Second Chance

  • Red Rock State Park, Gallup, New Mexico

    I woke early, and in a way, feel like I’m stealing some private time as I quietly slip out trying not to wake anyone.
    I have this journal in my hand, my blue jeans on because its a little chilly as the sun comes up behind the massive red rock, known as Church Rock.
    We drove in late last night, later than we should have – we were punchy and tired, and we pushed a little farther than we should have, but more to the point, we could barely make out the sites.
    The office here had long been closed and the restrooms were locked and I was out of beer, and nothing was right. So we had a bite to eat – no cooking tonight, just salad or cereal according to your preference, and then to bed, a little reading and lights out after a long, long day.
    But this morning, it is a different world.
    At 7 am I wandered over to the office and signed us in & picked up the keys to the showers and restroom, which were fine, although the ladies would have no use for them until nearly 10:00.
    Meanwhile, I take my free coffee (free coffee! and its good!) – sit down at a picnic table and contemplate my surroundings.
    Behind me stand a number of massive humps of red sandstone from the Mesozoic era. They look it too. For all the world, I could be in Bedrock and the Flintstones could be living among the trees that dot the top we had only seen by the rise of the yellow moon last night in a notch between two of these sleeping giants who surely witnessed dinosaurs trod this very ground even as we drive vehicles powered by petroleum oils derived from the remains of that same era. The moon last night cast a spooky light on Church Rock in the notch between these two massive tongues of sandstone embracing this campground.
    But as I sit here and sip my coffee in the pleasant quiet of the ancient early morning – and as the shadows slide down the rock faces and across the grass toward me, retreating before the oncoming sun, I try to recall the events of the past few days as thousands upon thousands of Monarch butterflies dance before and around me.
    Their peculiar fluttering, resting, darting and dancing has a hypnotic and restful rhythm – clearing my mind, but also my heart and my soul as I ponder the eternity of this resting place along their phenomenal migration from the jungles of Mexico to the northern forests (or at least what remains of them)..
    How do these tiny fellows accomplish their feat?
    Does it have something to do with the unseen quality of this place, something still magical to us, something for which we yet lack the tools to measure or perceive directly, except intuitively, as if out of the corner of the eye? Or is it that for them, like me, this place just “feels” right? This is where I’m supposed to be, this is what I’m supposed to be doing, dashing around the southwest in the heat, from rock to canyon, from pictograph to petroglyph, from ruin to ruin, contemplating the passage of time, and considering that the old ones – the Anasazi – were here only a thousand years before us, and nothing at all remains of them except a few scratches in the rock and a few stones stuck together with mud in the notch of a sheer cliff face.
    And before them came the “Basketweavers”, who left us even less – just a few pictographs in isolated places, miraculously preserved in the arid desert shadows among the rocks and crags – telling us tantalizingly little about them except that they farmed and wove and traded with fisher people as well as other hunters of the plains and mountains as long ago as 2500 B.C.
    And so four and a half millennia are to these butterflies nothing – they have been making these seasonal migrations for millions of years – who knows how long? Tens of millions, hundreds of millions? Admirably resilient for all their apparent fragility.
    And what shaman or hunter sat in this very spot three thousand years ago, among the crags of these red rocks, watching the sun rise, pondering similar thoughts amid clouds of Monarchs fluttering through eternity?

  • Nemesis Squirrel

    We had just returned from St. John, USVI. The trip is long, with many modes. We rose at the crack of dawn. Drove down to the ferry to St. Thomas. A limo to the airport. Fly to Miami, and from there to Austin.
    When we finally had made it home, we found some creature had somehow made it into our house, presumably down through the fireplace. What a mess! After that exceptionally long and involved multi-stage trip to finally arrive home only to find rodent shit everywhere, and broken glass, candy wrappers, tiny footprints on the toilet seat, and God knows what and where ever else?
    Exploring from one disastrous room to another we soon found ourselves upstairs in the master bedroom, looking for the little fellow when I heard three simultaneous shrieks like banshees. “For God’s sake, what? Where did he go?” I asked at the top of my lungs. But they only screamed louder, “A rat! a rat! he ran right across my feet!” “Stop screaming, and tell me which way he went!” I shouted through the shrill chorus.
    Anita pointed down the hall with a shaking finger. It turned out to be a squirrel, and I trapped him the playroom. After about half an hour of chasing the little fellow around the room with gloved hands, moving furniture, trying to catch him in a blanket like a doomed gladiator from Spartacus, during which he alternately jumped from above the doorsill halfway across the room, lurked under a dresser, and hurled himself directly at my face a number of times, I barely ducked out of the way in time, pitying the desparate little fellow even as I was enraged at the havoc he had caused in my house less than the annoyance of having to deal with this bullshit after what? eighteen hours of traveling? This may account for my slow realization that this chasing around a room full of furniture and obstacles was never going to work. I laughed at myself, as I actually pondered words I had read in the Art of War from the ancient Sun Tzu, General of Wu: “when the terrain favors your opponent, allow him a retreat which draws him into terrain which favors yourself.”
    I wonder what the old fellow would think of the use to which his words would be put 2300 years after they had been written?
    So I allowed the squirrel an escape into the much smaller and less obstructed adjacent washroom. It did not take me long to catch him then, thanks to Sun Tzu. Although he made a complete disaster out of the kid’s toiletries, fortunately nothing broke. Once I had him in my gloved hands, I made the mistake of not holding him quite tightly enough, out of concern for injuring him, and he wriggled around just enough to get his teeth into one of my fingers. And he chomped with all his might, no doubt believing his life depended on it.
    Up until this point, I had planned to release him in compassion, and forgive the mess as inevitable, but with this bite, I must say he sealed his own fate.
    It was deep and bloody, but I was sure a little soap and water, antibiotic and a band-aid would do. But Anita continued shrieking, “what if he has rabies? you’ve got to go to the hospital right away!” I stuffed the vermin into a box and thought how Jed Clampett might make a dinner, or at least an appetizer out of him. Anita and I argued for a few minutes, but my victory over rodentia was to be quickly followed by defeat at the hands of the weaker sex. I was too tired to fight, and allowed myself to be driven to the emergency room at ten o’clock with the box that was to turn out to be squirrel’s coffin in back.
    Two hours and a $200 band-aid later, animal control had the now suffocated squirrel for perfunctory testing, and we were driving home with the new knowledge that squirrels were not known to have ever infected a human with rabies. I made sure the nurse practitioner repeated that fact as clearly as possible to Anita.
    When we arrived home, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the girls had, on their own initiative, cleaned most of the house, vacuumed up most of the rodent turds and remade the beds, which promptly received two exhausted bodies lost in a fitful and restive sleep.

  • Dancing under the bougainvilla

    Christmas, 2000 St. John, USVI
    Last night, up the hill, we heard sweet strains of brazilian combo doing impression of Jobim+Astrud as we danced under the bougainvilla, aromatic and colorful under the night sky, a gentle breeze blew from an indeterminate direction and toussled our hair gently as we danced this Christmas eve, every detail within this moment perfect, from crickets chirping to the stars above twinkling blessings on a family as awkward as a three legged dog.
    He’s a game fellow, warm hearted and full of fight, but he misses that lost limb.
    Everything still seems a bit off-center, BJ is himself inscrutable, and it is impossible to tell what he wants and what he’s choosing to do in deference to Pam, or if in fact there is any difference but something tells me that they want to treat today as just any other day — no traditional Christmas symbols, no tree, no festive decorations, and although Santa came during the night and left a few gifts for the good boys and girls under the bougainvilla, Pam admonished him gently, without much delight, on their morning walk to find the source of that magical music that last night wafted down the hill, scented and aromatic, carrying with it a sad romance that affected me strongly somehow and thankfully, once shown, Anita responded as well, that’s not too surprising, for who would not, given the alluring nature of the place, but somehow we’re all slightly disconnected, our gears spinning at different speeds, and it would not have surprised me at all if, instead of wishing to dance under the stars to the strains of bossa nova, she had rather sat and gossiped with the girls.
    But we danced slowly instead, silently pondering the bittersweetness of this season.

  • Honeymoon Boat

    Yesterday we took the boat out for perhaps the second time in several years.
    We had been having a few problems with it, due to age and I’m afraid, neglect. The old battery still had some life in it, but I feel better investing a few bucks in a new one, a small price to pay every other season, considering the inconvenience a dead battery can cause you on a boat. Its bad enough going out to the dock, only to be disappointed — that has happened to us once or twice, but we like to get out to the middle of the lake and cut the engines — it would be pretty bad to get stranded out there…
    So I broke down and bought a new battery a few weeks ago — months ago now, I guess. I also invested in a battery charger, just in case. I actually had a need for it not much later, but not for the boat. We had to move the old blue van — we call him Vincent, Vincent van Lowe — and discovered the battery dead, again. For the fourth year in a row, those stupid batteries we’ve been putting in him have croaked early regularly, too regularly.
    But a weak battery wasn’t the only thing wrong with the old Sea Nymph. A few years up in the stacks, especially without a cover have really taken a toll on her.
    As the New Year approached I resolved to clean up the old girl. I spent hours fixing the deck, ripping out the plywood rotting in the stern, repair the decking and glue down the old indoor-outdoor carpet falling away from the hull below the gunwale, repairing the deck seats, whose screws no longer hold into the deck disintegrating in places. I braced them up with old two-by-fours, screwed into fresh portions of the decking, this time with stainless steel screws.
    But there was more to do, unfortunately. After hours, days of work, and checking out the motor and electrical systems, I was afraid, the transom was leaking.
    She had sprung a leak some years before around one of the bolts holding the transom to her aluminum hull. I pulled her from the marina and had her repaired at a place that had been recommended to me — Action Marine. A poor recommendation, as it turns out.
    After years in storage and a few years in various dry dock stacks, I’m afraid the crappy patch job they had done for me had failed and in more ways than one. Not only had they apparently used improper patching materials, it had cracked and the bolts had begun to rust.
    The rusting bolts in turn had begun eating away at the wood of the transom. This was beyond me. I had to call in a pro.
    So I had the mechanic at our current marina take some time out of his slow days in December to repair the leak properly, replace the rusting bolt and while he was in there, repair the running lights as well. What the hell.
    The net effect was, that we now had a clean, trim, ship shape little craft, ready to launch at the flip of a cell phone. It’s nice just knowing you can do it, but it’s even better actually taking that chance.
    Now yesterday was Friday, February 11, 2000. And I want to remember it for many reasons, but particularly because, for me, it was a watershed day — it was a breakthrough. Let me explain.
    The sky was complex, a war zone of hue and color. A mass of scaly mackerel clouds fought with wispy mare’s tails for the right, the privilege of being closest, of doing the greatest honor to the rusty old setting sun, whose precious day was rapidly waning.
    But those same clouds which had earlier been merely obstructions — gray masses punctuating the azure here aqua there, serene, rich metallic Mediterranean blue, pale blue sky — now positively exploded in crimson orange gold white then scarlet — no more than scarlet — reddish diamond white fire which sent the sun to bed with a clap, a bang, a Pow! Right in the kisser, stars in your eyes ka-boom! sunset.
    But earlier it was much quieter, the final act begun with the anticipated bell of the Oasis high above atop the cliffs overhanging our beautiful lake, after zooming up and down the glassy water — so smooth we barely felt a gentle rise and fall as we played around the Sometimes Islands amid her main body.
    In February, there was barely a soul out there, even on a fine Friday evening, oh, one or two sailors had made it out — much to my amazement, on this dead calm, but warm day unlike last Friday, which was a bit brisker (although not cold), but with a much more vigorous wind for sailors — one might think I suppose — but no that day there were literally none, and while today we still found few, there were one or two, perhaps those who felt, like I, that today would yield a remarkable sunset, but why?
    Last Friday, Anita and I had come down here, she for the first time, me for the second time in as many years, and although we came in a bit cold, we were well lit from within, and the glowing amber light emanating from the granite shoals of Lake Travis in the unique light of a winter sunset did not escape us. We swore to return, if possible, the following week, this Friday — and I had urged Anita to leave school as early as possible, three o’clock perhaps and dash home before the traffic rush, where I would be waiting for her, and we would leave the kids however we could — in Barbel’s capable care, without if we must, but to return to the lake on a Friday night — it was meant to be a tradition.
    And I’m glad I did, because she barely made it by three thirty, as I recall, even though she left illicitly early (two thirty, perhaps?), stealthily certainly.
    I myself had taken the entire afternoon off — I’ve been in a very good mood lately, for reasons which I will get to in a moment, but I could not escape a few more hours of work, even work at home is work — but it’s a little less onerous.
    A little paperwork, some finances, and aha! Anita’s here, let’s go, but no, there is a dance at the junior high, and I fight the gravity sucking us into our kids’ world — let them get a ride, let someone else deal with it, we are outta’ here! Let’s go!
    And we leave the kids — with Barbel at first, later alone for an hour or two while we rejuvenate ourselves and sneak off for what would perhaps be the best date either of us would ever go on, the best date anyone would ever go on — even though the evening would not go flawlessly, as we returned to our lives later in the evening our daughter would once again intrude momentarily with her trivial needs, but for these few hours, stolen it seems, but ours by right — these hours alone with one another were like worlds away from our everyday life which, one must admit is not so bad at all, although frustrating and difficult sometimes, it is quite comfortable and satisfactory. But still, lacking in the enthusiasm I seem to recall from our youth…
    But this day was for me a different sort of day. It was one for which I had been waiting some time.
    Our company had been in the ditch for a while, but we had come out of it, come out swinging! I had been unhappy for a long time, but decided to hold out until a good number of my long-held and previously seemingly worthless stock options matured. “Who knows? They might be worth something someday,” I thought.
    But I did not dare dream that they would increase more than eightfold in a year, and that not only would I be able to fund my children’s college (a responsibility I had shirked for some years, to my own shame and the perennial scolding of my accountant) but I would also be able to fund our (admittedly humble) retirement plan, entirely it would seem with some very conservative projections, we should be taken care of in just a few more years, well ahead of schedule.
    With a little luck we may be able to live unconventionally well a bit sooner than that.
    This had been preying on me for some years — since as soon as I had entered this phase of life marked perhaps most prominently in my memory by say, my thirtieth birthday — married, with a mortgage and children and a mediocre job and no investments, I had worked very hard to get this house in order — and in retrospect I don’t think I spent a day or a night as happy and rested as I ought to have been — on vacation or holiday, skiing or on the beach. I was always churning, there was always something gnawing at the back of my mind — a question really — “how long?” How long could I keep up this level of energy? How long before I was obsolete?
    My industry is rich with opportunity, but also very demanding. For many it seems to me, our “clocks stop” sometime in our thirties and we are less able to absorb new ideas, less flexible, less adaptable and our ability to continue to climb the earnings curve begins to taper off if we stay in the same place too long — we are liable to be tagged — predictable — risk averse — and lose our ambition through frustration at our chosen professions, or distractions from the other dimensions of our lives cause us to lose our concentration.
    Usually our families, our children and their activities, which so wholly consume young parents and become habits consciously or unconsciously tiresome ones to middle aged parents who are seemingly endlessly fatigued from work, for whom passion may be waning to a routine or a rare pleasure to be fit in when the kid’s schedules permit, or worse, lives entirely devoid of passion, lost totally in work or separate from one another in ways that somehow escape our awareness — so gradually do they enshroud us like ivy over a tree, choking out the sun, ultimately overcoming us in our desperate paralysis.
    It was this sort of feeling, or gradual awareness to which I was responding — and many of us sense it in one way or another creeping up on us, even as we sink our roots deeper with children’s activities and homeowner’s responsibilities and husbandly duties…
    But I resolved I would not let these worries own me. I would work hard not merely because it was expected of me, because it was the right thing to do, but to defend against this sense of vulnerability, this awareness of mortality, which became most pronounced for me since my father’s death. I remember the day, and how I cried in pity for the man and somehow for us all — how we work and struggle, and for what? For what?
    That, and many more questions have nagged at me since then and I knew I could not rest until I had at least achieved some level of security for our retirement and we would at least not be destitute in our old age — because I knew I could not keep this level of energy up for many more years — it gnawed at me.
    But today, this day would be by the grace of God my first day of freedom from that fear for a very long time. Not only had I survived long enough for a good number of stock options to mature and fill in this gaping hole in our financial plan, but to my great surprise, they had handed me a substantial bonus check today, two checks actually, exceeding my annual take home pay my first year out of college. This on top of a substantial and retroactive raise that amounted to an almost equal bonus last December.
    To me this wasn’t just a wad of money, although it was certainly that. It was also a vindication of all that effort which I feared might have been wasted, and it finally put us over the top of the financial target which only six months earlier I thought might take us another ten years to hit.
    Today we are there!
    And we are packing up the champagne and running out to the lake, God bless us, only fifteen minutes away. Why don’t we come out here more often?
    And we’re out here in the middle of the basin, confidently floating and cut the engines as the sun is still hand high from the storybook hills still warm in his transit as we chat and renew our avowals of love for one another, our eyes misting over with love — or is it the wine? Or the salubrious effects of the warm Texas sun in February? Or check me on this, but the sun-facing cliffs seem to emanate a mellow light, suffused against the darker background, distant, deep, western big sky country, our hearts positively singing, in an ecstasy of visuals, combined with a self-satisfaction of financial well-being, a mature, robust and satisfactory “high”, complete and perfect.
    I have not felt this way in recent memory, and in some sense have never felt this way before, so completely, and God-willing, so well-justified.
    Anita and I were beside ourselves with thankfulness. After all we’d been through so many wrong turns, and such seeming bad luck, that finally we had caught a break and that it’s not just enough to be in the right place at the right time, you need to know you’re in the right place at the right time, and as the Sometimes Islands played host to thousands of water birds from hundreds of miles away, as the thousand-colored and infinitely textured sky was backdrop to flocks overhead and if you listen quietly you hear beyond the gentle lapping of the water against the hull of our little honeymoon boat, the distant call of the grebe and gull, themselves saluting the departing old sun, warmth giver, praying for him to come again in the morning, and smell the evening breezes blowing cool now across the still waters if you’ve ever felt it, you feel it now, the warmth and righteous upwelling of two familiar hearts, that look in her eyes, the salt of her tears of joy, and who would not? For this perfect moment is now, is universal and is eternal.

  • the indians

    Our last full day here at Grandview in beautiful St John’s. Yesterday was definitely one for the books. We got up as early as we could and lugged our gear down to the dock at the Westin hotel after picking up a few items, including a gallon of water, our boat was ready and waiting for us. Unfortunately, we would have to wait for it. Although we were uncharacteristically punctual, arriving promptly at 8:30, another party was just a bit earlier and was already getting their briefing from the sole Nauti-Nymph representative, Michelle, of the bad bleach job.
    She went on and on, giving our fellow boat renters the low-down on all the good spots to hit — emphasizing good snorkeling spots and cautions about boating hazards, of which there were plenty. She spoke with that prep school sorority clique eastern equivalent of valley girl accent, rapid and curt, and I presumed she was from New England, from that tone of self-importance and thinly veiled but unwarranted condescension.
    This is tough for me to take, because not only do I know everything already, but I had that itchy feeling I get whenever I start to hemorrhage money. Our 25′ center console Fountain boat was costing us $275 for the day, and we waited a full half-hour just to get Michelle’s attention.
    Anita disappeared with her weak bowels into the bathroom, leaving me alone to stew in my own juices, while the other party of fun seekers was led down to their boat, identical to ours, for their equipment check.
    Meanwhile, I was treated to a feast of the local Creole accent as two idle resort workers chatted about one’s recent marriage to another. The fellow, a big round headed black man, called out to me “what do you think, mon?” and was surprised that I had understood some of their cryptic and melodic “lang” — I answered “about what, her marriage?” this got a laugh, easy and ready smiles, I’ve come to expect from anyone lucky enough to live here and also be lucky enough to have a job.
    He didn’t wait long before dropping into work mode, though and tried to put the hustle on me for a time share condo “good deal, excellent value, don’t you want to join our club mon?”
    I was too grumpy to be very polite, I’m afraid, and the young lady just smiled at my rebuff. I smiled back, and changed the subject back to marriage. The would-be salesman didn’t appreciate being contradicted as he had been advising her that divorce necessarily follows marriage — he with his two years experience was no match for me with my thirteen.
    Thirteen years. Wow, the blink of an eye. And I can’t complain. My love and my life’s companion and I have been through so much together, and have withstood so much even from one another like reefs under hurricanes. And she has taught me so much about people, and given me the gift of her good sense.
    These were my thoughts as I advised the young black lady about marriage and waited for our rental agent to return from her briefing and Anita to return from her bathroom break.
    We finally got our turn, passed through a quick boat check, got our advice about snorkeling locations and were out of Great Cruz Bay by 9:30. A whole hour shot!
    This ticked me off a bit, because it was an easily avoidable scheduling error. They knew there would be two groups going out this morning. Why would they schedule us both to arrive at 8:30? Or if it was necessary, why not have two agents to check us out (or divide the work into the paper work and the boat check) and so get us out of there that much sooner, instead of burning up the precious morning. Alternatively, we could have just slept the extra half hour.
    Even so, I bit my tongue, but my face gave me away again and Anita pounced on me, as if it were my fault.
    That pisses me off even more for several reasons. First, I was irritated at the little preppie witch and the company for which she worked for this costly inefficiency, as I saw it. Secondly, because although I had tried to restrain myself, I could not help but telegraph my feelings, evidently through facial expressions, body language and voice intonation. I dislike being so transparent and not in control. It may come from a weak emotional center, basic immaturity or it may simply be the combination of stronger emotions and a heightened state of awareness.
    No one would doubt that if one were completely unaware of a situation or one’s analytical faculties prevented one from appreciating that things could or should be better, at least until later, that it would be easier to avoid being pissed off when people do stupid things. Alternatively, if one’s faculties were so adept that they could apprise such a situation instantly, even anticipate and so avoid them or one’s mastery of communication — verbal, non-verbal, and what I call “neo-verbal” (voice intonations, rhythms, pacing and an affinity for accent and mode of speech either natural or calculated for effect) were so well developed that one could both effectively mask one’s own emotions and manipulate those of others, then one could also tend to avoid or ameliorate such situations. But while I am both too acutely aware to ignore and too socially incompetent to anticipate or master most such situations, I am also prey to strong emotions, and the strongest, most merciless attacks I reserve for myself, particularly for this lack of presence of mind which caused me to fail to anticipate the possibility that such a situation might arise and also for my inability to master either myself or through effective communication, those around me.
    …
    But all this went through my mind in a moment, I presume a flicker crossed my expression, a mere ephemera, and I just smiled and hugged her as my best counselor, ambassador and friend, as we made our way out of Great Cruz Bay.
    We stopped at the mouth of the bay and gazed back at Grandview. Halfway up the hill at the back of the bay, facing due southwest at 240 degrees true.
    Directly northward lay shoals reaching out to Steven Cay, a shortcut to the harbor and town of Cruz Bay for locals, and even some big boats, but not us. Unfamiliar with the shoals, we made our way all the way around, east and then north through Pillsbury Sound and past the Two Brothers and Lind Point into the Lovango Channel. We made past the Durloe Cays by 10:00 before pausing off Hawksnest Point to get our bearings again.
    Ahead lay Johnsons’ Reef, scourge of pleasure boaters, to our starboard, pleasant Hawksnest Bay, overlooked by the ruins of the old sugar mill atop Peace Hill — the stone turret solely surviving, the wood and canvas windmill vanes replaced now by wild saguaro cactus and nettle bushes.
    Past Hawksnest, we made on beautiful, still dead calm waters. Few sailors bothered out yet this breathless morning, a dearth of wind allowed them to nurse their hangovers a few more hours before hoisting and pulling before the wind would begin again for them.
    They say even the winds here keep “civilized” hours and show good manners, waiting for the sailors to rise and brew a cup of coffee or two before it begins to pluck their lines so that the lines slap their masts like bells calling the faithful to worship.
    Following the coast, we continued past idyllic Trunk Bay and Tranquil Maho, favored anchorage, protected from the north swells by wild, uninhabited Mary Point, and from the south and east winds by the big humps of Canelberg Peak and Bordeaux Mountain, rising 1277 feet from mother sea.
    Through the pass at Mary Point and Whistling Cay, we made through the narrows slowly, yielding to a lone sailor, the boat Godspeed out of Falmouth, Minnesota. She was fully rigged, but there was little wind, and so she made way slowly through the pass. About halfway in, she changed tack and I was glad I had held back. The V6 200hp Yamaha purred almost inaudibly as I tried to get a savory waft of the sailor’s dreamy way. He tacked back out to port and downwind toward the windward passage and Great Thatch Island.
    But I lack the patience for sailing and once we were clear of the Godspeed and the narrows, opened her up and sped into Leinster Bay, past Watermelon Cay and anchored up among the sleepy sailors before preparing for our first dive of the day.
    …
    We took our time here and failing to find any moorings close in, prepared to drop anchor. The Fountain had two, but the line on the most accessible of them was too short to find bottom. I took care to come up in line with the sailboats which had evidently anchored here for the night.
    I pulled out the second anchor and finding the line to be a bit longer, tossed her over. She found bottom, but dragged a bit before biting in. Once we were in the water I found the line our anchor had drawn in the sand at the bottom. It appeared to be about thirty feet long. In the ten or twenty minutes we sat about before going in, we had drifted that far.
    But now I was satisfied that we were set and we made for Watermelon Cay with fins and masks.
    At times like this Anita can be a child, helpless and needful. I was her lifeguard, as so many times before, and yet not her master. So like a child giving orders to her parents, Anita would in situations like this be very demanding and refuse to take direction. How many other husbands and how many other wives have perspectives to offer on similar situations?
    Anita insisted on propelling herself through the water backwards with a ski float under her back, her head in the air, presenting the appearance of some unusual stern wheel river boat or perhaps an enormous duck.
    I advised her against this, but she was determined. So once again, as so many times before, I dutifully accompanied her as lifeguard and protector, even as she argued and disputed with me. Her voice carried across the bay and seemed to echo off the cliff walls, and I winced with every word, imagining the sailors mocking us over their morning coffee.
    As we made our way slowly through the water toward the cay, I thought of many other times like this where my devotion had been tested. Such as when she had exploded out of her ski lift, flailing and helpless at the halfway station on Purgatory, near Durango Colorado, on another trip when I felt the possibilities of an alternative life drawing me away from the slavish drudgery of money chasing, commuting, computers and the corporate world.
    It took two of us to pick her up and they had to stop the lift. Hundreds of skiers up and down the mountain rolled their eyes and clicked their tongues at this storied faux pas.
    Afterward she scolded me for making a face. I had said nothing. She stopped the lift, and I made a face! No apologies, no thanks, just a scowl. God help me, her words sting even now, as I remember her splayed inelegantly in the snow.
    …
    Once she went out with her friend Mary Ellen to a garage sale. “Don’t buy anything we don’t need” were my parting words. She retuned with a Schwinn exercise bicycle.
    “Now this is something that we need,” I thought, but then I recalled the $300 Peugeot bicycle I had bought her years before, buried in cobwebs and dust behind our cardboard box collection in the garage. It was a beautiful bike, much nicer than mine. I loved to bicycle and clung to it as my primary mode of transportation even when I started work in Dallas and could afford a car.
    I wanted Anita to accompany me riding around our neighborhood. One of my favorite pastimes had been given a new dimension with the addition of a child seat to the old Raleigh racer.
    I remember now with some emotion packing first one and then another of my kids into the seat we had attached to my trusty bike, with which I have shared many happy hours.
    I buckled on the Koala Kare Styrofoam helmet and lifting her tiny body into place, threaded the rainbow colored shoulder straps over the top of the seat, never failing to think of Robin Williams’ suspenders on Mork and Mindy. (Even now. Funny how some things just seem to stick in your brain.)
    Snapping the clasp into place across her little chest with a satisfying ‘click,’ I would gingerly walk the bicycle from our garage out to the street. We would often go out in the late afternoon when the sun was past his prime, and the handsome old elms which blessed our house on Lonsdale gave their most welcomed shade.
    I can hear the crickets chirp and smell the fresh cut lawns in the dry Texas heat. I can see my little girl smile up at me cheerfully, trusting utterly, completely, her eyes so blue in love and admiration (an admiration I knew I did not deserve in my black empty heart, but which she gave nonetheless). The blue sky and white clouds reflected in her eyes as I walked the bike to the street.
    And she would sing her little girl songs as we pedaled down Woodthorpe. Past old Ed and June Card’s immaculately kept place, past Kelly’s house, down Broadmeade to Meadowheath, and all around Forest North, our neighborhood, her world slowly growing in ever-expanding circles centered on our home, and more specifically on someone in that home, my little girl’s mother.
    Our mother begins not as the center of our world, but as the world itself. All mothers are the world to the children they carry and nurture. It’s a bittersweet journey as they grow and inevitably part from that world, leaving it — her — emptier and longing.
    I had wanted Anita to share that experience with me, so that we might even take both kids out at once, and tool around our nice little neighborhood as a family — while we still could, for we knew how quickly we’d lose those little ones — to be replaced by changelings, different people, a little older, similar to these innocents, but not the same, never the same.
    But her bike lay unused and dusty despite my repeated pleas. The seat hurt, the handlebars weren’t right, she wanted fatter tires. “For Christ’s sake, I thought, how far will a person go to avoid a little exercise? And besides, she has no idea what she’s missing.” And now here she was before me with a goofy smile and an exercise bike. I never had any use for the things personally, give me the fresh air and real scenery every time — be it hot or cold, day or night.
    But I knew then what would happen to the exercise bike as I’m sure you do too.
    …
    And so now we’re paddling backwards and upside down over to Watermelon Cay. What can you do?
    There was not very much to see this time, and we were anxious to get as much out of our day with the Fountain as possible, so we didn’t stay long. Now we had a bit of a swim back to the boat and naturally, Anita insisted on doing her special paddle.
    I just shrugged and didn’t give it much thought, but stayed back with her, swimming slowly alongside. She presented a comical picture, raising a little foam behind her to the motion of the fins, riding high in the water, looking backwards out to the cay and the deep water beyond. Her snorkel rose from her head like the smokestack on a tiny tugboat.
    Remember, we pretty much had the whole Caribbean to swim in. This bay was several thousand feet across and we were more than 100 yards from anything — except for one buoy.
    I looked up to see Anita making straight for it!
    She had about 10 feet to go.
    “Look out!” I shouted.
    She heard me. “Look out for what?” she asked but did not stop paddling. “Look out for that buoy!” I shouted, and I won’t deny that I laughed to see her turn around just as she came upon it, a big white foam rubber cylinder with the words “no boats” on it. It descended perhaps a foot into the water where a hefty chain anchored it to the sea floor. Below the waterline the buoy was covered in green, slippery algae and a few barnacles.
    Anita turned and flailed at the buoy and wrestled with it, splashing and yelling. It fought back bravely.
    In the tumult, she scraped her arm on a barnacle and shrieked, “why didn’t you warn me?!”
    “I did.”
    “Why didn’t you warn me sooner?”
    “Lord, please help me” I prayed silently, but said nothing.
    We made it back to the boat and treated her wound with benadryl, as it was beginning to raise up in histamine reaction.
    We lifted anchor, cranked the engine and got on our way again. Once out of Leinster Bay, we proceeded on to Norman Island. This was one of the British Virgin Islands and technically, we ought to have gone through customs on Tortola before even entering British waters, but we decided not to mess with that.
    We tooled around Norman Island, looking for promising places to dive. We found the harbor and saw something unique — an old galleon converted into a drive-through (or rather float-through) bar and restaurant. But with no sign of reefs or indications from our chart, we moved on.
    Michelle had been good for something after all, as I recalled one place she had recommended. “The Indians” she had said, “are not marked on your map. Look for four fingers of rock sticking up out of the water here” and pointing to a blank spot on the map with one hand, she raised the other, palm away from us and wiggled four fingers in the air. She looked at us through her fingers as she did this and paused a moment for effect.
    So we made for the Indians and to our surprise, found a mooring free. No sooner had we tied off, than an enormous Sunspree catamaran moored up behind us flying the Union Jack.
    A pretty young girl with a charming midlands accent called out to us: “Excuse me, are you planning to scuba?” “No we’re just skin diving” we replied. “Well, the white moorings are for scuba diving only. Would you mind untying?”
    Naturally, we were disappointed. We had no knowledge of that rule, but didn’t know what else to do. She went on, “The greens are for snorkeling, and the red, commercial.”
    “Did you see any green moorings over there?” I called back, indicating the direction from which they had come.
    “I’m afraid not,” she said sympathetically. “But you can tie off to us,” she added brightly after consulting for a moment with one of her mates. We’re not sure what the arrangement was — we speculate now that she was cook and crew and her husband was captain and guide to a family on a diving holiday.
    What a life! Some people we had met were willing to toil away in dark cramped storefronts so that in their precious time off they might enjoy the beaches and the water, the diving, sailing and beautiful climate of this Caribbean paradise. But for such a husband and wife team, the sailing and diving would be their day job. If the island lifestyle seems like a dream to us landlocked drones, then such a life must seem like a dream, even to most islanders.
    So we tied off to the stern of the Sunspree Cat. Our 25′ boat was about the size of their dinghy. A spacious deck and ample cabin spanned the huge twin hulls. As they made ready their scuba gear, Anita and I sat under our Bimini top and pondered what to do. I didn’t feel extremely comfortable with this situation and I wanted to give it a few minutes to make sure our line was fast and long enough to keep us from bumping into one another.
    After sitting and watching for a few minutes, I decided to go in and see what there was to see.
    Anita didn’t feel comfortable going in at first and stayed behind as I went off to explore.
    It was a short swim, about 30 yards of very deep blue water, and excellent seeing –perhaps 70 or 75 feet clear.
    I could not see bottom at first, merely an infinite field of translucent cerulean. My hands and feet were visible more clearly than I can see them now, as if a magic lens magnified and clarified their image. I breathed rhythmically and deeply through the snorkel, keeping my head down, only looking up every now and then to get my bearings.
    I kicked briskly from the hips, keeping my knees locked and stroking arm over arm. With my head down, breathing through the snorkel, I was able to streak through the water quite briskly, imagining myself a dolphin with arms.
    About half way from the moorings to the fingers of rock I began to be able to make something out through the opalescent sea. It soon became clearer that I was looking at the sheer face of a sea-cliff, which extended down beyond the limits of my ability to see. In my immediate field of view I could see tiny particles. I could not make them out at first, and presumed them to be plankton or some other sort of simple creature. Then I began to see they were actually tiny minnows even smaller than usual, about the size of a pencil point. There must have been millions of them. They swam in a huge school and their collective form rippled in complex shapes and patterns, giving a depth and dynamism to the movement of the sea which inanimate matter must always lack.
    As I came closer, I began to become aware of the colors of the coral formations: orange, green, purple-blue, in rich hues and tones, complex and shimmering as if emanating light themselves.
    These were clearly some of the most dramatic formations I had ever seen. And the fish! Sea life in joyful abundance and variety too stunning even to experience, much less enumerate, classify or describe.
    I approached the rock face more slowly now, breathing quietly and trying to minimize my movements in hopes of allowing some of the more timid species to feel confident enough to venture out from their crevices and crannies.
    Before me stood a narrow canyon between two large “Indians.” I looked down. Below me the rock walls were covered in blotchy patches to a depth of fifty feet or more. I could see perfectly clearly all the way to the bottom.
    The sun was perfect, the water was perfect and although I felt a little bit lonely out there by myself, my excitement at the discovery was enough to overcome my loneliness. I stopped and checked on Anita regularly. She sat there grimacing uncomfortably, and keeping a weather eye on me, waving.
    I felt sorry for her but I had to see what else there was to see.
    I turned back to the canyon. A huge head of brain coral grew to one side, fissures and nodes like an elaborate hedge maze in a spherical and miniature formal garden. Many varieties of tube coral and fantastic specimens of cactus-like finger coral trembled in exaggerated frenzy to every movement of the sea.
    Lavender, pink, orange and brown sea ferns and fields of gold-and-tan variegated tube coral covered the sea cliff from the ocean surface to the sea floor, fifty or sixty feet below. The sun, now high in the clear blue sky, refracted through the infinitely complex surface of the sea and formed ever changing ripple-patterns of white in two dimensions projected onto the complex surface of this massive field of coral.
    The cliff wall stretched out before me for several hundred feet, I knew from observation above the sea’s surface. Down below, it seemed more like an eternity.
    There is something about this place — otherworldly, and essentially solitary, silent, majestic, restless. With literally no one else anywhere in sight, it seemed like I was as alone down here as if I were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That thought was a little bit scary, and I popped back up again to check on Anita before descending once more, deeper and longer with each dive.
    Imagine another world, like a dream world, but more vivid than any dream. Imagine colors that have no name, all of them splashing in your eyes, and imagine ripples such as you see on the surface of blue water, but extending up, down, before and around you in all directions, constantly changing, yet restful and calmingly still in their eternal motion. Imagine clouds of fish, like flocks of birds, weaving and spiraling, in seemingly endless variety — large puffers and tiny angels like you see in an aquarium, but you are in the aquarium, and it is like no aquarium on earth, vast beyond comprehension, humbling and inspiring, awesome and exhilarating.
    Imagine that, and feel the words rising unsummoned from your heart: “He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul…Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
    …
    (1/23)
    Below the surface, these rock formations descended almost vertically, perhaps 100 feet or more to the sea floor. We had an excellent day for diving, with calm seas and good sunlight.
    Have you ever noticed the patterns sunlight makes on the floor of a pool? When the water’s surface is still or almost still, and the sunlight refracts through it, the light seems to collect in what I call “seams,” constantly shifting and dancing alternately in rows of dots, circles and diamonds of light.
    It is a fond fascination of mine to observe and try to comprehend this pattern or pattern of patterns. I have often tried to render them in a variety of ways using paint, pencil and so on, without success. My mathematical training and reductionist mode of thought perhaps leads me to try to formulate equations which might have some hope of describing them. The wind licks up a ripple on the water’s surface, and the sunlight refracts through the ripple in a certain way, ultimately forming foci on the surface of the bottom. It is thought provoking and humbling to happily ponder the enormous complexity of even so simple a phenomenon.
    How much more so then is the problem of describing the shifting patterns of light drawn by the bright sun on the surface of the sea, which even when calm is never quite still, rising and falling in crests and troughs fascinating and hypnotic, restless, yet oddly restful.
    The two-dimensional surface of the sea when so agitated, even on a windless day, by the motion of the air across it, acts as a complex lens for the sunlight shining through it. Looking up at the sea’s surface from below, one can see that it possesses a mirrorlike quality, something like mercury, perhaps, metallic and bright.
    And the sea itself is nowhere empty. Life positively teems at every scale from the most minute microscopic forms to those visible only to the most acute and observant naked eye to small creatures of manifold variety and on up through the ranks of fishes in a ruthless hierarchy of predator and prey, up to the largest creatures of all, the baleen whales, which ironically feed on some of the smallest plankton.
    Through this society the bent light rays shine, and to my eyes seemed like the rays of heaven illuminating the heavenly hosts — as represented by the brightly colored and innumerably variegated tropical fish which day and night lived in this fantastic world to which I was a mere day visitor. It is a happy thought to consider them, or rather in many cases their descendants, swimming there today.
    The light rays collected into beams projecting through the water, suggesting the presence of God to me.
    (1/24)
    Floating there amid the brilliant colors of the coral and the teeming swarms in endless variety of fish in the timeless depths, with fingers of light playing in the clear water before me, I prayed.
    I thanked God that I was alive and able to come to this place. I pondered for how many thousands or millions of years had it stood here, under His watchful eye, and for how many more years would fish dart in and out of these crevices, would these blotches of coral — tiny animals, building their homes on the skeletons of their ancestors, through the eons and on into the nameless future — long after we are gone, after even our memories or the hint of a memory of anything like us is gone — days would come when the sunlight would flicker on the sea rods, illuminating the bright yellow tapers of the pillar coral, the red and purple candy dishes of the rose coral and the stately splayed fingers of the Elkhorn.
    Before me two of the rock formations crossed 15 or 20 feed below the surface, forming a dark and mysterious cave. As I had done on previous days, I filled my lungs and dove down, the pressure of the deeper water imposing itself on my ears.
    The fungus coral reminded me of a time, not so long ago, when I had suffered an ear infection so ferocious, it felt like knives piercing my eardrums. I literally could not sleep at all. I went to the doctor as soon as I could, and if you know me you know that that means this was serious. Dr. David Tobey had removed a mass from my ears, declaring dryly: “that is fungus.” When I looked blankly at him and at the clump of goo he had just removed and back to him, he went on, “Fungus is very slow growing. This might have been working in there for up to a year.”
    Up to a year! What a thought. I immediately thanked God once again to be living in an age where I can be treated so simply and effectively. There was a time, not so long ago when this would have gone on for some time, torturing me with excruciating pain such as I had experienced, not for one night, but for weeks or months — ultimately spreading and leading perhaps to deafness or even madness! Thus sayeth Dr. Tobey.
    Ponder that. It is not inconceivable that I might have gone mad from a fungus spread from my ear canal to the brain. Yuch.
    The brain is an amazing thing. All these thoughts and more crossed my conscious mind there in that moment, a few seconds only, as the sunlight flickered through the blue Caribbean waters against the fungus and brain corals, bright and blotchy.
    Simultaneously, I was sensing and observing the animal life all around me, thinking about Anita, hot and uncomfortable back in the boat, for reasons that don’t matter.
    I periodically popped my head back up to get my bearings and to check up on her. I waved. She waved back wanly.
    I returned to my explorations of the cave, and diving deeper with each breath, felt the pressure of the deeper water.
    …
    But fortunately, my ears were relatively clear at this time, so I was able to dive deep, though not for long. Up to a minute perhaps, by my watch.
    Even on good days, seeing underwater is not very good. While you may be able to make out shapes — particularly those in motion, through the contrast of light and dark, at fifty or even seventy five feet, you cannot make out colors very well beyond five or ten feet. In fact, to really appreciate the complex textures, patterns and variety of life these colonies of coral present, you must get close. Very close. To within a foot or two. Any closer and you introduce some risk that you might damage something by accidentally touching it.
    But at depths of ten or fifteen feet, the entire character of the colony seemed to change — different species of fish and larger specimens of soft coral — both Gorgonians (sea fans) and plexaura (sea rods).
    These truly remarkable creatures form in colonies resembling plants — leaves and stems — but actually consist of millions of tiny and simple animals, standing on one anothers’ shoulders, so to speak, in order to feast on even tinier organisms brought to them on the ocean currents.
    When I descended to these depths ( a mere puddle splash by some standards), I felt the massive weight of the ocean press down on me.
    Waiting stilly as long as I could, for the air in my lungs made me buoyant, and I swam head down, fins toward the surface, paddling slowly to counteract this tendency.
    I watched as tiny juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish darted in and out from crevices in the rock, their metallic blue spots strikingly brilliant against their dark blue bodies.
    I could see a sleepy and shy neon Goby resting or hiding in the troughs between fronds of a yellow-green ribbon coral.
    And I could see thousands more tiny lives pass before me in this vibrant underwater city.
    After briefly examining the entrance of the cave (I was not prepared to venture in, especially by myself), I passed through the shallow crevice between two of the “Indians.” I made my way around the leeward side of the rock, carefully keeping my body flat and my fins pointed back as the water was rather shallow here. The proximity to the surface made for the exceptionally brilliant colors to make themselves apparent without the exertion of diving on my part.
    I let the sloshing waves whisk me back and forth, relaxed and at home in this warm, welcoming sea. I feel so strongly that I belong there, that I need to be there, it fills my dreams for days or weeks after a visit. I am resigned to being here, hundreds of miles even from the lousy gulf and a thousand miles from the real thing, but resolve to return to her some day.
    Around again to the windward and then the shear southern face of the rock, with the most dramatic sights of all.
    “Anita must see this, ” I thought and swam back as quickly as I could.
    Even with the canvas Bimini top above her, I could see she was fairly baking and bored.
    It is one thing to be moored off an island in one’s boat — alone with the sea, and quite another to be tied off astern of a much larger one, averting one’s eyes from their luxurious comforts, trying not to think of the clink of silverware and the aromas of a fine lunch.
    And Anita was not feeling well either.
    Her mournful grimace told her tale as I told mine.
    She desired to go, but protested that she dare not. But then a resolve crossed her — a resolve to do something that even I had never done. Something that very few alive today have done. To overcome her fear and boldly go where she had not dared go before.
    After what seemed like an eternity treading water, she finally joined me as we made again for the Indians.
    We retraced my tour of the preceding hour, she as amazed as I had been. We passed by the colonies of Elkhorn, the cave and through the crevice. We passed through a channel slightly deeper than the surrounding shallows on the leeward side. I turned back to watch her as she passed over what seemed to be a very shallow passage. To my surprise, she had two or three feet of clearance!
    I suppose the water was not as shallow as I had thought — perhaps five or even six feet of water separated the tops of the coral colonies from the surface. I looked ahead once more, and carefully reached out to a rock outcropping I had thought was right below me, to my surprise I could not reach it at all. This water was indeed clear!
    The stillness of the surface provided by the sheltering rocks, blocking even the slight wind out of the west made this pool extremely clear and still. Resting there, Anita drifted slowly back and forth with the slowly rolling sea.
    To these fish, this was the world, to endlessly rock back and forth, day and night in calm weather and hurricanes. For them, there is no place to stand, no stillness, no rest even, for there are always hungry predators — but that is surely part of what attracts them to the coral beds in the first place — a predator large enough to eat one of these rainbow parrot fish, for example, could certainly not also pass through these narrow passages.
    Once more I swam around the choppy, windy eastern face. This time carefully guiding Anita behind me. Turning around to the south, I finally presented her with the dramatic cliff faces, purple, green, brown and lavender colonies stretching off into the murky distance as far as we could see.
    Stretching down to the sea bed below us where giant brain coral grew, who knows how far down? The charts put this water at 12-15 fathoms or 70-90 feet. The “Little Indian” rises fifty feet from the level of the sea, the “Big Indian,” 180′.
    It gave me great pleasure to share this experience with Anita, as I had shared so many others. We used to mark each new experience together with a bright: “another first for Andy and Anita.” Often, these would be the first time either of us had done something — gone to Mexico, to Europe, diving, skiing, boating, making love in beautiful and unusual places, how many new experiences had we opened up for one another?
    How many “impossible” things had we made possible for one another?
    Here I was, once more displaying these coral as if I were an experienced guide, when in a way, it was she who had brought me here.
    For what am I by myself? What might I be or have been? But through her, I have become myself, this person I am.
    …
    There in the water, Anita and I gazed in wonder and amazement at the formations and I dove again and again into clouds of blue Chromies — a school of hand-sized fish itself as big as a house.
    I dove and parted them like Moses parting the blue sea, with the dancing sunlight rays — the fingers of God playing his mighty rainbow organ coral reef, this is where my love for Anita has taken me, fool that I am.
    And when I rose for a breath of air, there she was — my wife, my love, my life companion, beaming, and as charged as I was — and she kissed me and she said, “thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for everything!”

    January 20, 1998

  • time is an illusion

    Physicists claim to have observed subatomic particles (neutrinos), which behave as if they travel “backwards” through time. What can this possibly mean? Are we like passengers playing bridge in a train hurtling through the night past another train going in the opposite direction? Why only backwards? Might we be passing over a bridge with another train underneath us, moving in a direction orthogonal to ours? Might there be a bridge game going on in that other train as well?
    With that humbling thought, consider us to be inhabiting a moment — a moment of infinite dimensionality — not merely three dimensional nor even four dimensional (with time as the fourth dimension, but a moment, each moment each timeless, universal moment consisting of energy patterns in infinitely varied forms.
    Physical scientists use mathematical expressions to help them describe the world more precisely than can be done using a natural language like english. (This allows them to explain things they don’t understand.)
    They describe the state of an entity in terms of vectors — arrays of data describing the position in space and energy state of particles, their mass, whether they are in motion relative to one another or some fixed point and if so, in which direction they are moving.
    As a practical matter, it is impossible to completely define the state of an entity, but imagine that you could completely describe, for every molecule in a cup of water, for every atom, for every electron, for every meson, gluon and quark, exactly what it was, where it was, and where it was going.
    If you could, you would have a vector — where each element describes a particle composing the glass of water. Each element would itself be a vector, in turn describing a different feature of the fundamental particle. Such a vector of vectors is called a “tensor.”
    This would be one big, honking complex tensor!
    But wait, another interpretation of a tensor is as a multidimensional space, where each element of the tensor represents a dimension, and each dimension is characterized by the corresponding value or subvector.
    If i had a room with six lightning bugs in it, i might have a vector of six elements. Each element would itself be a vector of three elements, specifying the position of each bug at any instant in time.
    You could think of such a descritption — a tensor field — as either a three-dimensional field of six elements or a six-dimensional field of three elements. Mathematically, they are equivalent.
    It is only at the conceptual level that we humans have a problem interpreting a six-dimensional entity. This is a limitation of our wiring — our brains — not of the world itself.
    In other words, merely because we cannot intuitively grasp a concept does not mean that it fails to accurately describe the world.
    Too often we all fail to preceive the reality around us because it does not “make sense” to us. It does not match our internal representation of the way things are, or the way we think things should be. But when we do this, we are making a mistake. The way things are does not have to match our preconceived notions!
    Our internal models fail to describe the actuality. It is ok. We are like aristotelian scholasitcs of the medieval period — our flat earth at the center of our tiny imagined universe does not begin to describe the world we actually live in, and yet, the earth still spins, even though we doubt her. The idea is to become aware of that fact, and admit that you have no idea what is going on. Don’t go on trying to fit the round peg of the universe into the square hole of your preconceived notions. Nothing good will come of it.
    So. If we could so describe a glass of water perfectly accurately using a very large tensor field, imagine the dimensionality of the glass as the number of elements in the tensor. The number of particles we can so describe. This is a rather large number, perhaps on the order of 10^15
    That is the dimensionality of a glass of water.
    Now imagine describing the entire universe this way. How big a tensor would we need? How many dimensions are required merely to describe the portion of the universe we know about? How much more remains unknown to us?
    See what I mean about humbling?
    And yet, imagine if we could define such a tensor field and so completely define a moment. How many different moments have there been, or will there yet be? How many moments might there yet be, which will never come to pass? How many others might there have been, which to us, never were?
    Our normal conscious mode of thought is very good for establishing cause and effect rationales, and has so far been an important factor in our continued survival. So far, I say.
    We can only focus on one thing at a time, and yet, we can sometimes intuitively grasp it all in an instant, in one moment. One moment of time. Time. What is it?

  • St. John's, USVI

    We got in last night about midnight. The ferry across from St Thomas was plain and simple. We observed many of the local people who sometimes sat taciturn and vacant or idly chatting like anyone on their daily commute — as if it were any bus or subway. Intermingled with these locals — jet black of skin — and speaking a melodic creole only partially comprehensible — sat others sharing this ride across moonlit waters between Red Hook, St. Thomas and Cruz Bay, St. John at 11 pm. a few others like us, lucky tourists, just coming in from the airport to our villas or resorts.
    Looking out through the Plexiglas window slid back halfway — a rhombus bisected vertically into two asymmetrical trapezoids — through which could be seen mellow humps I later learned were called Great St. James and Little St. James Islands, Dog Island and other small uninhabited extrusions from the winedark sea, the surface of which was, at this time, bespectacled with an infinite shimmering of the moonlight.
    The moonbeams threaded their way between these as yet nameless islands and cays through the limitless expanse of space from the moon hung in the inky sky, across the rippling water, reflecting as if by chance to our admiring eyes.
    This led me to ask Anita if she believed in fate. “If you mean whatever it was that brought us together — then you bet I do. ” was her answer. It was a series of events which would have been difficult to believe had we been told by a fortune teller when we were both fourteen how and where we would meet.
    I even wrote a song about it. Of course it had to be a country song, when a verse like this actually describes how you met:
    “…then one day in Dallas, I met a young lady, with love in her eyes and stars in her hair, I’ll never forget what I felt when I saw her, what I said to myself when we met way down there”
    But let me leave that story for another time. What I meant included that, but also much, much more. Our destinies are all complex and deep and in the fathoming — humbling. The question of fate is really tied up with another — the question of time. What is time? Where is it? Where does it go?
    Our lives are so short, and eternity so long, how can we “not be” for practically all of it, and “be” just for a mere instant?
    And all we are and do — all our actions, their consequences, our loves and accomplishments are like the dance of a lightning bug all of whose cares and passions span no more than a summer’s lingering gloaming.
    And yet, and yet. Our consciousness can grasp the infinite — can span time — and I believe, can get glimpses of a world outside of time. So, what is it? Where does time go when it’s gone? Where are our old friends, and our yesterdays? And more to the point, where does it come from? Where are the moments yet to be?
    …
    Some people think there is very little we cannot understand, with sufficient abstraction, with appropriate frameworks. In contrast I believe that the universe is so vast and unfathomable that we are capable of only grasping a fraction of it — in proportion as our lives’ duration is to eternity — so our comprehension is to reality.
    …
    And yet, and yet. Imagine if we could completely describe the world, somehow. If we could completely define even just one single moment. How many different moments have there been, or will there yet be? How many moments might there yet be, which will never come to pass? How many others might there have been, but which for us, never were?
    …
    But for us, there is only one moment. This one. The eternal moment, that is, is here, is here now. There is only one. Yet the moment in which you read these words will be different from the one in which I write them.
    This is for me the mystery of time. How can there be only one eternally present moment in time, and yet many different instants?
    I say that this is merely a limitation of our conceptual apparatus. that is, we are built to see the world a certain way, and we can only rarely, as if in our peripheral vision, get a glimpse of another mode of perception. Sometimes great thinkers come along and change our view of the world permanently, adding to our vocabulary and providing the rest of us as rational beings with the tools to understand the world in a new way.
    …
    But there is not a culture in the history of the planet, not an individual, who has never had the feeling that there is more — much more going on than we can grasp. Yet we doubt our intuition, especially in this rational era, as unconventional, “unscientific.”
    Like the cave man’s wife said to her husband: “Gor! Stop playing around with that flint and go out hunting like the rest of the cavemen!”
    Conventional thinking is usually right. That is why we have conventions. And by the same token, unconventional people are usually wrong. But thankfully, they are not always wrong, or we would never get anywhere.
    And so fate is our path through this enormous space of possible moments, perceptions of which make up our sense of reality, of what is, and what might be. It is our consciousness which travels along this path and in some sense all of our choices, past, present and future — lie out there in potentiality. Yet our consciousness only perceives one. This one, this one moment.
    It is as if we are looking at the world, its vistas and panoramas, through a cardboard tube. We can only see a tiny fraction of its entirety and as we turn our heads, we see the next portion and the next, each one adjacent to the last.
    Yet as we traverse the horizon, say, we miss the stars in the sky, and as we look at the stars, we miss those stars in our lover’s eye.
    So it was written in the stars that Anita and I should meet in Dallas. And has this moonlight has been waiting for all eternity to twinkle in our eyes just now?
    Does it not yet wait for us to return? Are we not still there, even now, making way through the warm, black and sparkling Caribbean water?

  • Fredericksburg Christmas

    This Christmas we had a fine time. I routinely stuck to my tradition of not putting up the outside lights until at least the fifteenth of december, but monica stopped me short with a question: dad: do you like Christmas?
    I must admit privately that I am ambivalent somewhat. it’s mostly a commercial phenomenon, and an exercise in ownership and consumerism on the part of our children. its like we’re indoctrinating them in to this world of ours, but we’re just being manipulated, having viruses planted into our brains from the advertisements on televeision and radio, constantly, incessantly. its maddening, really, and what it does to us and our kids, how can we in good conscience allow it?
    but i do love Christmas, what it represents, and what it evokes. I feel it in my heart as deeply as anyone. deeper maybe.
    this season, we have a few guests. its nice,. my brother BJ and his family came up on Christmas day. unfortunately, my nephew John had to be brought up by his ear. I understand, but what’s he supposed to do with his sister and two female cousins? I suppose one might imagine something for him to do?
    what we did, though was interesting. at Pam’s suggestion, we went out to fredricksburg for a day.
    where she had heard that it was a cool place to check out. I don’t know, but I think I know a little better than whoever told her. but as usual, we husbands just went along for the ride. I am reminded of samuel adams (*brewer, patriot) who said that if we do not oppose it we merely encourage it. hmmm words to live by.
    anyway, there we were on a ride to Abilene, er, I mean Fredricksburg.. and the place we got — at Anita’s researching, we learned was called “Rocky Top”. yikes. a toothless farm lady met us as we arrived, and moved into a camper, while we moved into her house at Christmastime, mind you, for 200 bucks a night. I don’t know what to think.
    I’ll never forget Pam’s expression as she turned to me and said what are we doing here?
    we sat in their living room, slept in their beds, while they slept in the camper out back in the freezing cold.
    of course it was nothing like we had expected.
    the idea was to have a rustic homestead feeling and a neat day trip out to the cool spots on top of enchanted rock.
    Pam also complained about the really poor literature from the state park people. I found a few interesting pieces on the web. how the legend is told of human sacrifices, and how native americans and their defenders say that that is just a canard. who knows? eh? some bad things were done, that is sure. but by whom and what, is less clear.
    i plugged in trusty old dell, and found that enchanted rock is a power place, revered by native americans of the southwest for centuries, or more.
    we went out there for the afternoon. it was an interesting trip. in fact the entire experience was so totally disconnected and so totally lowe-zone, that I can’t do it appriporiate justice in words.
    but let me say this: the first thing that happened (after I missed the entrance, and found I had to pull over to make a u-turn, I looked back to make sure BJ was behind me and I discovered that not only was BJ behind me but two other cars ful of tourists were behind him. we had all missed the entrance. I suppose they were following me? anyway, as I made my u-turn, It turns out that one of BJ’s followers decided to cut him off, and turn around before him, so we were now separated by one car at the entrance.
    ok, not too challenging, right? but we got in and prmptly took a wrong turn. this was ok, so far, we knew what had happened, and stopped and turned around waiting for BJ. first the car behind us, the rude u-turner, appeared, and proceeded, then BJ, barelling past us and of course he didn’t see us. uh oh, let’s go after him, I said.
    and we did. we came to another fork in the road and Bej took the wrong turn again, well you could say this was a judgement call, maybe not the wrong turn, but he was looking for us, and we weren’t where he was looking, the irony of course being that we could see him, and we weren’t lost! but in the fullness of time he exhausted his possibilities, made a u-ey and eventually found us. we proceeded to the launch point.
    we opened the car doors. so far so good. at this point John jumps out and high tails it up the side of the rock. hmm..
    Anita says this place is pretty big, we may not see him again for a while.
    BJ takes off after him.
    I didn’t see BJ again until it was time to leave. I met John briefly at the top of the rock, which is an easy climb, and not extremely interesting unless you know what to look for.
    now of course we had forgotten our flashlights, but we did find our way over to the famous caves. the caves are not on the map, but they’re interesting nonetheless. this weekend, there were plenty of people. way too many people, if you ask me, but it was kind of fun to take my kids over there and let them have a little experience of fun and exitement while we crept into the cave as far as we could see without flashlights and have a little feeling of adventure.
    I can never get enough of that little kid stuff.
    the true experience of living, I think is that innocent feeling of adventure, where there is enough danger to make your heart race a little, to let you know that you’re still alive, but not too much that you can’t handle.

  • friday in frisco

    Sun Aug 3, 1997
    One of the reasons I want to keep a journal is because I’ve already forgotten what we did the night before last.
    I remember now.
    Before Saturday came Friday. And Friday evening I remember as being dreamlike. Actually, Friday was a perfect day all the way around.
    We went back down to Frisco, which, I think, the consensus is we like Frisco a lot. The southern exposure on Hatteras Island really makes a difference. The water quality was perfect. The water was clear and clean and the waves were not extremely big, but very well-formed. The shape was good and it was just right where everybody could go in and enjoy the water and even the big kids could surf and the little kids could play in the waves and grandma could go for a dip, and who could ask for more from a beach? We got there about noon, and the tide was just coming in a little bit and when we all arrived it was pretty dramatic because it was a big gang. We had almost fifteen Lowes, and a few of John’s other friends and some of their parents, and the whole group approached 20. Quite a big crowd. But we had a real blast. We tried to stay in the water and make it last as long as we could, that beach was so fine and we all had that sense of the impending end of our holiday, being the last full day and a perfect, beautiful sunny day it was and after having had a couple of cloudy days, we really, really savored this one.
    And I remember high tailing it back to BJ’s place in Buxton which, from the layout and the look of it was very reminiscent of several places we had taken on the Texas gulf coast, it even kind of looked like one place that we kept returning to, in a way, except it didn’t have a direct view of the water from the living area, there was this kind of a half baked rig outside that was tacked on to the front of a regular conventional Cape Cod house from another generation with whatever the hell it was. Perhaps they didn’t have the same priorities as we did, they preferred to be sheltered from the storm. Maybe they were seamen, who would just as soon turn their backs on the old girl from time to time and hunker down for a good night’s sleep on dry land. But then someone came along and decided to tack this deck onto it, because it was more important, perhaps, to take advantage of an exceptional view, and with a narrow little spiral staircase, it takes you up to this little crow’s nest where you can see the water.
    But when we got back there there was a veritable feeding frenzy. Pam was a little bit ahead of everyone, as usual, and she stoked the fires by dishing out the hamburgers. I guess partially at least, thinking the way we do, with this the last day let’s eat up this food before we have to throw it out. And so she cooked up, oh, I don’t know, a couple of pounds of hamburger meat, and by the time we got there we were starving, because we had been at the beach all day, as long as we could stand it, and didn’t have any picnic lunches or anything like that. In a way, my favorite way to enjoy the beach, just with as few accouterments as possible. But anyway, the net effect is that we were hungry and thirsty and came in and all fifteen of us were ferociously devouring those burgers which Pam was shoveling out as fast as she could, everyone was making something with one hand and eating something else with the other, reaching for the beers and totally enjoying ourselves, really.
    Once we’d sated our hunger, we wandered outside. Some of us headed down to the beach.
    Now the sun was just going down at this point and Anita and Mom and I went and sat up in the crow’s nest and enjoyed the perfect golden, suffusing glow of the sun going down behind us in the west. Highlighting the yellow sand of the dune in front of us and the sea oats waving in the slight breeze with the backdrop of the beautiful blue Atlantic and the blue sky and the beach sounds, huh. Put that one in a bottle.
    So as the sun went down a little bit further, we descended from the crow’s nest, Mom, Anita and I, and Mom stayed behind as Anita and I went over the dunes and down to the beach where the kids were playing and it was another, another picture, I guess, we were just full of strong feelings because it was our last day, but again the light was just right and the salt air and the white sand beaches, our whole family there together like that, it just made me feel like a kid again.
    And it brought home all those memories of when we were kids, and you know how our parents loved the beach so much, coming from their little apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan, just to have a home and to have that home, and to have a family, they could pat themselves on the back a little bit and it was the 60’s after the war and the depression and they’d finally made it, finally made it to their little slice of heaven. And that feeling that they had somehow communicated itself to us, their kids, because there was, at the beach, there’s always been a place to come home to for us. The beach has been our home. Its where we come to get healed, as a family and as individuals. It’s harder to communicate that feeling to someone else who didn’t live it. I know my brothers and some of my cousins will pick it up, but others, it sometimes seems, just don’t get it.
    So Anita and I climbed over the hill, down to the beach where the kids were playing, some kids from the neighboring houses were playing football, and BJ and I picked up a lackluster game of catch with them, which got a lot more interesting once someone suggested playing keep away. The grown ups against the kids. That spiced things up a lot. And as we lofted spirals back and forth to one another, me and BJ, Anita and Pam, with the kids racing up and down the beach and a couple of bonfires lighting up fore and aft, the sun gone now, just a memory, like the childhood we’re chasing down that highway, rising up inside us like the waves beating the beach down, pounding, roaring, sea spray blown back by the wind, phosphorescent in the sleepy evening drawn down reluctantly like a kid who doesn’t want to go to bed even though he knows he’s exhausted.
    And after swimming all day and feasting frantically and a full week of intense Lowe-ness, with my father’s drunk spirit giving us our benediction, we still had energy to run up and down the beach tossing the football and holding our own against a couple of eleven year olds.
    But digging down deep, at the bottom, we found what we were looking for, there on the beach. There was no difference between grown ups and kids, husbands, and wives, we were all — family and strangers — like people all in love with the same beautiful person, who had been gone for a long time, now she was here and we all finally have her whole attention, and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Yes, this was it. This was what we were all looking for.

  • A Birthday in Seattle

    You might say that my first few nights here in Seattle were less than auspicious. I arrived on Thursday and right out of the gate I took a wrong turn and wound up on 5 north instead of 405. “I’d sniff it out”, I thought to console myself in my stupidity. Route 5 goes through downtown Seattle, so I thought I’d see what was what.. it turned out I had arrived late, so fortunately the traffic wasn’t so bad. Then I saw the sign for 520 — I knew that was good, so I took it. It turns out that the 520 bridge from seattle to the east side goes over this pontoon bridge over Lake Washington, believe it or not, and the view was nothing less than spectacular — the lights twinkling on the fresh water. Ok, so I found my hotel.
    My first day at work was quite a disappointment. This dinky little room with five people in it, utterly hopeless. They’ve been promising us a very nice office suite for a month now. It’s hung up with the lawyer in New York. Previously, it had been the subject of lengthy debate at the VP level (none of whom would actually occupy the office). They were arguing over whether to get class ‘A’ or class ‘B’ office space — i.e. fancy sales-oriented prestigous offices for the two marketing geeks who are never here anyway or modified warehouse space for those of us who do the real work. Meanwhile, this is what we have to deal with.
    “Bunch of losers” I thought, observing my staff, and thinking of my friend Vijay, who once commented on some of my less impressive PSW colleagues: “where do you find these jokers?” So to kick things off, I decided to have a meeting and make sure we were all on the same page. I drew a schematic of my understanding of the architecture and put names down where I knew everyone was working. I made the observation that this guy John’s name did not appear anywhere. So I made the suggestion that he take over the user interface. Everyone gasped. “Bad sign” I said to myself.
    Ok, the day ended and I went back to my hotel. But first I bought a 750ml of Johnny Walker. I always say to myself “the book that johnny walker read,” thinking of Pam when I buy the red. I took it back to my room. I would normally have bought some beer, but that is always cumbersome and problematic in a hotel room with no fridge, and all those empties,…so unsightly.
    After a few drinks, I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to find the scene here to see what was going on. I remembered that there seemed to be something happening down by the piers, Pier 59 or something like that rung a bell, so I headed that way. Seattle really is a beautiful town. I took a few wrong turns, but it was a little adventure. I already missed Anita and the kids, but this wasn’t too bad. It was kind of fun.
    By the time I got to Pier 59 or whatever, everything was closed down, but I noticed that there was a crowd of cars trying to park down by Pier 70. “What’s going on here?” I thought. So I parked illegally in the Spagetti Warehouse parking lot (“who’s going to be eating spagetti at 11:00?” I thought), locked my car and put my wallet in my front pocket and went out to see what was happening. It turned out to be a club out at the end of the pier, some kind of disco, and there was a short line out front. I got in line between two cute little black girls, one kind of light skinned with reddish hair and a nose ring shivered in the cold night. I offered her my coat while we waited. “No thanks, sweetie” she said, and smiled. Perfectly charming. When I got to the front of the line I was met by three off duty policemen who said I had to be frisked in order to get in. “Is that really necessary?” I asked. “I’m afraid so,” said a really beefy one. They left no crevice untouched. “Bad sign” I said to myself.
    Well, it was pretty much what you’d expect from a disco frequented by the black population of Seattle and a few whites out for a night of slumming. It wasn’t really a slum, with great windows and a deck overlooking Puget Sound with ever more twinkling lights, this time over the sound. I had a few beers, grooved on the good music and observed some pretty fantastic dancing. It was a really hopping place. As might be expected, a little rap got injected, and the parts I could understand, I didn’t like too much. But I had a pretty good time considering I was there by myself.
    After a while, I decided to go out for a little air. By this time it might have been 12:30. The line stretched around the block. The place had reached capactity and people were waiting just hoping someone would leave so they could let one of them in. “This is one popular place” I thought. “Do I have to get back in that line if I want to get back in?” I asked the beefy cop. “I’m afraid so.” he reiterated. “Laconic guy” I thought.
    I had had enough rap and hip hop for one night, so I boogied anyway. I got back in my car and cruised around town a little more. Then I stumbled on a really cool area lit by pseudo-gaslights and paved with brick and musicians and street people and college kids all out having a good time. A horse-drawn cab waited outside a tavern blasting some pretty good blues. The streets had names like State St. and Main St. and First St. It must have been the old downtown. It was also quite vibrant, althought the live music was somewhat inferior to Austin’s, except for one totally outstanding jazz/blues fusion group playing in an old bar, I mean really old, with fantastic carved oak work all over from the old days. There was only one thing wrong — there was practically noone there. This was probably the best band playing in the whole area (I had parked and walked up and down the drag, listening, so I knew), but the place was almost empty. It was kind of pitiful. But they were really putting the stuff out. The beat was fat and they had a really fantastic sax player. The band was all black, but none of the customers were.
    I called for a beer. “What kind?” said the bartender, pointing to a menu with probably fifty different varieties. Give me a local brew, I said. “We have about a dozen” he said. “Give me a good one” I said. He did. I didn’t bother to ask what kind.
    I digged the music and observed some pretty ugly girls dancing, but admired their enthusiasm, and eventually we closed that place down.
    I got back in my car and made my way back to route 520 (after a few more wrong turns). And back I went over the pontoon bridge. I mistakenly got off at 82nd Av. rather than 108th, which was my exit. The street naming conventions over here on the East Side, as they call it, are completely insane — but that’s another story. I discovered my mistake after a few blocks down the wrong street. By this time I was getting pretty turned around, so I got back to 520 and made another mistake, this time going back the wrong way toward the bridge. By the time I figured this out, I noticed the blue and red lights flashing in my mirror. It was well after 2:00 by now. “Oh shit.” I said.
    The officer came up and I asked him what I had done wrong. He was just a kid, maybe 22. “A puppy” I thought. “You were doing 39 in a 25 zone back there.” I’m sorry sir, I said in my most polite voice. I’m from out of town and,… “have you had anything to drink tonight?” he asked. Well, you may be able to guess what I was thinking — it had been a long night — “Oh Jesus,” I thought.
    Would you mind stepping out of the car? He asked. “No, no, no!” I thought. I got out, and he gave me the field sobriety test. Of course it was very late and I know I was driving carefully, I was just a little tired and turned around in an unfamiliar town. Maybe I was a little frustrated for taking so many wrong turns, so I hung the huey a little faster than I should, and evidently made another, bigger mistake.
    My mind raced.
    Well, I think I did ok on the field sobriety test, but there seemed to be a bit of a difference of opinion on that, and he asked me if I would take a breathalizer. “Totally optional” he said. I thought about it and said I’d prefer not to.
    “At this point, you are under arrest for DUI.” he said. My heart jumped out of my chest. “Oh Jesus Christ, not that,” I thought. What am I going to say — to Anita, to everybody? How the fuck am I going to get out of this? Should I ask for a lawyer? What the hell am I going to do? No one even knows me here. Who’s going to pick me up? “Put your hands on the car.” He handcuffed me very gingerly. “I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “How very nice of you,” I thought.
    Well, there I was, handcuffed in the back seat of this puppy-officer-fuckhead’s car explaining to him my story and that I was just a little turned around, and…
    At this point he offered me another chance at the breathalizer. I figured, what do I have to lose now? So I took it. Another first for Andy. I read .05 — not even close. I guess it had been over eight hours since my first drink, after all, and I hadn’t really had that much. I really was just tired and turned around. What do you think about that?
    So he let me go without even the speeding ticket. “It’s just like Dominus vobiscum,” he said, making the sign of the cross on me. “Dominus nabisco,” I thought. How perfect. Bless me you fuckhead for you have almost ruined my life, or some nontrivial portion of it. He gave me directions back to my hotel and that was that.
    When I got back, I got down on my knees and thanked God. You’d better believe it. It’s not much of a hotel, but it’s better than a Seattle jail, I’m pretty sure. You betcha.
    7/29/96