The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace

by Steven Nightingale

  To cite only a very few examples, among the many Clarissa came to know in her excursions: a walker in open country may come upon a butte that will teach her how to stand fast and calm in a storm of events. The slow windings of a summer canyon may teach, by their patience and sinuosity, the manner of movement in an afternoon’s lovemaking (preeminent among metaphysical excursions) that leads its lovers to unknown regions in the province of pleasure. The mountain valley built with grace around the clear stream may teach a woman how to gather her days around the current that runs inside life, how to keep that current at the center of her years, how to learn beauty from the movement of beauty.

  Now, it will certainly be objected that since land and humans are so different, the qualities possessed by rock in all its richness and propositions would be of little use to us. Those who have such objections have no chance of winning to heart and bed the beautiful Clarissa, who, amorous, philosophical, tough as stone, soft as dust, even now is walking from the canyons—into a story, toward you.

  Told to me in Venice, near the Arsenale. The teller was a history student who claimed she had gathered these facts from the secret letters of the lover of an enigmatic medieval king.

  SHE WRITES ABOUT THE KING SHE LOVES

  Once upon a time there was a man who wanted to be king; and because of his hard work and whole heart, by the rigor of his mind and the beauty of his sentences, he was indeed proclaimed king. Now, it was customary in his country that coronations be celebrated by a grand effort of engineering and architecture; and this time it was decided that a magnificent bridge be constructed. The bridge was to be completed on coronation day, and opened so that his majesty, newly crowned, could walk with his celebrating and beloved people onto a great suspended road of bold pier, filigreed iron, and flaring cable.

  However, when the great moment came, it was discovered the bridge lacked a small but indispensable supporting strut, and so was unsafe to tread upon. Desperately, the builders cast about for some metal they could twist and weld into place, so that the ceremony could go on. But they reported unhappily that a suitable piece could not be found.

  At that moment, the king stepped forward:

  “The solution is simple,” he said. “Ready your hammers and welding fires—and take my crown.”

  “Your majesty,” replied the builders, “you must keep your crown. You are a king, and this is coronation day.”

  “All this is so,” he said, “but what is the job of a king? It is to support his subjects on their way; so take my crown, that this bridge may bear them securely. On this first day of my reign, may I not be so unworthy as to let pass this chance to do for my people the service of a man who would be king.”

  And thus it was that the work was finished, the music commenced, the bridge opened to the great crowds. So great was the press of citizens that the uncrowned king was lost to view. No one had any doubt, however, that he was there among his people. Later that day, of course, I knew exactly where he was: in my bed.

  Everyone has taken up the work of the court. The country is productive, peaceful, beautiful, yet full of wild initiatives. It is so because of its people: though they are happy, they have learned that there is no end to thankfulness, that peace holds riches that show the gains of vainglory to be absurd, and that love and learning are two words that refer to the same resurgent life within. That is, the people of our country are distinguished not by the magnificence of a single throne, but by a royalty of so many hearts.

  At last, the triumph of monarchy: a king can learn to be a man. And then, as a man, if he is lucky, he has the chance to learn to be a husband.

  Then he can learn anything.

  By the side of Mono Lake sits the small town of Lee Vining, California. In the wonderful bookstore there, I met a woman fascinated by the Transfiguration, because of the many parallel accounts of such changes in the lives of those who, privately, have perfected themselves. She observed that transfiguration, apparently, does not need to take place on a mountaintop; yet it seems always to be a phenomenon of light.

  She went on to tell me this story of her illness and recovery.

  A VISITATION OF COMETS

  Everyone will be familiar with the motes of dust in the air, visible when light slants through a room. But it turns out that not all such specks of dust have the same origin, nor the same purpose. There are always those who think that dust has no purpose. And they are right, when it is only dust. There are those who think the heart has no purpose. They are right, when it is only a pump. But I must say, even at the risk of being despised, that if both dust and hearts have other uses, then every room, every house, the earth itself, is changed forever, as if by a slow but incendiary transfiguration.

  I will tell you how I know this. I live in the southwestern part of North America, a place where rock sounds with the clangor of sunlight. I once was sick, very sick, and I heard of a woman who lived far out across a mesa, who was said to be made of light. I dragged myself in her direction, and later, on the way, a kind man folded me over his donkey and led me along dusty roads. He left me with a boatman who took me across a cobalt river to the mouth of a canyon. He rowed the boat up on the sand and carried me up the canyon to a stone house alongside a stream. The house was almost invisible.

  In fact, the woman who lived there was almost invisible. I didn’t even see her, even though she was standing a few feet away from me. Then, when the light was low and slanted through the canyon, I saw a sparkling that looked to have a human form. And I heard her voice.

  “Come with me, onto my porch, and we will sit together. I am the keeper of this canyon; and for this one night I am your keeper, as well.”

  And all at once I could see her, in the flesh. She was a slight, plain woman, with a look on her face of sharp loving and raucous curiosity. She led me to the porch. We sat and talked in the twilight, listening to the stanzas of the stream, watching the juniper and pinyon pine gather the soft darkness. She did nothing but tell me stories, and so effortlessly that her voice moved like a companion to the passage of the stream over stone.

  Later, she took me inside and helped me into a bed, and she sat by my side for a long time. She touched my face lightly and whispered to me. Through the window I saw the moon rise, mindful and curious, over the canyon wall.

  In the morning I felt so well, I could hardly recognize myself. And I felt bold enough to ask some questions.

  Over breakfast (it was buckwheat biscuits), I said:

  “How is it that you sometimes are so hard to see?”

  “It’s a simple thing,” she replied. “It has to do with comets.”

  “Comets?” I asked skeptically. Though I must admit that being in that house gave me the odd feeling of moving through space.

  “Every day the earth is hit by small comets. They break up in the atmosphere, and nothing more is seen of them. Yet when they break up, their motes of dust drift to earth. They are almost invisible, except in the light. But light is a substance—everyone has known, since Einstein, that light has mass. So it is that these infinitesimal motes of dust, after their journey through space, come here newly composed. That is, they are composed principally of light, as they descend to earth.

  “As they descend, they do so watchfully, these celestial messengers.

  “Have you ever seen iron filings, the minute threads, collect around a magnet? In just the same way, these motes of light collect around anyone whose own internal lights are beginning to shine. They gather around such a person, they saturate her; until finally they recreate her. One day she, too, is composed of moving lights, a bounty and mystery of moving lights.

  “So it was with me. It means many things; it means, for instance, that I can heal.”

  I could see that our conversation was ending because she was becoming more translucent.

  “I cannot stay healthy until I know what you know,” I said quickly.

  “Then abandon this nonsense of living from dust to dust, with an interval of faith. From t
he sickness of faith, see your way to the healing offered everywhere, every day, in the very air. You will know, as you look and live, that the dust of what we are is meant to make a material of light. The world is a place, and a summons. My beloved friend, consider the patience of the earth, as it waits for us—”

  “How do I . . .” I began to ask.

  But there was nothing left of her but sparkling, and the downcanyon breeze took her off through rock walls, along the streambed, toward the big blue river.

  Or, as some would have it: the random wind blew the useless dirt down the canyon, where it will be scattered by chance across ground and water, to choke us, or stain us. Later, to bury us.

  A story from a woman who lived along the Truckee River, in Northern Nevada. This river links two lakes sacred to the Indian peoples of this region, Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake. These lakes, and the river, are said to hold secrets, to promote healing, and to offer urgently an uncommon way into the world.

  A LUMINOUS NEWSPAPER

  It was autumn and a woman was walking along a river. She loved this time—the beginning of twilight, when after hours of bright-eyed wandering through the day, the light began to take into its arms the darkness. And soon she came upon a small park and found at its very edge a newspaper stand. It was the ordinary sort of stand, of painted metal cold and hard as the usual news, yet the paper inside was placed so that the headlines were invisible—all she could tell was that those headlines were not of familiar typeface and layout, and so probably the publication was not that of any of the regional newspaper companies. What was more, the stand itself had no slots to take coins, and the paint was of a peculiar watery color that made it almost invisible against the river. In fact (the woman realized with a start) the stand faced the river, away from the sidewalk where strollers might likely see it. She wondered who was meant to buy these papers. The fishes, maybe?

  Our friend had discovered the stand only as a consequence of her walking as close to the water as she could. She did this because the reflections thrown forth by the river held for her extravagant fascination and continuous promise. And now, as she could not resist her attraction to the eccentric newspaper stand, she decided to obtain a newspaper from it, if such purchase was possible. First, she tugged at the stand; it did not open. Then she noticed the instructions, almost illegible from the effects of rain, heat, and river mist. They read: price: ONE CARTWHEEL.

  Now, our friend was no expert in cartwheels—just walking about, she thought, was spectacle enough—but a rambunctious curiosity kept her from departing. And so, after some deliberation and a little prayer that she be kept from permanent injury, she laughed her way through a passable cartwheel; and as she regained her feet, the latch on the stand popped open.

  Eagerly she took up the newspaper. It was thick. The headline read: THREE CROWS TO SPEAK AT DAWN TOMORROW. As if this pronouncement were not strange enough, the columns of news were arranged in a kind of impeccable confusion: some of the columns proceeded from the bottom of the page to the top; some were read from the right margin to the left, and some the reverse; and some columns even started at the top of the page, just as in an ordinary newspaper. In order to read the front page, our friend had to turn the paper in all directions, as though it were a little planet revolving in her hands.

  The content of the newspaper was amused, generous, and arcane. At column end of some of the frontpage stories, she found instructions like this: “Story discontinued,” or “See Page 45, which this paper may or may not have, according to the chances of history.” Sometimes when a reference to an inner page was present, the continued story would start with a sentence like “The story on the front page was a fraudulent lie; having got this far, Dear Reader, you deserve the truth,” or “For the remainder of this story, please phone so and so,” or “The reporter confesses being stupefied by this story and begs the reader to supply an inventive conclusion.”

  Yet others of the articles in the paper seemed to introduce stories already finished, or, alternatively, to be finished by events set in motion by the newspaper itself. One might find the notice “Story continued on Page 14 of the edition of this newspaper issued exactly one hundred thirty-three years ago,” or “The following events have not yet occurred, but they will,” or even “The following article describes something that should have happened yesterday or the day before.” One article was headlined NEWSPAPER LOSES ITS TEMPER and related how, when one of its readers was sensed to have been reading in too self-possessed and grave a manner, the newspaper had, in a fit of passion, torn itself to pieces.

  But most noteworthy of all in the newspaper was the subject of some of the pieces. There were the usual descriptions, in however prophetic and mischievous a manner, of the affairs of state and the deeds of humankind; but the greater part of the stories concerned a world that resembled this one, or perhaps a world that daily life is meant to resemble.

  Our friend read through the main article of the day, concerning the crows. It explained the expected arrival at dawn of three crows who had spent their lives flying up all the rivers of the world, in order to compare their headwaters, so that they might form some conclusions about the sources of beauty. After completion of that task, they had gone to the songbirds to teach them all they had learned, and to ask them to sing their learning, since crows, as we know, cannot themselves sing. And so at dawn, the crows were going to meet together and introduce their travels in plain language, and then appeal to us, that if we would understand our rivers, we must listen: and by the songs of birds we will be taught the origin and grace of these moving waters.

  Feeling better informed already, our friend moved on to another story which examined the important questions of human destiny and, by use of etymology, psychology, veterinary medicine, economics, mycology, puns, and arithmetic, proved that for some portion of humankind it really would be possible not to be killed off by melancholy. Yet another article described the discovery that the street layouts of every landlocked city on earth bore an exact and predictable relation to the layout of nerve cells in the brain of the common dolphin.

  All these stories so spellbound our friend that, even though no one can read in the dark, she sat in darkness reading them; and she had just finished the back page, a transcript of an interview with a group of fireflies, when she saw it was dawn.

  She noticed that another edition of the paper had been placed in the newsstand, and, by executing an accomplished cartwheel, she got a copy. The headline WAS NEWSPAPER WINS NEW READER, and she read a long story about herself that included certain future events, like for example the day, hour, and delicious situation when a man she knew would fall in love with her. And so was she privileged for months with an old-fashioned simmering anticipation, and was better able to prepare her heart and life, so that she might be able to judge well what journeying in the countries of love she should do with that gentleman.

  It will be noticed, in all this, that our newspaper had no title. Instead, it had headlines, stories, articles, interviews. All we can say is that it is the oldest newspaper in the world, that its writers never cease their labors, that its stands are everywhere, and that it is published every day, at sunrise.

  When I am traveling, I have the custom of asking the stranger next to me on the bus, the train, the airplane; on the trail, or in the café—of asking the old-fashioned questions; that is, about the weather, contemporary politics, the relation of language to reality, the nature of the soul, and other mundane topics. A woman on the overnight train from Paris to Madrid almost spat out this answer. It’s all she said. I translate, as in some other stories here, from Spanish.

  I never saw her again.

  SOUL, WORDS, GOD: SHE’S GOT ISSUES

  People say nowadays, in our advanced and glittering epoch, that the body has no soul. If it’s there, they say, why cannot we see it, touch it, find it once and for all? That may be so, we say, but take the meaning of words—can you see it, touch it, find it once and for all?

  Th
ey reply predictably: words have no meaning.

  We ask: What do you mean by that? But they don’t laugh.

  Neither do they laugh when we go on to discuss the location of the soul. The reasoning goes like this: if the soul (as has been established by researchers in the field) is that part of the body which may be made permanent by love, then, for those who have found a way to the midmost of life, by such adventures, for just such common folk, while their bodies are alive, the body is the soul.

  Now the sophisticates can touch it. And they’re still not satisfied.

  THERE SEEMS TO be a debate about whether or not God plays with dice—as if these were the only two choices. But according to graffiti found on walls in little bars in wild country in western North America, a different conception might be useful. God works like this: she sometimes rolls the dice; she sometimes sets the rules and gives us the dice, and the rules change according to who is playing, and their company. Or to put it another way, because we live in a universe refined by chance, we have a chance. Or to put it another way, sometimes she is the dice; sometimes she travels as thunderbolt and insect; she changes gender; he plays lead guitar and gives speeches late at night to boisterous and happy friends; he loves you, and you can tell, because the curve of his arm as he embraces you matches the arc of the crescent moon.

  She does none of these things, all of these things. But when she acts, what he does resembles these things. What does not change is what he means by this moving inside the worlds.

  She means peace.

  THE WORLD IS getting to be superlatively skilled in telling things apart. Anyone can tell you how one thing differs from another, how to make this distinction or that. There are definitions, degrees, categories, glossaries, lists, hierarchies. And all these things codify by much useful work the marking off of one thing from another.