I felt Cary get out of bed, but she came back and said, “I need to pee.” I laughed at the word—that she still knew it.
We put on our jackets and took a flashlight outside; Ralph came with us. Our plan had been to pee behind the house, but Cary suggested we walk down the road to the trail. It was after 3:00 a.m. The flashlight was dying. We followed the circle of light I shined at the dirt; we couldn’t see Ralph, who had run ahead of us, but could hear her steps, her breathing. We took the trail. In the woods, the flashlight didn’t seem like much, but when its batteries died, we missed the little light we’d had. We held hands; we called Ralph to come.
“Let’s keep going,” Cary said.
“This is far enough.”
I heard her pull down her pajama bottoms. “You know what they say,” she said. “The pack that pees together…”
In the dark we could hear Ralph sniffing the puddles between our legs: an honor to be known this way.
When we were finished, we started to walk back, but I stopped. I’d never liked the dark, but there, in the woods, time and space seemed not to exist. We were creatures of smell and sound and touch; blind children kissing.
In the morning, ticks. One red and bloated on Ralph’s head, one on my neck, one on Cary’s scalp. She checked me, I checked her. All her curly hair, it was impossible to know I’d found everything.
Also, in the morning, more flies.
Also, in the morning, toilet water threatened at the rim of the bowl. A recurring dream I’d been having for years: I walk into a clean bathroom, but the toilet is filthy and overflowing. I walk into another bathroom, white and sparkling, but the toilet is clogged. Then the light goes out, and soon I can feel the cold water touch my bare feet. We called our plumber, only to discover that it was Memorial Day; we hadn’t read a paper in over a month. We peed in the shower—something we were glad, in retrospect, not to have thought of the night before—and waited until dark to return to the woods, where we squatted side by side by side.
Also that day, late in the day, heavy rain that leaked through the roof and into our living room. We sat on the couch, a pot between us catching rain. We slept there, too, alternately soothed, then woken by the change in pitch of water falling into water.
The next day a roofer came out. He was bald—no eyebrows or eyelashes either—and had jaundiced eyes. It was unnerving to look into his eyes, but I did. He had a hacking cough and huffed his way up his ladder. It was difficult to guess his age without hair as an indication; he was just as likely forty as sixty. He evoked in me a desire to do his job for him, to ask him to come down from his ladder so I could climb up; he could tell me what to do while he swung in our hammock. I went inside to make tea, an excuse to get away from him. A few minutes later, just as the kettle started to whistle, I heard a sound I knew immediately was the ladder falling. Cary and I rushed outside, hoping we’d find him still on the roof, the ladder on the ground below, but he was on his back on our lawn, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut.
Cary called 911. I kneeled beside him and kept telling him he was all right, even though clearly he was anything but all right. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. All the air that could come out had come out, and none was getting in. I put my hand on his arm and said, “You’re going to breathe, just the wind got knocked out of you.” I shouldn’t have said just; the wind had been knocked out of him, yes, but he’d likely broken his back. Maybe worse, depending how he landed.
Cary came out and kneeled on the other side of him; she looked at him, then at me. He was trying to say something, but all he could do was make little puffs of air. “Breathe,” I said. “Just breathe.” I put my ear against his mouth and listened: three puffs, a pause, three more puffs.
Then, suddenly, I understood: “Call my wife.”
“Of course,” I said. “Of course we will.”
But he didn’t have enough air to give us the number; that was all he could say, just those three words.
He passed out briefly, and I said, “Hey, stay with us—don’t go anywhere.”
He opened his eyes, closed them again. “Hang in there,” I kept saying.
Sirens. Then the lights of an ambulance. In New York there would have been a crowd, but in Chilmark it was just me and Cary.
After the man was gone, we called the number on the side of his truck. His name was Russell, but he went by Sarge. The woman who answered the phone said she’d call Kerry, his wife. Sarge and Kerry, a roofer and his wife. That was all we knew. A few hours later, two men came by to get the truck and ladder.
We were so consumed with what had just happened that we didn’t notice, not until hours later, that the flies, every last one of them, were gone. Not dead on the counters and windowsills and couch cushions, just gone, suddenly, as if they’d never been there.
They came back for a few days in July, and a few in August, as if to remind us that they had been real and could return, regardless of our wishes otherwise.
Notes for The Book of Why, 2002
People missing limbs don’t grow new ones because they don’t believe they can, because they’ve never seen it done. People don’t live to be two hundred because they’ve never seen someone live to be two hundred. People don’t reverse, or at least pause, the aging process because they don’t believe that it can be done. People don’t understand that the human body is miraculous. The human body isn’t meant to break down; we believe it will because it’s all we know. But let me tell you: the human body is meant to go on and on. The human body is a self-healing wonder. Just ask anyone who had cancer one day and didn’t the next. Believe me—they’re out there. I have letters from them. They know the truth: If you can see something done in your mind’s eye, it can be done. Anything imaginable is possible.
Even if you receive a diagnosis of a disease one day, your body can be disease-free the next. If you believe that your body is disease-free, and if you maintain that certainty, that vibration of health, more than you maintain your awareness of the disease, then it will not—it cannot—remain in your body. It’s there only because you believe it’s there; it manifested only because you believed it could.
Look around you, no matter where you are, no matter how you may be feeling, and notice something that pleases you. Best not to wait for something pleasing to find you. You aren’t creating pleasure, you aren’t artificially manufacturing it, you’re simply noticing what’s already around you. The way sunlight slants through a thin crack in the canopy of trees above you and illuminates your wife’s hair as you both pause on your walk through the woods beside your house. The colors of leaves; the rings inside a felled tree; the earthy smell of the dirt trail, a whiff of mint and wet leaves. Focus on the slant of sunlight on your wife’s hair and notice how you feel. Focus on keeping, not losing. Focus on what’s here, now. Feel good about feeling good. Don’t dwell on the tiny bones your dog has dug up; this isn’t about finding something upsetting and fixing it. This is about deciding that there’s nothing to be upset about—not in your world, not in the one you’re perpetually in the process of creating. Best not to dwell on the felled tree; best to imagine the lightning strike that split the trunk; best to imagine that kind of power inside you. The more you practice appreciation, the better you’ll feel; the better you feel, the more you’ll want to notice pleasing things; the more you notice pleasing things, the more pleasure you’ll attract into your life. Every time you appreciate something in the universe, you are saying, “More of this, please.” But you won’t need to speak, you won’t need to ask—your thoughts and feelings will be enough. When we say or feel thank you, the universe says you’re welcome, as in: you’re welcome to more of this, to more of anything you want.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND: I’D always believed that I could save things; that it was my responsibility. My father, my mother, strangers, objects, the entire world. Cary, of course.
Foolish, especially when someone doesn’t need to be saved, or doesn’t want to be, or can’t be, but I’ve never
been able to help myself.
Which is ironic, I guess: a self-help author who can’t help himself.
I’m tempted to say that this is my first literal self-help book—the first meant to help me.
The first time I spoke to an audience, I felt as if I was doing what I’d been put on this earth to do. There was no doubt. It was instantly clear—even clearer when people spoke to me after—that my entire life had been leading to that moment; that everything I’d ever done had been in preparation for this; that this was going to be my life’s work.
Here’s what it feels like: The right words keep finding my lips; they come from a part of me stronger and more articulate than the me the world normally hears from. I tell the audience that I don’t need my notes and toss them onto the floor. I move to the edge of the stage. I walk up and down the aisles. I look directly into their eyes and mean every word I say. I’m not a showman; I’m not loud. If anything, I’m quiet. But the quieter I am, the more hushed the audience becomes, and the louder my quiet is. I have some tics (I’m aware of them; I’ve seen them on video). I rub my beard too much. I rock my weight back and forth from one leg to the other. I keep my hands in my pockets. I wear a jacket and tie but always sneakers. I take long pauses to allow the audience to think about what I’ve just said. Sometimes I say, “I want you to think about what I’ve just said.” Or “Take a moment right now and think about that.” Often I’ll say, “Listen to me” or “Here’s the truth” or “If there’s one thing you take away from this seminar, this is it” or “What I’m about to say—imagine it’s written in capital letters.” I’ll say things like “I know you can do this, I know every one of you can.” I’ll say, “Be patient—you’ll get where you need to go.” I’ll say, “Trust me.” I’ll say, “I’ve never been more certain about something in my life.”
I can access the feeling even now, nine years since that last talk in Las Vegas. I miss it. The way they lean forward in their seats; the way they write furiously in their notebooks; the way they blink. I’ve always found something sweetly vulnerable in a blink, something the body must do. During some pauses—long moments of silence during which I’d look from face to face and send my intention for peace and happiness, all their desires fulfilled—I’d see nothing but blinks. I’d become aware of my own. I’d play a game: try not to blink. A minute, two minutes, the eyes water, they hurt, the room blurs, and then, just for a fraction of a second, it’s all gone, everywhere darkness, and then the eyes open again and the world is still there, where you’d left it, and you wonder if it’s the same world. Games I’d play. Fun, at first. Then something else. During one talk, in Philadelphia, I started to cry. I don’t mean that my eyes watered from the blinking game, but that I cried; that I felt something—even now I can’t name what it was—that made me terribly sad, and it had something to do, best guess, with the word must: all the things a human body must do: blink, eat, shit, sleep, die.
And then I changed my thinking. I thought of all the things the human body does on its own: it grows, it pumps blood, it breathes.
I took a few deep breaths.
I told them that my tears were tears of joy. Something about how miraculous the body is, how limitless.
In the weeks after my father died, I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake early and wait downstairs in the dark for the sound of newspapers dropped on the stoop. Then I’d fold and rubber-band them. If it was raining, I’d put each paper in a plastic bag. I couldn’t stand the quiet, so I’d put on the TV. A color bar made a long, piercing beep; I kept folding papers while the station flatlined. I changed the channel, changed it again: TV snow, a swirling gray-white blizzard I could get lost in if I moved closer to the TV and stared long enough. An avalanche that could break me until I was nothing but a peaceful thought tumbling through beautiful white. Sometimes, in the snow, I could hear whispers, but never words I recognized.
And then the snow was gone and a man was preaching. His gray hair had been combed over his otherwise bald head; he was sweating, huffing into his microphone. He wore brown polyester pants and a striped tie that hung well below his belt. He stood before a young dark-skinned woman in a wheelchair and laid his hand on her shoulder. Create a new spinal cord in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Create a new spinal cord right now. All things are possible to he who believeth. We thank you, God, for a new spine in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. The woman slumped in her wheelchair, eyes closed. The preacher turned to other people standing in a line. Well, are you ready? He went from one person to the next and laid his hand on each head and spoke in tongues, and one by one they fell back into arms waiting to catch them. Then he stopped in front of a child whose legs were in braces. He gestured for everyone to give him space. He hunched over the girl—she was tiny—and touched her head. I lay my hands upon this little one. By the direction of the Lord, in obedience to the law of contact transmission—oh my, oh my, oh my my, my my my my—the healing power of God Almighty is ministered to this body, to undo that which Satan has wrought, to affect a healing therein from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. The girl fell back. In the name of Jesus. Say it again, everybody. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Another line had formed; he touched each person, and one by one they fell back. An old woman wearing a red beehive wig. A tall, thin man in a powder blue suit. Twin girls wearing matching red dresses. A woman holding an infant. A teenager with arms crossed in either boredom or defiance. They all fell, and the preacher spoke in tongues, and when he was finished he said, I felt the electricity of the Holy Spirit go into every one of you. You mustn’t lose faith. Keep the switch of faith turned on. A few years back a woman brought me her child, three or four years old. Both of that poor child’s feet were deformed. Now, I’ve seen a child with one club foot, but never did see one with both of them. Well, I took that dear child in my arms and held those little feet in my hands and I could feel the healing power of God go into them. But when I looked down, those feet were just as deformed as they ever were. I told the girl’s mother, I felt the electricity of the Holy Spirit go into those feet, your child is healed, that’s all I know. You need to keep the switch of faith turned on, don’t let Satan bring doubt into your heart. The healing power of God is working on the feet. Well, two weeks later she brought that child back and held her up for the congregation to see, and both feet were perfect.
Every night that year, the year of healing, I slept with my hand on her head. She fell asleep first, and I would wrap one arm around her, and with my other hand I would touch her head. I would close my eyes, and in the dark beneath my eyelids see whiteness, what looked like TV snow, and I would think, I send you an intention for complete and long-lasting wellness. I send you complete and long-lasting wellness. I send you complete and everlasting wellness. I send us both complete and everlasting wellness. I intend for you a long and happy life filled with peace, perfect health, and well-being. I am pre-grateful for your long and happy life filled with peace, perfect health, and well-being. I am pre-grateful for our long and happy life together filled with peace, perfect health, and well-being.
Electricity counts.
Brilliant if you were it, infuriating if you weren’t.
Tag, the simplest game children play, was my least favorite. A game you don’t choose as much as it chooses you: someone tags you, a hand on your back, You’re it. The other children run away, and the only thing to do is chase. Otherwise you’re it for the rest of the day. We’d hide in the bushes beside the rectory or behind the statue of Mary. I’d chase, but not to catch, not for the fun of catching, but rather to not be it, to relieve myself of that burden. If I was lucky enough to tag someone, that person would tag me back and run away. Sometimes we’d tag each other back and forth a dozen times. One time I had the idea to run around a parked car; the girl who was it would never be able to tag me. But after five or six dizzying sprints around the car, she stopped. I was leaning against the hood to catch my breath. She touched the bumper and said, “You’re it—ele
ctricity counts!”
I wanted to say, If electricity counts, then you’re it, because your feet are touching the ground and so are mine.
But then she could have said the same to me.
In which case, the entire world was it.
Love connects people at a molecular level; their cells become entangled. If you poke one, the other flinches. Once two particles have interacted intensely, even if you separate them by miles, years, lifetimes, they behave as if they’re still connected.
Sounds nice. A story like any other. A fairy tale, some might say. Wishful thinking.
But this one has been tested.
Two people with close ties—in most cases, lovers or spouses—are placed in separate rooms. One of them, the healer, watches a monitor. At random intervals the image of the healer’s beloved—sitting in an electromagnetically shielded room—appears on the screen. The healer sends the beloved compassionate intentions upon seeing his or her face. Scientists have found physical evidence—changes in perspiration, temperature, heart rate, and blood flow—that one person’s thoughts can affect another person’s body.
I didn’t need this study to believe—I’d been writing about this, in my own way, for years—but it renewed my hope that I could do this alone, that even if Cary had lost faith in her ability to heal herself, or if she’d never really had it in the first place, then no matter: I would focus my every thought on her wellness. I would meditate on it, envision it, be certain of it. I would take her life in my hands. Literally. Through summer and fall and winter, as long as it took, I would lay my hands on her head and the tumors would shrink, then disappear.
The Book of Why Page 17