"Eeigle, schmeeweigle, steeigle," at eight wandering alone
through the Maple Street neighborhood, down to Zee's or Monk's, writing cursively in the air with index finger, Palmer method, all loops and swoops, as instructed by Shakespeare, Miss Gwendolyn, third-grade teacher, and speaking in tongues, rapt in the sounds,
floating in a warm bath of non-sense, playing with verbal feces, kid language, id language, his mother ice-creaming her hair at the kitchen sink, urring cake batter with a blender, id the entity in identity, immersed in the delicious irresponsibility of daydreams,
a Blanc check, Si, Cy, Sue, okay you're a taxi, to feed his nightmares, who's on first, take my wife--please, but how the elephant got my jammies on I'll never know, reprieved from the repression of linguistic constraints, semantic and syntactic requirements
suspended, upended, content manifestly absurd and latently too, meson-like bouncing freely and decaying rapidly in a linguistic chaos of condensations and recombinations, id expanding into idea, wormholing wit (woot, woot) forcing new connections, finding
new doors, new odors, of perception, the mood subjunctive not indicative (as if!), transactive only in its resistance to authority and its phallic display, an inebriating chalice in wonderland bearing tequila mockingbird to him throned above the
beach on his bench at 80, still enjoying an active lex life, lost in himself in the vacant vast surroundings, anarch of all he surveyed, dopamiened, mind ababble in a slurry of words made fresh, dragonbite of himwit falling on deft ears: a granma's anagrams,
Alan and Lana both anal, distant star, Garbo, shooting star, LeBron, rock star Alex Honnold, Japanese apprentice pastry chef passes doughnut-making test with frying crullers, Asian game store has Chinese checkers, ethics board finds Rachel Schlurr guilty
of hate speech, odd, a venial memory speaks bearing a pale rezemblance to a story by Bokanov (we know our Vladimir liveth, abracadavera, he is risen), he says you're a...a poet, classicists, having a Latin common, infer that Dante painfully discovered a basic
empiricist principle, seeing his Bea leaving, yet managed to attain a divine comity, surrounded by a slew of murderers our impassive faces mark us--oh, really, us?--as Stoics, abso--bloody--lutely, and now they're beating up liberals, those cucksockers, and
my periodontal problems have me on an erosional molar coaster, Flunked your essay test, eh? Yes, words failed me, my talk sick masculinity, my girl friend's genes make her look phat, and she loves to do cartwheels and somersaults, Tumbler?
Yes, I do, her body is Rubenesque and her breath smells of sauerkraut but she pursevers, that woman who's continually putting back the bag that keeps slipping off her shoulder, lobal warming the hot-ear sensation a man may feel when talk turns to his peckerdildos
and m'lady's maladies, menstrual shows, becoming blue over red states, though sometimes God stops spots, Dog, Go ogle a porn website, oh, cripes, Suzette, we're tired of pancakes, so, quiche, Lorraine? eggs, Benedict?, Ze-zir salad, Caitlyn? enough isn't,
all by his lonesome, idiosyncratic, so be id, let id be, futile felicity, finally, bringing no atonement, no salvation, no news for modern man, God's spell checked, tao lost in tau, Mnemosyne ultimately marooned in a clump of beta amyloids, Kilroy's inscription
fading with time, the old handwriting on the wall, he had to wonder: Humans have invented some 6,000 languages, but do an infinite number of languages exist in God's mind (and wouldn't that make the number finite?)? Does God know an infinite number of,
and infinite number of combinations of, sounds and morphological and syntactic constructions? Is there a Proto-Theo-Lingo from which they have devolved? Does God think in an infinite number of languages simultaneously? Does He, like Wittgenstein,
know only what He has words for, or does He think digitally, in ones and zeroes, or does He not need language or numbers to think? Can there be language without sounds or signs of some sort and bodies to make or receive them? Is He just pure consciousness
wherein thought is language- and number-free and thought and action are one? Do all possible uses of all languages already exist in God's data base? Can any human use of language ever be original in the sense that God hasn't already imagined
it? Did Shakespeare only write what God had already conceived? Can God ever be surprised by language usage or, having already imagined an infinite number of Finnegan's Wakes, can there be for Him literally nothing new linguistically
under the trillions of suns in this universe? Lord, don't stop me if you've heard this one, but if, in a wrinkling of Your brow, with the intent of creating life, you produced a quantum fluctuation in the void and concocted the singularity from which
this universe ballooned, whose effulgence on this rarest, sunniest, bluest, greenest of April days from my vantage here at the base of the Bowl gleams from the flapping white wings of windhovering seagulls, this morning's minions, from the whiteness of the
churning ferry Spokane and its silver wake, from the billowing white sails of surface-skimming sloops and the powerful white cabin cruisers plowing their white-edged furrows, from the snowy eastern slopes of the Olympics, and fills me with in--fucking--effable
joy, was a singularity, and that particular singularity (not a pleonasm), the only option You had? Must any universe be exactly like this one? Must each and every singularity compact to the same density? Must each and every singularity inflate
to some two trillion galaxies? For life to exist, must each singularity produce exactly the amount of matter and energy and dark matter and dark energy that exist in this one? Could you have downsized or supersized your singularity? Or gone
in another direction altogether and made the universe steady-state? Or cyclic, a Big Bouncing from expansion to contraction to expansion to contraction ad infinitum rather than the one-way rush to disintegration implicit in the Big Bang?
When you made the singularity, when you gave the Word, were You constrained by the natural laws of physics and chemistry that scientists have since discovered? Have there always been, so to speak, legal limits to Your creative options? Must E always
equal mc2? There's nothing You can do about it? Could you alter the speed of light if you wanted to? Are the prevailing laws the only laws that are possible? If so, where did they come from? If not, why did You impose
them? In birthing the universe, could You not have come up with a quicker, cleaner, cold-fusion process? It couldn't have been done without all that heat and radiation? You had to explode a myriad of stars in order to make the elements that
constitute me? It had to take 13.8 billion years for me to come into existence to sit on this bench here in the Bowl? What would You have been doing with your time--would there have been any time, or would there have been nothing but time?--prior
to forming the singularity? Where were You when You when you did it? Where are You now? Are You to be found in every quirking quark, as a pantheist would claim, or standing idly by contemplating the harmonious operation of Your clockwork,
as a Deist would maintain, or Schrodingerianly part of and apart from everything until You exercise an option? Whence came You? Were You before You were? How is it that You are immortal? Could You commit suicide if You wanted to?
If not, why not? In any case, if, as my Christian Scientist grandparents believed, man is ultimately not material but spiritual, why is the material even necessary? We are such stuff as stars are made of and we can't be anything else? If
You can separate soul from body at death, why create bodies at all? Why not make all experience an out-of-body experience? Why not settle for ethereality without materiality? The supernatural without the natural? Metaphysics without
physics? Universals, not particulars? Heaven, not Edmonds? Timeless essences, not disintegrating Adams? Why not just one plane instead of two? Wouldn't that be more economical, more elegant, more pleasing to Occam? If all
matter, including people, is nothing more than molecules behaving according to mathematical rules, why not be satisfied with the rules alone? If all things are number, if number is a preexisting ideal of which things are mere copies, why could not You,
and any spiritual beings You might choose to create, be satisfied eternally contemplating the ideal? If the music of the spheres is an interplay of numbers, why do we need to see the spheres? Why do we need to hear the notes? Or is spirit,
like music, feeling, then, not sound, a hyperlinking, self-transcending feeling of love and awe at the sensed immanence of God, a sublime, mystical joy found in the apprehension of a supersymmetrical yin/yang unity of the ideal and the material, realizable
only through an exchange of electricity between neurons? Can we divine the existence of beautiful concepts, such as matter and energy being always in flux and transformable into each other at the quantum level, change without change, unceasingly, only
by discovering their embodiment in the physical world? We can't be without ubiety? We can hear a fly buzz when we die but, absent some blooming of metempsychosis, not after we die? We cannot come by Caesar's spirit by dismembering
Caesar? Without skin we lose touch not only with the world but with our self? Existence cannot be environment-free? Like atoms and electrons, we exist only in so far as we interact with an environment? No body, no feeling, no ecstatic
insight? No body, no spirit, no soul, no self? At death, must the soul be given a new body or transplanted into another body in order to continue its existence? Is resurrection or reincarnation requisite? Does the new body need oxygen
and aliment? Does it excrete? Will it want sexual gratification? Does it have the same color that it had on earth? Does the social construct that is race deconstruct when the original body does? Does the new body have the original
one's gender or genderlessness? Does it have the same brain and same memories? If it suffered from dementia, will it remember what it didn't experience? Will it speak the same language(s) that it did on earth? Is there a celestial
Esperanto to serve as lingua franca? If so, how will facility in it be acquired? Or is there a celestial Google Translate that automatically converts language into the listener's preset preference? Does the new instantiation occur
instantaneously with death? Can there be no state of being apart from material being? Or is there a provision for temporarily placing the soul on ice, a period, for Divine judgment perhaps, between the cleaving from one body and the cleaving onto
another? And if Your ultimate Big Bang purpose was to create life and to place, at the top of a great chain of being, humans, why? You are, after all, perfect. For what reason was your self-sufficiency insufficient? Boredom? A
disdain for the monotonous contemplation of mere abstractions? A pragmatic need to exercise Your omniscience and omnipotence by turning numbers and laws into things and beings? But, knowing everything and being able to do anything, wouldn't that
exercise soon become boring too? Loneliness, emptiness? An aching need to be revered, adored? Graciousness? Delighted to the nth degree by the joy of consciousness and bubbling over with love, You chose to make it possible for other,
though lesser, sentient beings to experience that delight to, shall we say, the mth degree? And, why, if some version or other of Christianity is true, did You choose to present the theory and practice of it piecemeal through revelation and scribes?
One might question Your pedagogy. Clearly, Your classes have ever been unruly. Just as today some overwhelmed teachers expel students for eating in class, swamp them with meaningless assignments, separate them for talking and take away their cell
phones for texting, play favorites, in some schools as a last resort even send them to the principal for physical punishment, so You expelled Your primal pupils for eating forbidden fruit, drowned all but the ark types in a flood, destroyed a tower to prevent
people from sharing language to enrich their knowledge and power, privileged some as pets by making a covenant with them at the expense of all others, and rained fire and brimstone when all these methods of discipline failed. The entire Bible
is a compendium of poor lesson plans. You have often seemed unprepared, winging it. Yes, Adam and Eve were born immaculately (discounting that mud for Adam and that bloody rib for Eve) in that they had no nature, no instincts, no genetic inheritance,
and no nurture, no previous experience, no cultural history, no lore handed down by parents and community. Certainly it was a challenge to teach in The Blackboard Garden. All the more need, then, to craft a solid lesson plan. Marshalling
the resources of rhetoric--logos, pathos, ethos--You should have won their hearts and minds with an anticipatory set and a clear statement of Your objective. You should have established Your authority at the outset, rather than assuming that
they would love and respect You and accept Your word as law. Lecturing and hectoring, without motivation, illustration, and feedback, seldom lead to that change in behavior we call learning. Formal instruction, based on precept and admonition,
and informal instruction, relying on unconscious imitation, must be supplemented by technical instruction. Rather than simply standing at Your dais in that open air classroom and offering Adam and Eve dominion over all the creatures of the earth and
seas and admonishing them, on pain of death, not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as if this would suffice to teach them to live in harmony with You and the animals and each other, You could have won their attention by retarding
the pull of gravity and goosing the push of dark energy for just a nano-second and then, as for a nano-second they felt themselves infinitesimally rise involuntarily into the air, along with the tree and some vibrating fruit, and their flesh ever so slightly
begin to uncongeal and their mouths almost open to shriek, returning the forms to their norms, smiling and making soothing sounds while catching a sparrow beginning to fall from its wobbling nest. Having narrowed Your students' focus, You could then
have stated the lesson's objective, in infinitive form and from their point of view: To understand that they will have dominion over the earth and all its creatures, bask in Your love, and achieve immortality if they refrain from eating the fruit of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. You could have clarified the objective by explaining what it means to have dominion (possessing and exercising the poet's power to name, the horse-whisperer's power to control), to bask in God's love (being shot-through
with feelings of joy and exaltation, unburdened by conflict, angst, or guilt, rapturously warbling songs of innocence), what immortality is (first a definition and then, for illustration, with Eve as witness, tout à coup slaying
Adam with a rabbit punch and a moment later resurrecting him, then slaying Eve with Adam as witness, checking for specific behaviors in the process ((screams, wails, moans, sobbing, gnashing of teeth, swooning, sighs of relief, wide smiles, tears of joy, hugging))
as evidence of their understanding, asking each to verbalize what they had learned from the explanations and demonstrations, reinforcing with praise (("Good, good," "Save the mark," "Right on," "Yes!")) whenever possible, correcting gently (("Not quite," "Sort
of," "Can you think of another way to say it?" "How do you define that term?" "Can you provide an example?")) when necessary, then going over to the tree in question, warning that they must never touch it, warming them to You by humorously cautioning
them not to bark up the wrong tree like that best friend they recently named Canis lupus familiaris, pointing out how its bark and leaf structure differed from that of other trees, identifying its fruit, explaining what "eating" meant (any piece,
however small, no matter how attractive and delicious they might find it, taken into the mouth, swallowed or not), asking each to paraphrase in their own words what You had just said, having them demonstrate their understanding by taking a safe bite of fruit
from a different tree, trigger-warning them that You had a deep-seated need for them to prove their love for You by resisting temptation and that their fidelity and obedience would surely be tested by a jealous, devious creature, a serpent perhaps, which lurked
in the Garden and would use its rhetorical wiles ("It's soo delicious, soo nutritious, and, best of all, in eating it you will become like God") to inveigle them to ingest the magical but forbidden fruit, cautioning them to steel themselves, reiterating that
if they failed to do so they would be cast out of the Garden and cursed to an excess of brow-sweat toil and childbirth pangs, asking if they had any questions, answering those they had, then asking each to summarize in their own words the trigger-warning
and its consequences, following that with a pop-quiz (Could they just touch the tree as long as they didn't eat the fruit? No. Could they take a bite of the fruit provided they didn't swallow it? No. Would they be pardoned for eating
the fruit because they revered You and wanted to become just like You? No. Would they be given a second chance if they made a little mistake and took just a little bite? No. Would they be given probation or put on a from-work release
program if they behaved well after leaving the Garden? No. Would their lives always be full of pain? Yes.), bringing the lesson to a conclusion by asking them to restate its objective in their own words once more, then, taking nothing for
granted, popping back frequently to review and re-teach as necessary. You could have. But all along You knew it was a mug's game, didn't You? You and John Keating, John Novak, Gabe Kotter, Harvey Lipschultz, Jaime Escalante, Pat Morita, Mickey
Goldmill, Frankie Dunn, Mr. Chips, Miss Dove, Miss Brooks, Miss Jean Brodie, Sam Mussabini, Charles Kingsfield, Richard Dadier, and Wayne Adams all know that no educational theory, no matter how philosophically and psychologically sound, no matter how meticulously
put into practice, would have succeeded in achieving your objective. Knowledge and power sell; ignorance and innocence remain on the showroom floor. Humans bristle with psychological reactance. Capricious, captious, perverse, they resist
the blandishments of seemingly advantageous restrictions or requirements that impinge on freedom and autonomy. They must play with fire.
A shadow fell over him.
"Wayne Adams?"
He turned to his right. A handsome, round-faced
woman, deep-set dark eyes, teeth even and white, not entwined with each other or mottled like those of most of his coevals, inky hair, twisted into Mobius strips by a curling iron, extending past her shoulders, bangs almost touching her eyebrows. Wearing a
long-sleeved, scoop-necked, ankle-length beige dress with thin brown vertical stripes, a straw boater with a wide brown ribbon circling between its brim and crown, white running shoes, no socks. Was this Marie Osmond?
"Yes?"
"It's
Sylvia Vose."
"Sylvia! Really? How are you?" He stood to shake her hand. He noticed through blurred peripheral vision that Sunset had been coming to life during his raptivity. Cars were creeping north from Main, out-of-towners
stopping to park and love on the view. Pedestrians--solitary senior strollers like Sylvia or, their kids safely off to school, twosomes of fit young mothers chattering effortlessly, joyfully, as they set an eight-miles-an-hour pace in their bright nylon
shorts and tee shirts with matching headbands, their sweat jackets off and tied around their waists--had begun to populate the sidewalks. Hammers were pounding and saws screeching as renovating carpenters were getting to work adding rooms and decks and
balconies to a couple of '30s or '40s bungalows along the east side of the street. He set his iPad under the bench. "Please sit down and join me. I don't think I've seen you since our 25th reunion at the Landmark Inn in Lynnwood. We
had one dance together."
"I remember. We did a little non-descript slow dance before you and Diane started flying all around the floor doing your disco stuff. I was so sorry to see her obituary in the Edmonds Beacon online 10 years
ago."
"Yes, thank you."
"It was a car wreck?"
"Yes. Out by Echo Lake on old Highway 99. She was on her way home from a Bible study about 9:00 p.m. when a drunk driver crossed the center line and hit her head on."
"How awful."
"Yes. She never regained consciousness. Died at Stevens Hospital a day later."
"I'm so sorry."
"Yes. I still miss her. She strengthened me. But what about you? You told me during our
dance that you and your psychiatrist husband Roger lived in San Francisco? You had a couple of kids? And you had just opened a little tea parlor cum art gallery?"
"Yes. I'm surprised you remember that. Well, a few years
later Roger fell in love with his pretty receptionist and, truth to tell, I had a little fling with a young man who worked for me. Roger and I ended up divorcing, and Benjamin and Megan stayed with me. Roger married his receptionist, my young man
soon escaped my cougar clutches, and I reassumed my maiden name (it's nice to see you wince at the utterance of that phrase). I've had a few male friends over the years but no long-term relationships. I discovered that I rather like being unencumbered.
Ben and Megan are now in their fifties, Ben in Alaska and Megan in Utah. Together they've given me five grandchildren whom of course I adore. And Megan's daughter will make me a great-grandmother in October."
"So Sylvia returns to Sylvania
for what-- a brief visit? To see your brother and your cousins and a few old friends?"
"No, I'm back for good--if that word can be applied to an 80-year-old! Last year I finally sold my tea parlor/gallery, which was doing pretty well what
with the tech boom in San Francisco but was also becoming way too much work, and when I did I began to feel an urge to get back to the old home town. I realized that here I could still dwell amid low clouds, hills, marine air, drizzle, cool temperatures,
saltwater vistas, and gentrification, with the added benison of trees, and all made more poignant by the infusion of childhood and teenage memories. I've been settling in for the past month now."
" From 'Baghdad by the Bay' to The Gem
of Puget Sound."
"Speaking of Clouds!"
"You remember Ray?"
"Of course. I used to read The Tribune Review from front to back every Thursday. I loved the 'Social and Personal' section. Gretchen Meyring used
to call my mother every week to find out where her sewing circle was going to meet."
"As you may remember, at one point my parents and I lived in the apartment above the Tribune office on Main, in what is now Glazed Amazed, a ceramics place.
The floor used to shudder when those heavy linotype presses thundered every Wednesday night. And my dad and Ray's son Ken were high school classmates. They played in a lot of bands together over the years."
"Yes, my parents used to
go to the dances your dad played at the Seattle YMCA and the Lake City Elks' Club and The Merry Max Dine and Dance out on Highway 99. They'd been friends with your dad since grade school."
"Our families used to do a lot of things together.
Picnics at Echo Lake. All that potato salad and blackberry pie. That huge log separating the wading area that we daringly swam under like navy frogmen on our way out to the raft. Poker games at your house or our house. You and your
brother Vernal and I would play Monopoly on the living room floor, then fall asleep on the rug about 10:00 and our dads would wake us at 1:00 a.m. for the scrambled eggs that our mothers were making."
"I remember best that fifth-grade summer when
you moved down to 4th. We spent a lot of time on our own running around in swimming suits at that beach down there."
"Sometimes I just sit on this bench and overlay a visual from the late '40s."
"The boathouses? Andy's and Jim's
and the Edmonds with those tracks running about 50 yards out into the water so boats could get launched at low tide? They were always busy. Most everybody rented boats for fishing in those days--couldn't afford to have their own. The Edmonds
Yacht Club was years away from existence."
"We certainly rented. At first, when we lived up on Maple Street, it was just a rowboat. On windless Sunday afternoons my dad would row us north to Brown's Bay and we'd fish for silvers with
worms and pop gear. Later he saved up enough to buy a little five-horse Evinrude and we'd get up at 3:00 a.m., my mom would make Spam sandwiches with lots of mustard and fill thermoses with coffee and cocoa, and we'd go out to Possession Point and troll
with herring and dodger. The Sound was just gunwale to gunwale with kicker boats in those days. We caught more dogfish than anything, but we usually managed to get one or two humpies that my mother would bake for dinner."
"And the creaky
old wooden ferry dock with its smell of creosote, the cars in line from the ticket booth and then back to the north on Sunset. Nothing like this wide concrete pier with the pedestrian overpass. No highway bypass extending from Edmonds Way to those
holding lanes south of Main. No cops directing traffic. No two-hour waits. But what I remember most is the one sawmill that was still left down there south of the dock where the beach park is now. That sweet cedar smell in the sawdust
and the smoke. And the massive log boom that we would wade out to at low tide and dive off."
"Into that 'scrotum-tightening sea'."
"Scalp-tightening for me! Did you hate the iciness of the water as much as I did?"
"More.
But I kept doing it because in my dreams you were my girlfriend."
"Really! You didn't have a crush on Solveig?"
"Not until our senior year. In our sixth-grade summer, when you and I and Gary and Solveig and all our friends were old
enough to go bean-picking, riding in that big old tarp-covered truck with the benches in the back that they crammed us into for the trip to the fields in Redmond, I'd scramble to wedge in next to you so we would be thigh-to-thigh and I could graze your breast
with my elbow when we made a sharp turn."
"#MeToo! Objectivized sexually, even then! I was hardly aware of your moves, though, because I had a crush on Gary and was always sneaking peeks at him."
"Gary's running for City Council now,
you know."
"Yes, I do know that. And Charlotte and Monk, too!"
"And they always attend our class reunions. As do I. Did you get your invitation?"
"I did. And I'm going to come. I'm excited to reconnect."
"Great! You can join us in singing."
"Singing?"
"Yeah. We always sing the alma mater after announcements and before we eat, but for this, our 80th year on the planet, I wrote a remembrance of our grade school and
high school days that Gary is going to help me deliver, and also an Edmonds version of 'How About You?' as rendered by Frank Sinatra in his '56 LP 'Songs for Swingin' Lovers.' May I?"
"I guess."
"I liked the Bowl in June
How
about you?
I liked how Mathis crooned
How about you?
I liked a pep assembly
With a big game due
Chocolate malts and cherry Cokes
Car coats and moron jokes
How about you?
I
thought drive-in movies a treat
How about you?
If, that is, viewed from the back seat
How about you?
I liked the Wireless
And the Vodvil too
Desert boots and Mary Janes
Crew cuts and flowing manes
How about you?
I liked Jack Foster's class
How about you?
And giving Principal Hill sass
How about you?
Racing up and down 99
In a chopped Ford ‘49
Was crazy to do
But
I liked it
How about you?
I liked watching “Cheyenne”
How about you?
And being a Rainiers fan
How about you?
Packed team bus rides to Arlington
Where we seldom won
I’d never rue
‘Cause I liked them
How about you?
From ’54 to ‘57
With all our hormones revvin’
The time just flew
And I liked it
How about you?"
"Well how
about that? My excitement mounts! But right now I have to finish my walk and get home because I'm expecting a phone call from my daughter. I prefer not to walk and talk--it's too distracting."
"And where is home?"
"Just
over that way. I can see it from here. I bought one of the condos in that relatively new Pine Street development on the hill that used to overlook Union Oil."
"A great spot."
"I feel some entitlement guilt, but God help me I
do like that place. I'm close to the water, I can watch waves spilling themselves on the beach, I can see past Whidbey up the Sound to Hat Island and beyond that to Mt. Baker. If I turn slightly to my right I look over the marsh and the bird sanctuary--the
swallows, the crows, the blue herons, the goldfinches--and up at all of the town--the houses and business buildings and tree-covered hills--the cradle of my life, my omphalos. I gaze out, and then I gaze within."
"So you meditate."
"I do."
"And what else?"
"I walk, read, watch stuff on Netflix and HBO Go."
"Like what?"
"Like Orange Is the New Black, Schitt's Creek, Veep, Silicon Valley, Arrested Development,
Curb Your Enthusiasm."
"Some of my favorites."
"And I shop. I've always enjoyed prowling boutiques, craft shops, consignment stores, used-book stores. I maintain an extensive email correspondence with San Francisco friends.
Thursday I'm going to visit the Edmonds Cemetery and look at the graves of my parents and some of the other Edmonds old-timers."
"I haven't been to the Cemetery since my dad died in '99. Both of my parents, my paternal grandparents, and my dad's
sister and brother-in-law are buried there too."
"What about Diane?"
"Diane is not buried anywhere. We both willed our bodies to science and opted for cremation years ago. When I asked where she'd like her ashes scattered if I should
happen to outlive her, she said, 'Surprise me. I'll be watching you from afar, you know. I'll be up in Heaven, having the time of my death.' She believed strongly that her soul would be given a new body after her old one died.
So late one afternoon, after the Science Care people were through with her and a few days after the memorial we held for her at the Hilltop Presbyterian Church, attended by a throng of her former colleagues and students and fellow church members and Lynnwood
Golf Club members, I put her urn in my golf bag and walked on as a single at the Lynnwood course that we had played together so often for years. I imagined her watching me as I hacked my way from hole to hole. After I bogeyed the 12th, a 100-yard
par 3 that she loved because she made so many birdies there, so often just knocking her 7-iron stiff and sinking the putt, I looked in all directions to be sure no other players or the course marshal could see me, then scattered her ashes beneath the maple
trees back of the green."
"And said a little prayer over them?"
"No. And Diane would not have expected that of me. She and I had different views about prayer."
"Wayne, why don't you join me at the cemetery on Thursday?"
"You know, I could. Thursday's my day off."
"Day off? You're not still working?"
"Oh, no. I mean a day off from softball practice or weightlifting or shooting baskets. After I retired from teaching, I discovered the
amazing world of competitive senior softball. I played a few years in the local Edmonds league, just thrilled to be playing at all, forever homo ludens, you know, then at 60 got involved in a couple of Seattle leagues and hooked on with a traveling
team comprised of guys from Tacoma, Renton, Bellevue--all over the area. Gary was content just to play in Edmonds, but I wanted more. From April to October I'd play weekend tournaments throughout the west--Kelowna, Wenatchee, Olympia, Salem, Eugene,
Concord, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Phoenix, Mesa, Las Vegas, Mesquite, St. George, Denver. I kept up the pace as we progressed through the age divisions--60, 65, 70--but when we hit 75, with the ranks thinning due to infirmity and
death, we began to cut back. This year, in fact, I'm going only to one tournament--St. George. And I'm now playing again only in the Edmonds league, which itself is becoming a very difficult challenge because there are no age divisions--just
55+. Five years of age makes a significant difference in speed, strength, coordination, endurance. Twenty-five is downright scary. So that's why Gary and I practice on our own three days a week. The Z-man and I are still reliving our childhoods.
In our minds we're still the Maple Street All-Stars."
"Well, I want to relive my childhood by visiting the cemetery. So what do you think? Want to meet me there on Thursday? 10:30?"
"Let's do it."
[Wayne, your "mind
ababble in a slurry of words made fresh" section is at best puerile, at worst sexist and racist. I would advise you to leave it out. Charlotte]
[Wayne, old buddy, I find your lesson plan parody as much a satire of ITIP methodology
as of God's pedagogy. Bill]
[Sorry I interrupted your "raptivity," Wayne. But was it really getting you anywhere? I find meditation more rewarding than wheel-spinning. Sylvia]
[Wayne, your questions run the gamut from
Solomonic to sophomoric. In regard to the possibility of God's thinking without language, "mentalese" (with its aural tease of "mentalease") might be the word you are looking for. An omniscient subject needs no language, no logic, no brain.
It knows immediately and eternally. God never does mathematics. In regard to why there is a material world, something rather than nothing, and why people are material beings rather than spiritual essences, I subscribe to Leibniz's Principle of
Sufficient Reason. For every truth, there must be a reason why it is so and not otherwise; and for every thing there must be a reason for that thing's existence. There must therefore be an explanation for the existence of the world, whether
we can find it or not. This teleological explanation does not have to posit or imply the existence of God. "Un-things" (such as mathematical entities and logical laws discoverable by human reason) might furnish an answer to the mystery of the world's
existence. I, of course, am partial to a theistic explanation. Dave]