by Tammy Kling
“Nope.” Pete worked to arrange the logs in a triangular fashion, pulling mine out and re-positioning them again in his own way, like a small version of a teepee. He started with one log in the center and stacked the others carefully at an angle beside it.
“See, it all starts with the foundation,” he said. “Just like our lives. If you don’t put the logs onto the stack correctly in the first place, it’s too late once you’ve lit the match.” He carefully positioned the last log, found a box of matches in the kitchen, and rolled up some paper, lighting it.
“The outer logs can burn for hours independently, and if they’re not touching the center log, you’ve got no bonfire. You’ve just got random logs that don’t connect with the other ones. You need to build it right to get the full effect.”
I watched Pete’s fire spark, then ignite. Before long it burned passionately in deep red tones that sent smoke swirling upward through the stone chimney. The scent of pine filtered into the cabin, enveloping us.
Pete settled onto the couch and motioned toward his creation.
“Now that, my friend, is one of life’s hidden treasures—the simplicity of knowing how to build a fire and passing it on. Next time you build a fire you’ll do it that way, I bet.”
I smiled, and I was sure he was right.
“And you’ll think of me,” he added.
I stared into the blaze, hypnotized by the flickering of the flame.
“My brother can make a fire like that,” I said, thinking out loud. “He was always the meticulous one. Earned a badge in boy scouts for building a fire when we were kids.”
“So you have a brother?”
I nodded, and tears began to gather at the corners of my eyes. Pete noticed and pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his shirt.
“You want to ring him up? Brag about where you are?” He smiled, no doubt trying to make me feel lighter.
“No,” I said. He looked at me curiously. “It’s a long story.”
Pete shrugged, placed a hand on his jaw, and scratched down the side.
“So are you sad?” I asked, changing the subject.
“I don’t know,” he responded. A line of stubble had started across his chin and he tugged at it for a while. He looked up as if he was pondering my question, or searching for answers. I thought then that he was the most open person I’d ever met. He had no desire to impress anyone, as if the years on the mountain had erased his ego.
“I don’t know if I’m sad or happy, Jonathan. Happy to be found, finally. Happy that I was recognized by my mother in some small way. You have no idea what it’s like to not know where you come from and to have no connection to anyone.
“The orphanage records were destroyed in a fire years ago, and all of my family history was erased. So I have no idea how they found me. Still, I’m happy that I’ll finally learn more about that connection.
“But I suppose I’m a bit sad at the same time.” He pointed out the window to the trees in the front yard, where two bluebirds were engaged in a battle. “Look at that!” he said excitedly. He rose from the couch and walked outside, and I followed.
The first bird swooped low, straight toward the other, then flew away with the second bluebird fluttering in pursuit. They jaunted up toward a branch, then under it gracefully, jabbing back and forth at each other.
“We’ve all got a war within us,” Pete said. “Like two warring bluebirds.”
“You’re like a wise old monk,” I said, smiling. “You know that? You always have a way with words. Two bluebirds, eh?”
Pete nodded.
“That’s right. And sometimes we let the bluebirds fight and rip us to shreds inside, when we should stop it from happening.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Why do I feel a lesson coming on?”
“It’s all a lesson, Jonathan.” He stood up and lifted his hands to the sky. “Look around!” he said excitedly, with more passion than I’d seen from him before. “We’re alive! Look at this majestic beauty we woke up to this morning.” He turned to me. “How many summers or falls do you have left Jonathan? Maybe twenty? Thirty? There’s no time for warring emotions. We need to make a decision to be happy, despite the death of our dreams. We need to be willing to create new ones.”
I sat down and leaned far back in the rocker, pushing with my legs until the forks were lifted off of the deck. I inhaled and stayed there for a while, eyes closed. Quite frankly, I didn’t want to think about my dreams. I felt anger rising inside, against Pete, against God, against the world.
I pushed it down.
Pete spoke again.
“I’ll get over my sadness today,” he said, “get on my plane tomorrow, and let it go. We humans place too much value on our emotions, and we let them rule our lives and wreak havoc in them.”
“Sometimes life wreaks havoc on your emotions whether you let it or not,” I shot back.
“Yes, our circumstances can be tragic. But your emotion isn’t who you are. Often we humans make the mistake that it is.” He stared into the trees, where the sun had dropped, casting an orange glow through the branches. He looked back at me, and his brown eyes were wide and young, the eyes of a twenty year old. What I felt at that moment was indescribable.
“We believe that emotion is who we are, but it’s not that way at all,” he continued. “That’s a trap. You can get trapped in your emotions until they become your identity, until you’ve lost all direction and your compass is off kilter.” He stood and walked to the wood railing, placing his hands on it. “You’ve been sad since you arrived. You have a heavy spirit of darkness all over you. How long are you going to let yourself live in that?
“Why do you think it’s your right to ask?” I said angrily.
We sat in silence for a long time.
Then Pete turned and swept his hand across the sky.
“Can you imagine being persecuted for your beliefs in a world as beautiful as this?” he said, changing the subject.
“What?” I was starting to wonder if he’d had too much to drink. “Is this another one of your philosophical diatribes, because if it is, just give me another hit right now.” I held the shot glass out toward him.
“In Greece, in 399 BC,” he continued, ignoring the glass, “Socrates was prosecuted for his teachings. The government charged that he was corrupting the youths of Athens. At his trial, Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. He was sentenced to death.”
“Did you read about that in his book?”
“Oh, no, my friend. In fact, Socrates never even wrote a book of his own. Plato was there, and recorded it all.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” I echoed. “What does that mean, anyway?”
“Well, most people go through their lives on autopilot. They get up, go to work, go home, sleep, get up, go to work, always reacting instead of being intentional about their lives. Some of them let people in when they shouldn’t, while others do the exact opposite, closing themselves off and hanging onto toxic people or feelings longer than they should. Either end of the spectrum is destructive.
“Our society is driven by a complete, apathetic lack of intentionality.”
I looked around at the forest, marveling at the whole thing. Just a few days ago, in the desert. Now here, in the mountains with someone I’d never met before I arrived, drinking whiskey when I hadn’t drank in years. Yet somehow it all seemed right. Stepping out, letting life lead.
“So most people don’t examine their lives, is what you’re saying,” I asked.
“Exactly,” he replied. “And some people examine them too much.”
I hesitated.
“Is this your roundabout way of trying to get me to go to Italy to be your bag boy?” I asked. “I know that’s what you’re getting at.”
“It might just be time for you to help a friend,” he said with a grin. “Some people are so self-centered that they’re always drowning in their own pain. They’re so focused on themsel
ves that they never contemplate giving to someone else. But that might be exactly what they need.”
“I think I’ve been a mixture of both in my life.” I said.
“Haven’t we all.” He looked somber again. “Your journey of self-discovery is worth it all, Jonathan, despite the pain. Come to Italy with me. It’ll be just another adventure.”
I looked at him and rolled my eyes.
“A plane ride with you?”
Pete threw his head back and laughed.
“What else have you got to do?”
I shook my head. He had me there. My muscles felt atrophied from lying in bed for more than two days. He was right.
What else have I got to do? If I was honest with myself, nothing.
Chapter 6
THE JOURNEY
Sometimes you meet someone who
changes your life, but it doesn’t mean
your life has to change.
Every man has his journey.
Che Guevara embarked on a motorcycle journey through the Andes in the ’50s, a controversial figure who crossed several countries. His life-changing journey began in Buenos Aires, and he traveled across borders into Chile and then across rugged mountains to Machu Picchu.
I once read a newspaper article about a man who backpacked halfway around the world after his business failed because he had nothing left. In the journey he found that he needed nothing materially and was able to survive on very little.
We journey because we can, and sometimes we journey because we have no other choice. Sometimes I thought of Lacy and saw that, sometimes, it’s another human being who sets us off on a journey. Was I like Manolete, the great bullfighter, who just didn’t know when to give up? Or would I journey to the end of the earth and find peace?
At the departure gate in New York, Pete had handed me all of the travel documentation along with the boarding cards his travel agent had sent over. We’d be flying into the Otopeni airport in Bucharest, and I would help him get through security and the lengthy customs process, plus haul around the one small bag he had packed. I’d get him loaded onto a train that would take him to Rome because it had been a boyhood dream of his to take a train.
We’d part ways and I’d be free to follow my own path into the mountains of Transylvania, to stay in a hostel Pete had arranged for me. He would meet me three days later.
“Transylvania?” I had asked. “Why there?”
“Just seems like an interesting place,” he said. “And since we’ll be flying in and out of Bucharest, it makes sense.”
The flight attendant walked through the cabin. Her navy blue vest matched the rest of her outfit, which included a skirt, hose, and a jacket layered with necklaces. Before, I would have watched her with different eyes like the other men who traveled on business and pretended to be reading the sports section while they were fixated on the cleavage that was spilling out.
Now I saw everything differently. Her shoes were thick; the vest too tight on an aging body. The energy of the men who leered at her, hoping for attention or casual conversation, was disgusting. It was as if I were wearing new glasses.
Pete settled into the seat beside me, closest to the window, and fell asleep like a newborn the moment the engines hummed. His eyelids fluttered, and, as I watched him, I felt a softness I’d never felt for another man except my grandfather.
Before he dozed off, though, he looked over and whispered.
“I’ve got some advice for you son, and I’d like you to listen up. There’s a reason you’re sitting here with me, an old man you just met on a mountain.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “What is it? It better be good.”
“People come into and go out of your life. Some are worth keeping, and even fighting for, and others need to be let go. That’s a very important lesson my friend. You need to find a way to understand who’s there to add value to your life, and who was sent to take it away. If someone is taking away from you, let him go. It’s his season to leave you. If some emotion is taking away from you, let it go, too.”
I stared at my friend and pondered his words.
Let it go.
The most liberating thing about him was that we hadn’t talked about my past, and that he hadn’t actually required anything of me, which meant we made a good pair. I had nothing to give, and he had nothing to ask.
He fell asleep shortly thereafter, and I stared past him out across the tarmac as the jet engines roared and the pilot backed the aircraft out of the gate, proceeded down the runway, and lifted into the sky.
I felt a tingling in my soul, a sense of nervousness coupled with disbelief that I was really doing this. Am I really flying halfway across the globe?
A couple of hours into the flight the attendant came over and asked if I needed anything.
“I’ll have a Coke,” I said.
“You bet,” she replied. “We’ll be serving dinner soon.”
Pete stirred, turned his head, and then fell back into a deep sleep. I read the remnants of the London Financial Times that someone had left in the seat back pocket and settled in to watch a movie. The plane was loaded with passengers of various nationalities, and many of them fell asleep right away. Others read or listened to music that filtered through headphones, and the flight attendants served a three-course meal, including chocolates.
After several hours, Pete woke up and tapped me on the arm.
“Good flick?” he asked.
“It’s okay,” I shrugged and removed the headphones from my ears. “You have a nice nap? You missed dinner.”
“I had a dream,” he said.
“Anything good?”
He wiped his eyes. His hair was disheveled on one side and stuck to the top of his forehead.
“I dreamt that I was standing on a rainbow,” he said. “It was like I was floating above the clouds.”
“Your mind is a crazy place to be.”
“Dreams have vital importance, you know. You should listen to them. Some are prophetic.”
“I don’t dream much anymore . . . ” I lied, remembering the man who had spoken to me in a dream. “But I used to when I was a kid.”
“That’s because children are magical thinkers.” His expression was serious. “When we were young we didn’t have the stress to keep us awake at night.”
“I suppose. So what would Freud say about your dream?”
He pondered it for a minute.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Maybe there’s a rainbow ahead. A new life, awaiting us on our journey.”
I stared at my new acquaintance.
“I’ve never met anyone quite like you, Pete. You have a uniquely optimistic way of looking at things.”
He grinned and turned and stared out the window. The plastic was marked with long scratches from the elements, the result of years of takeoffs and landings.
The pilot spoke loudly through the intercom three decibels higher than it needed to be, as if someone had brushed up against the volume button by accident.
“We’ll be landing in the capital city of Bucharest, Romania, in just under two hours.”
“Have you ever been to Romania before?” I asked Pete.
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“I imagine it’s poor, but beautiful.”
“The mountain region in Transylvania is supposed to be one of the most majestic in the world,” he said. “The average salary there is about $50 to $100 a month, yet the country’s literacy rate is upward of 95 percent. Higher than ours.”
“And we think we’re the richest country in the world.”
He laughed. “Oh, far from it. Not materially, and not in natural assets.”
“We do have wealth, though; you’ve got to admit that.”
“We have the appearance of wealth. We have debt, is what we have. And other countries, like Israel and Romania, have rich natural resources that are unimaginable in our corner of the world.” He looked excited as he spoke. “This is going to be a great trip, Jonat
han. I sense something major is about to occur in our lives, and it’s going to be one helluva ride.”
I didn’t reply.
The airplane hit the tarmac in Bucharest, and the fuselage shook. The pilot apologized for the rough landing, and soon we disembarked and stood in the line at customs. I carried Pete’s bag as we passed through, and I helped him through the terminal and found a luggage cart that he could push to the curb.