Even in her old age she was extraordinarily beautiful. She was an outrageous woman. She was a woman who raged. That gigantic installation in 1998 at Garavicchio in Tuscany must have been just about her last presentation, if it were not her very last. Her fantastic organic forms, her fairyland kind of humans, her nutty animals that sometimes were partly plants or plants that were partly animals had evolved into grotesque sculptures even more exaggerated than her former work. That wild and strange collection was based on the Tarot cards.
I need to include here something else I recently learned about Niki de Saint Phalle but I can merely mention the information I have because I have not been able to learn more. She had a strong relationship with Hanover in Germany and gave that city many of her works. I believe they made her an honorary citizen but I am not at all clear on what went on between Niki de Saint Phalle and Hanover except that the people there loved her, just loved her.
We lost a great one on May 21, 2002. We, especially women, lost a role model. She must have met the resistance from men all women who show giftedness experience but it did not slow her down. She danced high and happy over any obstacles, laughed riotously at least in a figurative sense, sang her own song and sang it good and loud. It hit a cord that rings bells in many of us who mourn.
Goodbye Niki. We love you. Your work will sustain us.
The Theory and Practice of Mind Games
by Paul Nachbar
Who on Earth invented mind games?
None of us will ever know;
Who on Earth will play the last games?
Hope its me, not my friend Joe.
Some folks say they detest mind games
Here I say 'what can you do?
All of us have played our mind games
As they did to me and you"
Really I did not invent them
Did not create much that's new:
Maybe people need their mind games?
Though they often make us blue.
I get flustered with some mind games
Ideas laid on broad and thick
Some of them somewhat convincing
But most sort of makes me sick.
Am I innocent of mind games?
That would be a lovely claim
How dramatic! No more mind games!
"Aren't we grateful that you came!'
"Yes you have cleared up all confusion!"
Cries some voice amidst the rest
Though all things add New Confusion
Make more 'complex" every Test.
"Sincere" poets cry out "Mind games!"
And some sincere preachers too:
Then one finds they are MOST guilty:
What on Earth is truly ever new?
Sometimes I guess I fall for mind games
Clear and simple logic rarely helps:
Beneath complexities of mind games
I sense a few related yelps.
The troubles here with all such social mind games:
The character of all those keeping score
All half corrupt or half insane at all times
Which is why I rarely ask for "more"
They really want to prove stuff with their mind games
Which most relates to food or who's "on top":
Or who gets all the love or sex or money
So useless that I wish these games would stop!
Of course they cry out "Truth' in all their mind games
Get angry here both for and against "God":
Beware you linger too close to their mind games
They'll call you dunce or heretic or 'odd'.
Sometimes I guess I also play some mind games
And here I am a little bit ashamed:
Mostly an odd man out among THEIR mind games
Who's sometimes "loved" but mostly just gets blamed.
Where will all the mind games take us>?
Really I don't care to know:
Is the future better for it?
In the shower I must go.
Streaming water on one's body
And soap bubbles in one's hair
Singing some atonal lovesong
Now for games I just don't care. .
Sometimes best to be quite silent
Sometimes best to really talk
Now is time for some relaxing
And I'll let the others squawk.
Who on Earth invented mind games?
None of us will ever know;
Who on Earth will play the last games?
Hope its me, not my friend Joe.
Some folks say they detest mind games
Here I say 'what can you do?
All of us have played our mind games
As they did to me and you"
Really I did not invent them
Did not create much that's new:
Maybe people need their mind games?
Though they often make us blue.
I get flustered with some mind games
Ideas laid on broad and thick
Some of them somewhat convincing
But most sort of makes me sick.
Am I innocent of mind games?
That would be a lovely claim
How dramatic! No more mind games!
"Aren't we grateful that you came!'
"Yes you have cleared up all confusion!"
Cries some voice amidst the rest
Though all things add New Confusion
Make more 'complex" every Test.
"Sincere" poets cry out "Mind games!"
And some sincere preachers too:
Then one finds they are MOST guilty:
What on Earth is truly ever new?
Sometimes I guess I fall for mind games
Clear and simple logic rarely helps:
Beneath complexities of mind games
I sense a few related yelps.
The troubles here with all such social mind games:
The character of all those keeping score
All half corrupt or half insane at all times
Which is why I rarely ask for "more"
They really want to prove stuff with their mind games
Which most relates to food or who's "on top":
Or who gets all the love or sex or money
So useless that I wish these games would stop!
Of course they cry out "Truth' in all their mind games
Get angry here both for and against "God":
Beware you linger too close to their mind games
They'll call you dunce or heretic or 'odd'.
Sometimes I guess I also play some mind games
And here I am a little bit ashamed:
Mostly an odd man out among THEIR mind games
Who's sometimes "loved" but mostly just gets blamed.
Where will all the mind games take us>?
Really I don't care to know:
Is the future better for it?
In the shower I must go.
Streaming water on one's body
And soap bubbles in one's hair
Singing some atonal lovesong
Now for games I just don't care. .
Sometimes best to be quite silent
Sometimes best to really talk
Now is time for some relaxing
And I'll let the others squawk.
Wistful Cynicism
by Bob Johnson
Come and sing a song with me,
one of joy and laughter,
one of pain and weeping,
and of all that may come after.
Come, tell me a story
of how it all began,
and fill my mind with wonder
at the miracle of Man.
Come and let's explore
the mysteries of life,
the Questions of the Ages,
and the deepness of the night.
Come, let's find the meaning,
or some underlying reason
for us to keep on keepin' on,
and for us to keep believin'.
Come, let's not and say we did,
and fool ourselves some more
let's imagine that we can dream
and can hope for something more.
Come and sing a song with me,
one of joy and laughter,
one of pain and weeping,
and of all that may come after.
Come, tell me a story
of how it all began,
and fill my mind with wonder
at the miracle of Man.
Come and let's explore
the mysteries of life,
the Questions of the Ages,
and the deepness of the night.
Come, let's find the meaning,
or some underlying reason
for us to keep on keepin' on,
and for us to keep believin'.
Come, let's not and say we did,
and fool ourselves some more
let's imagine that we can dream
and can hope for something more.
Did We Win or Did We Lose?
by Paul Nachbar
Is it soup yet?
Is the meal ready to eat?
Is it success yet?
Did we rise above defeat?
Is it truth yet?
Is it victory for us all?
Is it real now?
Is it our time to be tall?
Are we happy?
Did the bright new age begin?
Did we flourish
In games only we could win?
Is it grace time?
Did we take over the world?
Or disgrace time?
Though the flags are all unfurled?
Is it over?
Did we drive the bastards out?
We recovered?
And it's time to twist and shout?
We made magic?
Or we merely were obscure?
We wrought havoc
Or our works cannot endure?
We played lotto?
And our tickets always won?
We went blotto
And we settled with a gun?
We got married?
And we had a dozen kids?
We just parried
And all ended on the skids?
We found answers
To all questions that we had?
We were dancers
Far more clumsy than our dad?
We split up then
And divorce did hurt us all?
We ignored pain
And ignored the man named Paul?
We loved movies
Which all ended with a Point?
And loved stories
Which would never disappoint
We loved artists
Though we tore them into bits?
We loved porn stars
And we all admired their tits ?
We chose battles
That we all were sure to win?
We were churchgoers
Though all ended up with sin?
We were crazy
Though all doctors crazier too?
We were lazy
And would always blame some Jew?
We knew heartbreak
Because we know we'd never win?
Our lives mistake
Which we medicate with gin?
And the moral?
Yes the moral neath it all?
Is that under
Great stuff is always small?
Its all hopeless
We were hapless as before
And the taxman
Is now rapping on our door.
All forgiveness
Is just galaxies away?
And the madness
Seems much stronger every day?
I am finished
And the world feels like a curse
It feels over
And we're waiting for the hearse.
Is it failure?
Or is it a great success?
Life goes staler
And we flounder in the mess?
We can show off
Precious stuff or else despair?
It seems over
And we fiddle with our hair?
They play simple
Games they always played?
And the victims
Sometimes publicly got flayed?
They play simple
Games with clear reward
Though there's small print
Underneath each point that's scored
All feels heartless
Yes they told me not to think?
And one's life can
Just vanish in a blink.
God is heartless
Or less does not exist
And we vanish
Simply items on Their list
Did it matter
Yes it did to you and me?
Life does shatter
Here 'agree' or 'not agree'?
Mediocre?
Here the critics will conclude?
With their satire
As they roast you in the nude?
You are old hat
And all critics are unfair?
Join some chorus
Or just twitch and mope and stare?
Her loud whining
Merely gets upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what one deserves?
Her loud bitching
Merely gets upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what one deserves?
His soft whining
Merely gets upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what one deserves?
His soft biching
Merely got upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what noe deerves
It is horror
Here: exist or not exist
It is sorrow
Whether on or off some list.
It is horror
And we all embrace this stuff
Fertile horror
And we never have enough.
Let the others
Teach their Lessons Big and Blond
We are Dark Ones
And the world is not too fond.
Let the others
Win their battles Small and Big
Its all Tragic
But right now do not give a fig.
Is it soup yet?
Is the meal ready to eat?
Is it success yet?
Did we rise above defeat?
Is it truth yet?
Is it victory for us all?
Is it real now?
Is it our time to be tall?
Are we happy?
Did the bright new age begin?
Did we flourish
In games only we could win?
Is it grace time?
Did we take over the world?
Or disgrace time?
Though the flags are all unfurled?
Is it over?
Did we drive the bastards out?
We recovered?
And it's time to twist and shout?
We made magic?
Or we merely were obscure?
We wrought havoc
Or our works cannot endure?
We played lotto?
And our tickets always won?
We went blotto
And we settled with a gun?
We got married?
And we had a dozen kids?
We just parried
And all ended on the skids?
We found answers
To all questions that we had?
We were dancers
Far more clumsy than our dad?
We split up then
And divorce did hurt us all?
We ignored pain
And ignored the man named Paul?
We loved movies
Which all ended with a Point?
And loved stories
Which would never disappoint
We loved artists
Though we tore them into bits?
We loved porn stars
And we all admired their tits ?
We chose battles
That we all were sure to win?
We were churchgoers
Though all ended up with sin?
We were crazy
Though all doctors crazier too?
We were lazy
And would always blame some Jew?
We knew heartbreak
Because we know we'd never win?
Our lives mistake
Which we medicate with gin?
And the moral?
Yes the moral neath it all?
Is that under
Great stuff is always small?
Its all hopeless
We were hapless as before
And the taxman
Is now rapping on our door.
All forgiveness
Is just galaxies away?
And the madness
Seems much stronger every day?
I am finished
And the world feels like a curse
It feels over
And we're waiting for the hearse.
Is it failure?
Or is it a great success?
Life goes staler
And we flounder in the mess?
We can show off
Precious stuff or else despair?
It seems over
And we fiddle with our hair?
They play simple
Games they always played?
And the victims
Sometimes publicly got flayed?
They play simple
Games with clear reward
Though there's small print
Underneath each point that's scored
All feels heartless
Yes they told me not to think?
And one's life can
Just vanish in a blink.
God is heartless
Or less does not exist
And we vanish
Simply items on Their list
Did it matter
Yes it did to you and me?
Life does shatter
Here 'agree' or 'not agree'?
Mediocre?
Here the critics will conclude?
With their satire
As they roast you in the nude?
You are old hat
And all critics are unfair?
Join some chorus
Or just twitch and mope and stare?
Her loud whining
Merely gets upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what one deserves?
Her loud bitching
Merely gets upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what one deserves?
His soft whining
Merely gets upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what one deserves?
His soft biching
Merely got upon our nerves?
They were all right
One just gets what noe deerves
It is horror
Here: exist or not exist
It is sorrow
Whether on or off some list.
It is horror
And we all embrace this stuff
Fertile horror
And we never have enough.
Let the others
Teach their Lessons Big and Blond
We are Dark Ones
And the world is not too fond.
Let the others
Win their battles Small and Big
Its all Tragic
But right now do not give a fig.
My Friend
by Sonja Aiken Struthers
morning
he surprises me, anew, every morning
he pulls me into consciousness
thief! he steals the warmth from the morning sun
thief! he steals the light from my eyes in the mirror
my protector, he soothes me
do not worry my dear; you will not feel today
i am grateful
day
he is a kind and thoughtful friend
my constant companion, he comforts me
do not worry my dear; someday you will not need me
you will learn not to feel on your own
i am not hungry
he spoons ashes into my mouth
i am grateful
night
i can no longer stay awake
he is here
brushing the tears from my face
caressing my cheek
wrapping me in his frozen embrace and whispering in my ear
do not worry my dear; i will stay until you fall asleep
i am grateful
my friend, my grief
Sonja Struthers
©October 2009
The Word Works/Sage Press
morning
he surprises me, anew, every morning
he pulls me into consciousness
thief! he steals the warmth from the morning sun
thief! he steals the light from my eyes in the mirror
my protector, he soothes me
do not worry my dear; you will not feel today
i am grateful
day
he is a kind and thoughtful friend
my constant companion, he comforts me
do not worry my dear; someday you will not need me
you will learn not to feel on your own
i am not hungry
he spoons ashes into my mouth
i am grateful
night
i can no longer stay awake
he is here
brushing the tears from my face
caressing my cheek
wrapping me in his frozen embrace and whispering in my ear
do not worry my dear; i will stay until you fall asleep
i am grateful
my friend, my grief
Sonja Struthers
©October 2009
The Word Works/Sage Press
Ashtray
Ashtray
by Quinn Tyler Jackson
When she took a seat beside me at the dance club, I was already three drinks into a seven drink night, there to hear the music and watch the movement on the dance floor. She was with a girlfriend, drinking a rum and Coke. She appeared to be searching for a lighter to start up her cigarette, so I held out mine, already lit. After putting the tip of her smoke to it, she nodded her thanks.
I had long since learned that, in the dance of unspoken signals and messages in the night club scene, lighting a woman’s cigarette was an invitation to start a conversation. When she told me her name was Sarah, I replied by letting her know mine. The direction of conversations at a dance club hinged on the next few words out of either party’s mouth: whether wit or triviality, what either of us said next would determine not only how long the conversation would continue, but its general tenor. Our conversation jumped about enough to keep me engaged.
“I often think about how the sun is eventually going to burn out,” she eventually said, brushing her just-past-shoulder-length black hair over her ear as if preening. She had soulful eyes. “It scares me.”
“Do you think that matters?” I asked. I leaned back into my seat and lit another cigarette. “It’s a long way off.”
“I think a lot about things like that,” she replied. Her smile showed her perfect teeth. “I know that most people don’t, but I do. I can’t help it.”
“Well, I doubt you’re going to find many people who come to a place like this, see someone as attractive as you, and have them want to talk about when the sun is going to burn out.” I sipped my drink and then explained, “These people haven’t even figured out how the rest of their night is going to go, let alone the next billion years.”
Sarah’s laugh shook me inside. I knew that I should not let my guard down, but maybe it was the drink, maybe it was the nice feeling that came with the fact she was putting so much enthusiasm into the conversation; I let it down despite my better judgment and returned her laughter. Eventually the conversation went to where I lived, and I admitted that I was staying in a hotel room.
“For how long?” she asked as she put back some of her drink.
“About a month,” I replied. “Give or take a week.”
“Is it a nice room, at least?” she asked.
I paused to think. The room was mostly empty. Other than the banged-up furniture it came with, it had my saxophone, notepads, laptop, and a half-dozen changes of clothes. “Kind of barren, but I like it that way,” I finally said. I sipped my drink and then added, “And what’s more—when the sun explodes in a billion years, I won’t lose much.”
She half-grinned when I said this. “What happened about a month ago?” she asked.
“I woke up.”
Sarah looked closely at me. “Care to explain? I’m curious.”
“Simply put, I’m no longer attached to as much as I used to be.”
After a few moments to consider, she finished her drink and smiled at me again with those perfect teeth of hers.
* * *
My lungs ached. As I opened my eyes, my first sight as they struggled to focus was the half-full ashtray on the end table beside the head of my bed. I smoked a brand with a white filter; half the butts in the tray had fake cork ends, and a few of those had lipstick smudges on them. I reached over with my right arm, expecting Sarah to be in the bed, but she wasn’t.
Now that my eyes were completely focused, I could see the red numbers on the clock: seven in the morning. The bathroom sink was running. I closed my eyes and imagined my head under a cold stream of water.
“This place has no fridge or stove,” she called out from the bathroom. “You weren’t kidding about barren.”
“I’ll treat you to breakfast down the street,” I replied through my cigarette-smoke-glossed teeth. “After I freshen up.”
She walked out of the bathroom, her black hair wet from having showered. “That would be nice,” she said, smiling. In the morning light, her eyes sparkled. It was then that I fully realized what I had done; she couldn’t have been a day over twenty.
I got out of bed, pulling the sheet over myself out of false modesty. After reaching over for my boxers and pulling them on, I went into the bathroom. A quick shower and thorough scouring of my teeth later, I came back into the bedroom, feeling ten years younger than I had when I’d awoken. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking her brand.
“Let’s go, then,” I said as I pulled on a clean turtleneck. She butted out her smoke and followed me out to the hallway.
* * *
“What prompted you to abandon everything?” Sarah asked me as she cut her bacon into two pieces.
I sipped my coffee while I formulated an answer to her question. In the light of day, with no alcohol in my system, and half a cup of coffee in me, she looked good even against the backdrop of the cheap café where we were eating. “I awoke every morning feeling as if I was only half a being,” I finally replied. “Try as I could to make the feeling go away, it got worse, rather than better.”
Sarah nodded that she was listening as she chewed her food. She placed her fork to her lips with an almost perfect delicateness.
“I came to feel,” I continued, “that my feeling of half-being was tied to my endless pursuit of unicorns other false gods.” I turned my plate halfway around and started on my hash browns. “Then I remembered how life was when I was about your age—assuming you’re about twenty-something or so.”
She smiled and said, “Or so.”
“Thereabouts,” I said, almost choking on a small chunk of greasy fried potato. “I didn’t need so much back then. You understand? I didn’t need all of the things and people I found myself surrounded with all those years later.”
“All those years? How old are you?” she asked.
“Twice your age, or so,” I replied. She appeared to blush, but kept to her breakfast, so I continued. “I didn’t need most of the things and people around me. If I didn’t need them when I was your age, how had I started to need them later on?” I shrugged. “But I acquired them anyway, and came to believe that I needed them. Each of these attachments had a price.”
“What price?” she asked between forks.
“I had to give up dreams, hopes, desires that were truly me. To know person X, I had to stop talking so much about subject Y. And so on. That, I determined, is where the ‘other half’ of me had gone.” I pushed my empty plate to the middle of the table. “So I walked away from all of that. I no longer needed to sacrifice and compromise my being, since I no longer needed to be around those people, with those things.”
Sarah’s face suddenly appeared very sober. “I don’t know if I could walk away from everything around me,” she finally said. “I have two jobs, and am proud of being able to have it all.”
I started to chuckle. “Nobody’s asking you to leave anything,” I assured her. When the waitress came, I paid for the food and Sarah and I parted company.
* * *
It was two weeks before I met her again, at the same club. This time, she was sitting by herself when I walked into the smoking area. She acknowledged my presence when I entered the room, so I sat close to her and pulled the ashtray closer to myself and lit up.
“Hello,” she said, smiling widely.
I suddenly felt as if no time at all had passed since she and I had eaten breakfast after our night together. “Hello, Sarah,” I replied. “Are you still worried about the sun going out in a billion years?”
“You remember my name,” she said. “Are you still living the minimalist life?”
I nodded yes.
She started to laugh heartily, so much that her perfect teeth showed and her full beauty came out to play. “We’re a few weeks closer to doom since the last time we talked,” she said.
“Indeed, we are. The clock is ticking. Tick. Tick. Better find a bomb shelter.” I looked to my left and right as if the club was about to be hit by a nuclear blast.
She put her right hand on my forearm. Her fingers felt gentle through the material of my shirt and I remembered our night from two weeks earlier. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she said.
I took my cigarette from my mouth, tipped the ash from the end of it into the ashtray, and returned it to my lips. “And? Come to any conclusions?”
“I wish I could do what you did,” she said.
“You’re too young to be empty,” I returned, placing my hand over hers. As my skin touched hers, I asked myself why I had put my hand there, and settled on the idea that I did it to comfort her from an unspoken angst in some way.
As she looked into my eyes, I noticed something inside her own eyes that spoke of a deep gloom that could only be noticed in a certain light, at a certain distance, under the
exact conditions she and I were now in. This young lady, only about half my age, was in agony. The beauty of her features hid her sorrow well; when she smiled, almost everyone else’s heart would soar the sky like a free bird to see such perfection on a human face. Somewhere inside Sarah’s soul, however, was an inky darkness that was struggling to get out, to be free of its chains. At the center of those amazingly bright eyes of hers was a dark beast. I knew that beast because that beast stood behind me every day as my own shadow.
“Then again,” I mumbled, “maybe you’re not.” I leaned to her right ear and whispered, “Did you miss me?”
She leaned to my ear in response and whispered as quietly as I had to her, “Yes, I did.” Her cigarette had gone out, so she took mine from my mouth, put it between her lips. I lit another one for myself.
“Do you want to give everything up and be free of all that?” I asked. I picked up my drink and took a long sip from it. “It may not be what you need to be free. Everyone’s different, you know.”
She continued to stare into my eyes, that darkness at the center of her clearly fighting just behind the thin mask that was her perfect young face. “It’s an intoxicating thought,” she admitted.
I broke our stare and scanned the smoking room for another couple, eventually finding a young man and woman seated a few yards away in a dark corner. “You see those two? The man’s wearing a red shirt and the woman has her hair up.”
She looked about until she’d spotted them and then said, “Yes.”
“Tell me what you think they’re discussing.”
Sarah shrugged and said, “No idea. Maybe he’s saying something like, ‘Let’s have sex.’ That would fit right in at a place like this. I certainly get hit on enough around this place by guys like that.”
I chuckled. “Probably. When you stop being attached to things and people,” I said, “you think less about what is going on in your own self and start putting two and two together about what is going on around you. You start to see how utterly ridiculous almost everything really is, and best of all, you….” I stopped myself.
“Best of all you what?” Sarah eventually pushed, her eyes intently locked on my mouth as if she was waiting to see what I was about to say.
“Best of all,” I continued, “you stop worrying about when the sun is going to burn out and destroy the planet, and you start to live your life with a certain amount of clarity and freedom from the shackles inside your heart and mind. You stop hearing your shadow scream at you for its freedom once you free it and start listening to it whisper its advice in your ear.”
I could tell from her expression that she was listening to what I was saying. I didn’t want her to; I wanted her to get up and run away from me as if I were some kind of crazy man she’d met in a night club. But she stayed in her seat, watching and listening as if I had something to say. Everything bright and cheerful in me wanted to explain to her that once one had reached clarity and freedom, there was no seeing the world through the haze of deception one had become used to over years of self-defense against the truth about the world; maybe that would scare her off. Everything bright and cheerful in me, however, was not what she was looking at. The darkness behind her pupils was fixed on everything dark and melancholy in me. She had seen past my friendly face and was
appealing now to that part of me that kept my decency and goodness in balance such that the end result evened out and kept me from being destroyed by imbalance. She was beseeching my shadow.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” I finally asked. Although I was not putting on a face, I imagined that my face must have appeared very serious to her. This was the face that she longed to see on another human being.
“I want to see things the way you do,” she finally replied.
“No,” I said. “You want to see things the way they really are. It’s not the same thing. There’s nothing interesting about me or how I see things.”
She continued to stare into my eyes.
“The sound you hear, the one that makes you worry about the future, is your shadow, hollering to be free. I can see it in your eyes, kicking and screaming.”
She blinked, as if embarrassed to have been staring so intently, but then she regained her composure.
I did not expect that I would say the next words that came out of my mouth, but my shadow betrayed me and let them be released into the noise. “If I were so damned enlightened, I would get up right now, walk away, and never look back. I wouldn’t want to need you, or anyone else for that matter. I wouldn’t feel the loneliness of seeing only one brand of cigarette butts in my ashtray in the morning.”
She shushed me by putting her right index finger over my upper lip until my mouth was closed. In the pounding of the night club music around us, we did not speak another word, but instead sat, smoking and drinking, for what seemed like hours but was probably only a handful of minutes. When it came time to get up, I did, and she followed me again to my hotel room. Her cell phone started shaking and glowing a few minutes into our walk, but she turned if off and put it in her purse.
by Quinn Tyler Jackson
When she took a seat beside me at the dance club, I was already three drinks into a seven drink night, there to hear the music and watch the movement on the dance floor. She was with a girlfriend, drinking a rum and Coke. She appeared to be searching for a lighter to start up her cigarette, so I held out mine, already lit. After putting the tip of her smoke to it, she nodded her thanks.
I had long since learned that, in the dance of unspoken signals and messages in the night club scene, lighting a woman’s cigarette was an invitation to start a conversation. When she told me her name was Sarah, I replied by letting her know mine. The direction of conversations at a dance club hinged on the next few words out of either party’s mouth: whether wit or triviality, what either of us said next would determine not only how long the conversation would continue, but its general tenor. Our conversation jumped about enough to keep me engaged.
“I often think about how the sun is eventually going to burn out,” she eventually said, brushing her just-past-shoulder-length black hair over her ear as if preening. She had soulful eyes. “It scares me.”
“Do you think that matters?” I asked. I leaned back into my seat and lit another cigarette. “It’s a long way off.”
“I think a lot about things like that,” she replied. Her smile showed her perfect teeth. “I know that most people don’t, but I do. I can’t help it.”
“Well, I doubt you’re going to find many people who come to a place like this, see someone as attractive as you, and have them want to talk about when the sun is going to burn out.” I sipped my drink and then explained, “These people haven’t even figured out how the rest of their night is going to go, let alone the next billion years.”
Sarah’s laugh shook me inside. I knew that I should not let my guard down, but maybe it was the drink, maybe it was the nice feeling that came with the fact she was putting so much enthusiasm into the conversation; I let it down despite my better judgment and returned her laughter. Eventually the conversation went to where I lived, and I admitted that I was staying in a hotel room.
“For how long?” she asked as she put back some of her drink.
“About a month,” I replied. “Give or take a week.”
“Is it a nice room, at least?” she asked.
I paused to think. The room was mostly empty. Other than the banged-up furniture it came with, it had my saxophone, notepads, laptop, and a half-dozen changes of clothes. “Kind of barren, but I like it that way,” I finally said. I sipped my drink and then added, “And what’s more—when the sun explodes in a billion years, I won’t lose much.”
She half-grinned when I said this. “What happened about a month ago?” she asked.
“I woke up.”
Sarah looked closely at me. “Care to explain? I’m curious.”
“Simply put, I’m no longer attached to as much as I used to be.”
After a few moments to consider, she finished her drink and smiled at me again with those perfect teeth of hers.
* * *
My lungs ached. As I opened my eyes, my first sight as they struggled to focus was the half-full ashtray on the end table beside the head of my bed. I smoked a brand with a white filter; half the butts in the tray had fake cork ends, and a few of those had lipstick smudges on them. I reached over with my right arm, expecting Sarah to be in the bed, but she wasn’t.
Now that my eyes were completely focused, I could see the red numbers on the clock: seven in the morning. The bathroom sink was running. I closed my eyes and imagined my head under a cold stream of water.
“This place has no fridge or stove,” she called out from the bathroom. “You weren’t kidding about barren.”
“I’ll treat you to breakfast down the street,” I replied through my cigarette-smoke-glossed teeth. “After I freshen up.”
She walked out of the bathroom, her black hair wet from having showered. “That would be nice,” she said, smiling. In the morning light, her eyes sparkled. It was then that I fully realized what I had done; she couldn’t have been a day over twenty.
I got out of bed, pulling the sheet over myself out of false modesty. After reaching over for my boxers and pulling them on, I went into the bathroom. A quick shower and thorough scouring of my teeth later, I came back into the bedroom, feeling ten years younger than I had when I’d awoken. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking her brand.
“Let’s go, then,” I said as I pulled on a clean turtleneck. She butted out her smoke and followed me out to the hallway.
* * *
“What prompted you to abandon everything?” Sarah asked me as she cut her bacon into two pieces.
I sipped my coffee while I formulated an answer to her question. In the light of day, with no alcohol in my system, and half a cup of coffee in me, she looked good even against the backdrop of the cheap café where we were eating. “I awoke every morning feeling as if I was only half a being,” I finally replied. “Try as I could to make the feeling go away, it got worse, rather than better.”
Sarah nodded that she was listening as she chewed her food. She placed her fork to her lips with an almost perfect delicateness.
“I came to feel,” I continued, “that my feeling of half-being was tied to my endless pursuit of unicorns other false gods.” I turned my plate halfway around and started on my hash browns. “Then I remembered how life was when I was about your age—assuming you’re about twenty-something or so.”
She smiled and said, “Or so.”
“Thereabouts,” I said, almost choking on a small chunk of greasy fried potato. “I didn’t need so much back then. You understand? I didn’t need all of the things and people I found myself surrounded with all those years later.”
“All those years? How old are you?” she asked.
“Twice your age, or so,” I replied. She appeared to blush, but kept to her breakfast, so I continued. “I didn’t need most of the things and people around me. If I didn’t need them when I was your age, how had I started to need them later on?” I shrugged. “But I acquired them anyway, and came to believe that I needed them. Each of these attachments had a price.”
“What price?” she asked between forks.
“I had to give up dreams, hopes, desires that were truly me. To know person X, I had to stop talking so much about subject Y. And so on. That, I determined, is where the ‘other half’ of me had gone.” I pushed my empty plate to the middle of the table. “So I walked away from all of that. I no longer needed to sacrifice and compromise my being, since I no longer needed to be around those people, with those things.”
Sarah’s face suddenly appeared very sober. “I don’t know if I could walk away from everything around me,” she finally said. “I have two jobs, and am proud of being able to have it all.”
I started to chuckle. “Nobody’s asking you to leave anything,” I assured her. When the waitress came, I paid for the food and Sarah and I parted company.
* * *
It was two weeks before I met her again, at the same club. This time, she was sitting by herself when I walked into the smoking area. She acknowledged my presence when I entered the room, so I sat close to her and pulled the ashtray closer to myself and lit up.
“Hello,” she said, smiling widely.
I suddenly felt as if no time at all had passed since she and I had eaten breakfast after our night together. “Hello, Sarah,” I replied. “Are you still worried about the sun going out in a billion years?”
“You remember my name,” she said. “Are you still living the minimalist life?”
I nodded yes.
She started to laugh heartily, so much that her perfect teeth showed and her full beauty came out to play. “We’re a few weeks closer to doom since the last time we talked,” she said.
“Indeed, we are. The clock is ticking. Tick. Tick. Better find a bomb shelter.” I looked to my left and right as if the club was about to be hit by a nuclear blast.
She put her right hand on my forearm. Her fingers felt gentle through the material of my shirt and I remembered our night from two weeks earlier. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she said.
I took my cigarette from my mouth, tipped the ash from the end of it into the ashtray, and returned it to my lips. “And? Come to any conclusions?”
“I wish I could do what you did,” she said.
“You’re too young to be empty,” I returned, placing my hand over hers. As my skin touched hers, I asked myself why I had put my hand there, and settled on the idea that I did it to comfort her from an unspoken angst in some way.
As she looked into my eyes, I noticed something inside her own eyes that spoke of a deep gloom that could only be noticed in a certain light, at a certain distance, under the
exact conditions she and I were now in. This young lady, only about half my age, was in agony. The beauty of her features hid her sorrow well; when she smiled, almost everyone else’s heart would soar the sky like a free bird to see such perfection on a human face. Somewhere inside Sarah’s soul, however, was an inky darkness that was struggling to get out, to be free of its chains. At the center of those amazingly bright eyes of hers was a dark beast. I knew that beast because that beast stood behind me every day as my own shadow.
“Then again,” I mumbled, “maybe you’re not.” I leaned to her right ear and whispered, “Did you miss me?”
She leaned to my ear in response and whispered as quietly as I had to her, “Yes, I did.” Her cigarette had gone out, so she took mine from my mouth, put it between her lips. I lit another one for myself.
“Do you want to give everything up and be free of all that?” I asked. I picked up my drink and took a long sip from it. “It may not be what you need to be free. Everyone’s different, you know.”
She continued to stare into my eyes, that darkness at the center of her clearly fighting just behind the thin mask that was her perfect young face. “It’s an intoxicating thought,” she admitted.
I broke our stare and scanned the smoking room for another couple, eventually finding a young man and woman seated a few yards away in a dark corner. “You see those two? The man’s wearing a red shirt and the woman has her hair up.”
She looked about until she’d spotted them and then said, “Yes.”
“Tell me what you think they’re discussing.”
Sarah shrugged and said, “No idea. Maybe he’s saying something like, ‘Let’s have sex.’ That would fit right in at a place like this. I certainly get hit on enough around this place by guys like that.”
I chuckled. “Probably. When you stop being attached to things and people,” I said, “you think less about what is going on in your own self and start putting two and two together about what is going on around you. You start to see how utterly ridiculous almost everything really is, and best of all, you….” I stopped myself.
“Best of all you what?” Sarah eventually pushed, her eyes intently locked on my mouth as if she was waiting to see what I was about to say.
“Best of all,” I continued, “you stop worrying about when the sun is going to burn out and destroy the planet, and you start to live your life with a certain amount of clarity and freedom from the shackles inside your heart and mind. You stop hearing your shadow scream at you for its freedom once you free it and start listening to it whisper its advice in your ear.”
I could tell from her expression that she was listening to what I was saying. I didn’t want her to; I wanted her to get up and run away from me as if I were some kind of crazy man she’d met in a night club. But she stayed in her seat, watching and listening as if I had something to say. Everything bright and cheerful in me wanted to explain to her that once one had reached clarity and freedom, there was no seeing the world through the haze of deception one had become used to over years of self-defense against the truth about the world; maybe that would scare her off. Everything bright and cheerful in me, however, was not what she was looking at. The darkness behind her pupils was fixed on everything dark and melancholy in me. She had seen past my friendly face and was
appealing now to that part of me that kept my decency and goodness in balance such that the end result evened out and kept me from being destroyed by imbalance. She was beseeching my shadow.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” I finally asked. Although I was not putting on a face, I imagined that my face must have appeared very serious to her. This was the face that she longed to see on another human being.
“I want to see things the way you do,” she finally replied.
“No,” I said. “You want to see things the way they really are. It’s not the same thing. There’s nothing interesting about me or how I see things.”
She continued to stare into my eyes.
“The sound you hear, the one that makes you worry about the future, is your shadow, hollering to be free. I can see it in your eyes, kicking and screaming.”
She blinked, as if embarrassed to have been staring so intently, but then she regained her composure.
I did not expect that I would say the next words that came out of my mouth, but my shadow betrayed me and let them be released into the noise. “If I were so damned enlightened, I would get up right now, walk away, and never look back. I wouldn’t want to need you, or anyone else for that matter. I wouldn’t feel the loneliness of seeing only one brand of cigarette butts in my ashtray in the morning.”
She shushed me by putting her right index finger over my upper lip until my mouth was closed. In the pounding of the night club music around us, we did not speak another word, but instead sat, smoking and drinking, for what seemed like hours but was probably only a handful of minutes. When it came time to get up, I did, and she followed me again to my hotel room. Her cell phone started shaking and glowing a few minutes into our walk, but she turned if off and put it in her purse.
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