His shadow stood up beside him, unstoppable. He could see all of himself. The juvenile thrills, the willful ignorance, his daily indifference, the neglect of his chance to cherish, the idolatry of himself, the farce of his loving . . . he saw it all, and much more.
The shadow took hold of the hand inside his hand.
People do not like the look of corpses. But the corpse he left behind looked so beautiful, really so beautiful, compared with the man the shadow led away. That man, my young brother, now was covered with what looked like pus on fire.
Nothing is stranger, nothing, than one certain idea of men. They think that because women forgive them, they will always and forever be forgiven, even by the light of the world.
I once worked in a bar in Battle Mountain, Nevada, which is, blessedly, not near anyplace else. I remember the time fondly because it was in those days I began writing one sonnet every morning, and four on Saturdays. I shared this with no one except this woman, an eccentric house-painter who was so slow in her work, you would have thought she was in a museum copying an Old Master. This woman never drank alcohol, except on holidays, and then she drank whiskey. One New Year’s Day, she told me this story.
ANGEL-PAINTER
Once there was a woman who was an angel-painter. She had bolted onto the stone wall at the entrance to her shop an old brass plaque, which said just that: ANGEL-PAINTER. At the time she began in her trade, most of the people in her community had consciously developed their angelic faculties; and so were they, some of them, couriers of sunlight, compatriots of moonlight, sidekicks of rivers, translators of the many-leaved books of the big oaks. That is to say, their angelic natures were developed; and though they seemed normal, they had a wide range of responsibilities in the world. Just like everyone, they did the work they were qualified for.
It was necessary to paint these angels now and then because of the arduous work involved in that winged profession. Sometimes they would come to her as a group, dirty and bedraggled, windswept and fatigued by their trips all over the earth in search of a nondescript flower whose petals, infused in water from a spring hidden in mountains, would make a potion to cure a little girl who was deathly sick. They did this, of course, because this girl, as a woman, would by her gentleness and learning save a whole country from destruction.
But more often they would come singly: one angel, who lived many of his years as part of the ocean, had been given the task to fall at the right moment as enormous storm waves, just as a certain young woman walked by herself on the beach. The waves rocked her with such joys that in later years she was able to put all the seven seas into one sonnet. When the ocean-angel, preparing for such work, had come to our painter, she had restored to him the glossy rhythms and prophetic gatherings of salt water; so, later, along a wild shoreline, there was just the concentration of beauty meant for someone who did not know she was meant to write verses.
Other angels would come to her: those who had just worked all night long to plant cottonwood seeds in a high desert canyon. This work they did so that years later in a spring grove of big trees a doe could find shelter she desperately needed; all in order that the first steps of the fawn born there would by seen by a priest who had sought the wilderness in hopes of healing his mad heart. And so it was that by the example of the fawn, the priest was able to give to the phrases of his next sermon a motion that held the beginning of grace.
Yet another angel, painted, in a bit of fun, to look just like a human, wore himself out standing in the hot sun all day selling books that were alive: if these books were opened, they would, then and there, attend closely to the thoughts of the one who held them, and the book upon its pages would set forth exact and uncanny stories that included the most intimate details and propositions about the reader. It was a perfect ruse, since it was important to take people by surprise, and most people think that they read books, but not that they may be read by a book.
To those who did the more classical work of angels, and so did not need to alter their traditional form, our painter gave fresh coats to brilliant robes, she touched up radiance of a halo, she sharpened the line and set of a wing. For those more outrageously inclined, who might be called upon to become anything or anyone in the world, her work was arduous and various: with her magic strokes she painted the receptive angel’s form in accord with any worldly necessity—she might become a gazelle, a redwood, a waterfall—whatever was apposite to the task at hand.
As hard at work as she was, it was lucky that, later on, the angel-painter noticed when the more conventional people in the area increased in numbers. A few of her clients were jailed, or even put to death for not having a useful vocation that everyone could understand. An angel who ran as a clear spring creek was injured when the creek was dammed and turned to a stagnant pool. A gathering of angels standing as aspen trees in the autumn on a hillside, showing all their gold, was razed to the ground by a chain dragged between two tractors. A winged angel was stripped bare, and her feathers used to decorate hats. What formerly was known to be divine was now by a terrible distortion of history taken to be merely supernatural, fabricated, or useless.
Under these conditions, thought our painter, how could the angelic work go on? With angels imperiled, who would tend to the hidden work that holds together our world? Alarmed as they were, the angel-painter and her luminous clients came up with a plan: whatever the labor, in whatever form necessary, to be undertaken in the world, our worker would, when they returned to her, paint all the angels to look like humans. They could always, as the centuries moved through them, come to her at a later date for their change into the form of life needed—the star, the flower, the phrase, the hope, the miracle. But once the task was done, they had to be repainted; each of them had to be disguised again, to hide away their mischief, their hopefulness, their radiance. And our angel-painter, she would focus her skills, she would specialize in giving back to these boisterous spirits a human form and color, so that the community of divine assistants could not be so easily attacked. She would paint them to look just like everyone else.
And so she did.
To this day she continues her work, renewing the human look of those she loves. Of course, since there are not many angel-painters, she cannot always set to work when she is needed. And so you may notice a wing becoming visible on the back of your neighbor, or wildflowers and forest shadows showing through the veins of your postman; you may, when you call the plumber, be startled by a hollow place in his forehead where oceans and stars can be seen.
When this happens, then follow these people, for they will soon be on their way to the angel-painter. And it may be that you too had once felt her thunderous brush but had gone out in the world, and, in the pitch and commotion of daily affairs, forgot your real work.
Told to me by a tough, enterprising Dutch woman who had sailed around the world three times. I met her in a museum in The Hague, where I had gone to see a certain Vermeer. As it turned out, she had gone there to see the very same painting.
Even when she was walking, or speaking, she was sailing. During each of her circumnavigations, she had nearly died. She was planning a fourth.
SHE CLAIMS THAT EVEN TIDAL WAVES MEAN SOMETHING
Tidal waves are contained within the ocean and are not visible until their devastating embrace of land. As these waves move through the sea, small sailboats may be lifted gently, as by a long swell, and no one aboard will know that a titan has passed beneath.
It is said that, in a similar way, a reality is contained within the world and moves toward the coastline of our lives. Those who deal in the surface of things notice only a long swell that affects day-to-day events but slightly. But as it passes, those who know the depths will take heed, remember, love, make jokes, labor with light and air, warn, and watch. They are, in other words, just like the rest of us: here, in part, to learn the possibility, the usefulness, and the inevitability, now and then, of devastation.
It must be said that this storyteller is a wom
an impertinent about almost everything else, as well. I understood her to be formed by the history of her country, a mind-bending mix of life-giving beauty and grisly violence.
She is Spanish, very funny, very beautiful, and lives in Salamanca. She’s enough of a reason for any man to uproot himself and move to Salamanca.
SHE IS IMPERTINENT ABOUT TRAGEDY
The world is evolving toward perfection.
Consider this: as thieves perfect their boldness and treachery, and so improve their art, there will come eventually a thief who will steal thievery from the world.
Even more important: there will come a terrible band of killers who will murder all the other killers; and then, as they do always, turn upon each other.
This is not to say that those who want peace can stand down and do nothing. They must, for instance, make sure that thievery does not reassert itself in our world, because of people who think it’s risky, daring, subversive, and exciting. It should be pointed out that these qualities often distinguish activities that are idiotic.
And as to the killers: once they have eliminated one another, we must make sure that we remember their names in a museum of savagery and abomination. It must be a museum that is finely conceived, clean, efficient, and a credit to our community and our admirable public spirit. The rooms will be kept unreasonably hot, so that everyone will want to use the drinking fountain, and find out what human blood tastes like.
A reflection on evil, this time straight from a doctor who worked in an insane asylum where I volunteered, near Stanford University. This particular asylum was for military personnel, and she heard many stories of unspeakable violence. One day as we were sitting together in her office at the end of the shift, she turned loose this bitterly reasoned outburst.
She told me later that she discovered a small group of patients who once had worked in vaudeville. They all adored her.
THE GOOD DOCTOR TURNS LOOSE A TIRADE ABOUT EVIL
Tension and relaxation, elation and disappointment, triumphs and setbacks, all our internal feelings and the evident sagas of clarity and health, confusion and sickness: the alternation of these things is supposed to constitute a life. But what if these things are mere derivatives, hangers-on, mess-makers, intrusive and obnoxious relatives? What if we are supposed to stand forth and leave behind that yapping crowd? What would we feel?
We’d feel solitary. We’d be obliged, out of the fetid pool of our own conceptions and emotions, to dry out; and, there in the sun, to talk to ourselves, as preparatory to talking with someone else.
MAYBE WE COULD return to tradition. Tradition has it that there are two kinds of ideas and emotions. The first kind are the degenerate artifacts of culture, history, personality, conditioning, assumptions. The second kind are those derived from pure attributes of soul. They resemble one another, as the tempting, luscious grapes on an old vineyard resemble a bottle of vintage, complex, rich, necessary wine.
But why make wine when one could eat, when one could add the grapes to a table sagging with a weight of food, various in its presentation of sweetness and savors? Why not stuff ourselves with the news, bulk up our thoughts with the fat of the times, make ourselves a part of the exciting stories of our age?
There are other advantages: emotional lard does not have the external discomforts of physical obesity. It is curious, though, that such efforts are expended warning people about the dangers of obesity, and treating those who suffer from such overindulgence. Yet very little attention is paid to those who have contracted a much more widespread and virulent malady: those who are enlarded with themselves.
This is in keeping with a strange cultural preference of ours: that we take aggressive measures to eliminate nuisance and to attack melodramatic, hateful, obvious evil; but we are affably incurious about our internal, continuous evil, which makes all the other kinds possible.
So it is that evil in the world has its reign—not by any special capacity or power, but because of the emotional and ideological bond people have with themselves, and so with each other.
It’s a social activity, the way people belong first to themselves, then to each other. The society of evil then is our humdrum social club. We kill each other, in classic murder-suicides. We use the most lethal and dependable weapons in the world: our contented approval of ourselves; our passionate plans; heartfelt, laborious opinions; the elation of our thriving and the bitterness of our pain—everything we feel about who we are. So do we defend and define ourselves, as part of an inconsolable striving for assurance that we are in some way real. We crave that reality. Desperate to have it, desperate to be sure, to do something decisive, affecting, irrevocable—we kill, we are killed. It makes all of us count, at last, for something. We glow with accomplishment, with action, with history, with drama. It can take a lifetime. And many honors are bestowed upon us for these efforts, because what is admired nowadays is using death to make a difference. What matters is doing ourselves to death, and winning recognition and approval for it.
Such a plan. Foolproof, almost.
Told to me in northern California near the Lost Coast, which is, along with parts of Big Sur, the last wilderness coastline in the state. It is known for its fog, redwoods, legends, earthquakes, and marijuana. The woman who shared this story with me would not even give me her name. She did give me, however, a small, flat, smooth piece of wood, such as she used in place of canvas, in her work as a painter. The wood had beautifully finished portraits on both sides.
THE GRANDMOTHER
Once on a cliff by the sea there lived an old woman, who each year invited her grandson for a summer visit. Living near this old woman was a little girl the age of the grandson; and it was this circumstance that was specially delightful, for the two were boisterous and fantastical playmates, whose endless dreaming antics at seaside left their bodies toughened with salt and their minds overcome with maritime beauties.
At night, the grandson could never by any ruse or childish knavery persuade his beloved friend to accompany him home. So he would go and dine with his grandmother, and after dinner fall exhausted, exalted, delighted into the old woman’s arms, then to be carried gently in by the fire where he would sit, warm and cherished, and listen to stories of the sea.
Now the grandmother, an old sailor of ocean-crossing schooners, had many a tale: about the time in the South Pacific when during a tempest a storm-petrel with an injured wing had fallen upon the deck, and how her crew nursed the bird back to health and learned from her a subtle cry that calms the troubled seas; about shape-shifting dragons who were sometimes big as islands and sometimes small as men’s eyes; about the sylphs and ocean-witches, women who walk along the tops of waves and carry cyclones in the tips of their fingers; about sailors bewitched by sharks, who thereafter roam the world in terrible hunger, eating only the souls of other men; about dolphins that burst from the sea and land in the crow’s nest of ships, there to leave a blessing of playfulness before they arc back into the water. And it was in part because of these nighttime stories and the sailing, salt-white, wing-wide hours with the girl who romped with him through the daylight, that the young boy grew into a gentleman of blessed and peaceful abilities; and his surety of conscience and breadth of heart were uncommon on this earth.
Our gentleman was still a young man when death took his grandmother out of the warm house. And he was in the middle of his years on earth when he met once again his childhood friend. She had lived an extraordinary life as a painter of landscapes, roaming all over the world. Her paintings were full of irrepressible energies; it was almost as if the sea moved within the landscape of her canvasses. Our friend found her familiar beyond the coincidence of memory and affection.
Finally, when he was himself old, he received from the woman, now also in her old age, an invitation to visit her on the coast where they once had gamboled together as children. He set out immediately, and found his childhood playmate had been changed by the years—into his grandmother.
“How could this
be?” he asked.
“I was both your grandmother and a little girl,” the old woman said.
“But how?” he asked.
“You were so dear to me that I doubled my life to be able to care for you as a friend during the day and as your grandmother in the evening.”
“Such things are possible, then?”
“Such love is possible,” his old friend said. “Everyone thinks that immortality would be a good thing. They should take a moment to ponder what they might do with such a gift. Loving you the way I have is what I have done. One of the things I have done.”
And so did our gentleman go on his way, to let his mind work upon these secret things. As to the way his new knowledge transfigured him—that is another story.
The old grandmother, alone in her house again, lit the fire and began to prepare certain stories for a grandchild of hers, who was of the age to delight in a visit to the seaside. The invitation had been made, and the child would be arriving that very day.
I was buying postcards in Bend, Oregon, and the woman behind the counter invited me to coffee. She delighted me abundantly, not least with this story. The wild open spaces of the American West hold some of the most remarkable women in the world: tough, funny, uncompromising, brilliant, capable.
A COUNTRY GIRL IN THE CITY CANYONS
Riata, raised in the high desert of the American West, was stunned when she moved to the city. Though she liked the hubbub and the irrevocable fevers, the savory hopefulness and irritable jubilation of city dwellers, she thought she saw one particular problem: The city thought it could concentrate the whole world within itself. All that was beautiful and fascinating could be incorporated within itself. It discussed itself, worked according to its own understanding, analyzed the world by its own rules and suppositions. It looked to the present and the future and took destiny into its hands. The city thought, in other words, that the world could be made familiar and human. And, as far as it went, this was all fine.
The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace Page 10