It’s Sunday, Easter Day, and I’m on the No. 1 subway train, the 7^th Avenue line, under New York City.

I think we were somewhere near the 168^th street station, near Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, when this young man came striding in carrying a small platform along with two big conga drums. He settled down diagonally across from me, right against the doors that open only at Express stops, unfolded the small platform into a seat, and sat down.

He greeted everyone in the subway car: Dominican parents with two little girls, a college student buried in her book, a man buried in a shaggy beard, another talking on his phone, all cultures, hues, and ages, a typical NYC subway crowd (when I lived in New York, I loved the subways). He wished everyone a Happy Easter, and for those who don’t celebrate Easter, joy and happiness in whatever they celebrate. Then he shut his eyes and began to drum.

I didn’t take my eyes off him. He bent his head low over the conga dreams, listening to an internal beat that may or may not have had any connection to the rhythms he was producing on the drums. The train whizzed by, shadows and lights appearing in the doors behind him. He drummed on and on, oblivious to the fact that the door he was sitting against was going to open at the next express stop and New Yorkers would rush into the train.

But the train slowed down and came to a stop—work on the tracks, the woman conductor said—so he sat there undisturbed, bringing us his very own Easter message.

I inhaled New York. The beat of the conga drums, the two girls in front of me begging for their father’s attention, sneakers of all colors on the floor, a large group of boys tramping down the car, heads buried in hoodies, everyone in their private world and still aware of the young man drumming aloud, maybe waiting for him to stop and ask for money.

But he didn’t stop, just went on drumming, as if he’d forgotten the purpose of playing on the train.

“I’m bringing you the sound of Easter,” he told us when he finally stopped.

I felt deep gratitude towards him. I often have trouble relating to ceremonies others share, the way in which everyone celebrates. Not for me the Passover Seder, with its special metaphorical foods and discussions of what freedom means. Freedom is deep and personal for me, very private and intimate. And not for me the Easter services—Tenebrae on Thursday evening, the fasting and dolorous silence of Good Friday, the anticipatory quiet of the intermediate Saturday culminating with lights and joy on Saturday night, and finally Sunday, with its mounds of song and flowers.

I prefer the more personal messages, the young man bent low over conga drums, making music out of his own heartbeats while I eavesdrop, trying to make out the brave new world he’s hearing and expressing.

I dropped ten dollars when he passed with his bucket; I don’t think he even noticed. The two Dominican girls approached him with big smiles on their faces, both with buck teeth hanging over their lower lips, each holding a quarter for him. He nodded and said thank you.

I came down to New York to meet up with friends, old friends. Also, to leave Bernie’s ashes on the grounds of Greyston. I will write more about that tomorrow. But I can’t forget that the visit started with the Easter and Passover message of conga drums reaching out to me from a very distant world, reminding me that the membranes separating us are as thin as could be.

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We were at Spare Time Bowling, in Northampton, when I overheard Bernie’s daughter, Alisa, say to her son, Milo: “You know the times of Easter and Passover? We do a Seder at Passover and also go for service at the Meetinghouse on Easter, right? It’s like people make special time for God. They pray, they meditate, they celebrate freedom. Do you know what your Grandpa Bernie used to do? Your Grandpa Bernie liked to go on the streets. That’s where he went to find God.”

He began to go on the streets in 1991, and especially loved to live on New York City streets during Holy Week. It was often still cold in New York, especially at night (I remember one retreat when it snowed during the day).

I did a few of these with him so I remember the procedures. We always spent the first night in Central Park, the entire group together. A cold mist gathered one year, and I remember lying on a flattened carton (we all got good at gathering cardboard flats), my head enveloped by mist. I had just moved, was exhausted, and slept like a baby in that wet fog even as others walked around, wide awake due to the chill. They woke me up at 4 and said, “Let’s get going.”

“Why?” I complained.

“If we don’t walk, we’ll freeze,” was the answer.

I got up to my feet and discovered that the night air was clear and cold, while the mist was low on the ground. I had a wet film on my face and my hair was sopping wet.

We’d walk and walk, collapsing often on benches at the old Thompson Square Park in Lower Manhattan. We talked to street folks, getting info about where to stay dry, warm, and avoiding the police, and begged for coffee. The police were all over train stations, especially Penn Station, rousting everyone who didn’t have a ticket.

We also fell asleep on subway cars, only we had to beg for money to get through the turnstile. I don’t recall any of us jumping over the turnstile, but that may have happened.

Some people found it gimmicky; at first, I was very skeptical. Eventually I got accustomed to putting a sweater and extra pair of socks in my backpack, a hat, a small umbrella, a roll of toilet paper, and going with him. In addition to taking these items, Bernie would add a staff (it was 10 miles of walking from Yonkers to Central Park) and, of course, a cigar, which he would smoke in dribs and drabs throughout our days together.

He would sprawl on one of the benches, lighting up, and survey Thompson Square Park like it was his personal kingdom. Now that I think of it, you could have put him in a zendo, one of Donald Trump’s mega apartments, or on a bench on the streets and he seemed equally comfortable. But he was happiest on the street.

He loved the freedom from clocks and appointments (none of us could wear a watch or carry a phone), the lack of structure, the pragmatic concerns of where to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom; he seemed to feel freest in those times.

We would do a Buddhist liturgy, The Gate of Sweet Nectar, in which we would vow to feed all the hungry ghosts, and he loved scrounging around for two pieces of metal which he could clang together to evoke the sound of bells, or a small branch to knock against the wooden bench for the sound of drums. We would make a lot of noise and chant: Now I have raised the Bodhi Mind. The mind of enlightenment, the mind of compassion.

You might snicker and say, “Tell that to the really homeless people living on the streets with no home to go back to at the end of five days,” and you’d be absolutely right, that’s a very different case entirely. You could stand on the side and shake your head, say this is silly, even frivolous. I can speak only for myself and share a little of my sense of how Bernie experienced it.

He experienced going on the streets as freedom. He experienced it as generosity, the generosity of the streets. “All the Buddha’s riches are at our feet,” he told me over and over. Sometimes it wasn’t the riches you were used to, so he could improvise with rocks or twigs to take the place of bells and drums, and he knew how to darn that brown samue jacket he liked to wear.

He knew how to talk to street people, hanging out on the benches under the sunlight as though that was his usual life, not days full of office appointments and concerns about projects and budgets. He more than any of us, grizzled and walking with some trouble, looked like he’d lived there all his life.

He had bad knees for many years and few people understood how much they hurt him in those retreats, especially when there was rain (and there always seemed to be rain), how he’d come home limping, take ibuprofen, need to rest. It didn’t deter him from going out again and again, till he finally couldn’t.

But even then, when life got too much, when he felt weighed down by the complexities of running things or when our own relationships wasn’t going well, he’d warn me: “One day I’m going to go on the streets and never come back!”

And I’d say, “Okay, just don’t forget to take that 50-inch TV screen you insisted on with you.”

He’d mutter something, yell for Stanley the dog, and together the two would go into the car for a ride, Bernie lighting up his cigar. And that would be the end of it.

 

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“Grrrr. Grrrr. Grrrr!”

“Grrr all you want, Aussie, I’m not taking off that muzzle.”

“Grrr! Grrr! Grrrr!”

“It’s either that or a gag order, but I think that in your case, Aussie, a muzzle works better.”

“Grrrr! Grrrr! Grrrr!”

“I’ll take it off on one condition, Auss. No talk about the arraignment of Donald Trump. Promise?”

“F#**+**# son of a b***%%!”

“Aussie, you promised!”

“In cases of grave misjustice and all-around bullshit, promises don’t mean shit. What promise would you make Adolf Hitler?”

“Are you comparing me to Adolf Hitler, Aussie?”

“No, but that f***ing DA has his moustache.”

“Alvin Bragg’s moustache does not resemble Hitler’s moustache at all, Auss.”

“Would you trust a lawyer whose last name is Bragg and not Schwartz?”

“I don’t trust anybody or anything here, Aussie, and especially not the media.”

“Of course, you can’t trust the media, the Man’s been saying that all the time.”

“I don’t want to hear one more word about it, Aussie. The world has so much more to consider than Donald Trump’s hush payments to a porn star. Ukraine is burning. Somalia is starving. France’s retirement page is zooming up to 64, Rupert Murdoch just canceled his 5^th wedding, and we have to talk about Donald Trump?”

“He’s never had a lucky break in his life! He’s been maligned, mocked, persecuted, and cheated of another term in office. Could you write him a check for his legal fees? He needs money badly.”

“I’m not giving him a penny, Aussie.”

“Don’t you tithe?”

“Aussie, I don’t want to talk about Donald Trump going to trial. It’s a media circus, is what it is.”

“I love circuses!”

“I especially get angry at newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post. They write articles about how so much of this is media hyperbole, but they’re no different from all the rest, like a band of hypocritical hyenas laughing all the way to the bank.”

“What’s so funny about going to the bank?”

“Aussie, nobody in this house is going to pay the slightest bit of attention to Trump’s arraignment and trial, including you. They want our attention and they’re not getting it.”

“Is she crunchy?”

“Who?”

“Stormy Daniels.”

“Why should Stormy Daniels be crunchy, Aussie?”

“Because she’s a corn star.”

“Porn, Aussie, not corn.”

“What’s porn?”

“Porn is when you do something to turn somebody on to make money.”

“And that’s bad?”

“I don’t think it’s bad. I don’t even care that he paid her off, it’s how he did it, Auss. That’s what they’re going to determine in trial.”

“He probably paid her off with Pup-peroni Beef Flavor Liver Treats.”

“I doubt it, Aussie.”

“Organic Yummy Turkey Tendons? Munchy Pork Chomps? I know, I know. Dingo Munchy Stix. Even I would shut up for Dingo Munchy Stix.”

“It wasn’t Dingo Munchy Stix, Auss.”

“So what did he give her?”

“Money, Aussie.”

“Money? She shut up for money? Pourquoi?”

“How should I know, Auss?”

“She must have been really hungry to settle for money. Money doesn’t have much protein, you know.”

“That’s not the point, Aussie. The question is, how he accounted for the money he used to pay her off.”

“You could order Dingo Munchy Stix on Amazon, get it in two days, and no one’s the wiser.”

“Aussie, I’m sick and tired of all the sleaze, including our sleazy media. I’m putting a gag order on you and Henry. No talking, barking, growling, or any expression at all, pro or con, about Donald Trump. I’m blocking all the articles about this. I don’t want them to make a penny out of us, see? Where are you going, Aussie?”

“Down to New York. I love a good stink, as you well know.”

“Just don’t roll in it, Aussie. It’s getting harder and harder to get the smell out.”

 

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“I’m really good at bowling, Grandma Eve, you’ll see.”

We’re at Spare Time Bowling, Northampton’s bowling alley—me, Alisa, and Milo. Milo is not my real grandson but rather Bernie’s, which makes his name for me that much more endearing.

It’s early Monday afternoon. The bowling alley, with some 32 lanes, has three occupied. By the time we play our final game we’ll be the only ones there. The food court is closed, so no White Russians.

Inside, I’m quiet. Can’t help it. This is where Bernie and I used to go bowling. He loved it. I would enjoy it for some 30-40 minutes, then get bored losing to him bigly. After a while I didn’t want to go bowling at all, whereas he would have gone bowling at least once a week.

So here is another opportunity for me to feel bad about the things I didn’t do with him or for him. Didn’t go out to dinner as much as he wanted us to, wasn’t ready to talk about work as much as he wanted us to, wasn’t ready to travel as much as he wanted us to. Didn’t go bowling as much as he wanted us to.

Nothing like death to help you look back and remember all the things you said no to.

I looked back a lot after he died, now not so much. But every once in a while, something from the past reappears—a person, a place, a story—and regrets start coming up, though they don’t last long. I spotted the lane where we used to bowl (it was at the other end) and contemplated the heavy orange bowling balls that he favored and that I could barely hold.

“Do you have any regrets?” a friend asked me a short while ago.

“Who doesn’t?”

“What’s yours?”

“The line goes out the door,” I said.

“Such as?”

“In the mid-1990s we did a benefit for Greyston in a fancy Manhattan apartment. I coordinated it and it wasn’t a great success, simply not enough potential donors at the dinner. At some point Allen Ginsberg came in. He addressed the group in that meandering, Ginsbergian way he had and told them to shell out money for Greyston. At the end of the evening, he whispered to Bernie and Bernie called me over (we weren’t married at the time).

“‘Eve,’ Bernie says, ‘Allen has two tickets for the 11 pm Picasso show at the Museum of Modern Art tonight. He wonders if you want to go with him.’

“The Picasso show at MOMA was the biggest thing that season. Tickets for the entire show were sold out months in advance and the night before the opening MOMA held a special late-night viewing for certain VIP members, and Allen was one.

“Did I go?” I tell my friend. “Not for a second. All I could think of was the long drive home.”

“’You said no to going with Allen Ginsberg, the poet, to the Picasso show at MOMA?’”

“Guilty as charged.”

She shook her head. Clearly my reputation had taken a triple backwards dive in her eyes.

Ginsberg and Picasso at MOMA. This afternoon I was sorry I hadn’t gone to Spare Time Bowling in Northampton more often with Bernie. But towards the end of our last game, Milo turned around and said, “I think we’re the only ones here.”

“We’re bowling so well that everybody ran for the hills,” I told him. I’d just gotten three pins down.

“One guy’s still here,” Alisa said.

“Where?”

“He’s sitting in that seat right there,” she said, pointing to one of our seats. “Wears a Hawaiian shirt and suspenders, and smokes a cigar. When Grandma Eve just finished her turn, he said: ‘Call that bowling?’”

 

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I’m getting company. Alisa, Bernie’s daughter, along with her son, Milo, are here for a number of days. I don’t usually have family near me, so when somebody comes it’s a big, big deal and has priority over everything, including this blog. We’ll spend these days doing different things, outdoors and in. I look forward to hanging out with both of them, traveling around, eating out, watching movies.

First, this morning I read that the Vatican finally rescinded its Doctrine of Discovery. That doctrine was comprised of papal bulls that, for almost 600 years, authorized Catholic kings to take over any lands owned by “pagans and infidels” and take ownership of the people living on those lands for the benefit of their souls. It had been invoked by the kings of Spain and Portugal as justification for their conquests in Latin America and, believe it or not, was incorporated into American jurisprudence in the early 19^th century.

The article appeared lower down on page 1 of The Washington Post, way under the immense, giant-size font headline: Trump Indicted. Sorry, Post, you got this one completely wrong. Trump Indicted is common and tawdry, designed to inflame as many people as possible. The rescinding of a religious doctrine that justified enslavement, murder, plunder, and illegal appropriation of land not theirs—all in the name of God—is way bigger news. It is unbelievable and terribly unfortunate that it took more than half a millennium—long after slavery was made illegal—for the Vatican to finally take this back.

I first heard of this doctrine from the Native American scholar Steve Newcomb, who gave a very moving talk about this some 8 years ago at our 2015 retreat at the Black Hills. He also talked about this when he participated at our retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau and was among the delegation of Native Americans who visited the Vatican to plead the case against the doctrine.

The recalcitrance of the Vatican in refusing to admit the consequences of that doctrine—the millions of indigenous people who lost their lives and lands in this hemisphere—was painful to hear in Poland, reminding me of the many who still deny the Holocaust ever happened.

If we don’t come face-to-face with the results of our past actions, what hope is there for the present? For the future?

There is nothing accidental about this announcement being made just days after the terrible fire that caused the death of 39 migrants in a migrant center in Mexico close to our border. By all accounts, they were left to die. No one ran in after them even as they screamed and shrieked for help.

I’m reminded of something VS Naipaul, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, is reputed to have said about Third World immigrants making every effort to come to Western lands, to the effect of: “They wouldn’t be coming here if you hadn’t gone there first.”

He was reminding us of the effects of colonialism even after the death of Empire, when Western values continue to supersede traditional cultures, when Western-style institutions continue to be built on non-Western soil, when success and failure are judged according to Western criteria.

Leaving one country for another is not just geographical displacement, it’s also an internal one. The host language is not yours, the host culture is not yours, their family values are not yours. You try to integrate your children into American society while making sure they remember where they come from, but there’s a nagging feeling inside that something is lost.

In talking with Jimena, my contact with the immigrant community here, about her family, she’ll mention a situation involving her sons in which she puts down her foot and says: “In this family we don’t do those things.”

No-man’s land doesn’t just lie between borders, it can lie in people’s souls, too.

 

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“Aussie, this is not a good time to ask for a treat.”

“No time like the present.”

“Can’t you see that I’m in trouble trying to go down this steep slope? I’m practically sliding down.”

I walked the dogs the other morning on a trail in a heavily wooded area. I heard water gurgling, looked down to my left, and saw what first looked like a dark cabin wall below, at the edge of a pond, some 15 feet high and 25 feet wide.

A cabin? There were no habitations of any kind in those woods.

You have your boots on, I reasoned with myself, so get down there and see what it is. Slowly I made my way down the steep, wet slope. Standing on a ridge of wet leaves that encircled the water, I realized that I was looking at a massive patch of black earth that had once held a living tree, the roots wriggling through the perpendicular hard soil as though everything was still alive.

I crossed the pond, looked at it from the other side, and saw that not one, but two trees had fallen. In fact, not two but three were lying there, one next to the other, dead comrades of winter.

Spring here is the time to bear witness to what winter has wrought. Usually one tree falls, bringing its roots up with it. But here it was as if an entire plot of earth had suddenly cracked, three related trees crashing down on the ground and bringing up their intertwined roots in one large patch of earth that looked like nothing I could identify.

From a distance, it looked like something dark and forbidding, abstract, a formless form. Only when I got down to take a closer look and crossed over to the other side did I see another version: the story of three trees with interlocking roots, closely related, sharing soil, fungus, sunlight and oxygen for who knows how many years.

Lived together, died together.

Slowly I clambered up to the path again, fighting against gravitational pull to slide back down, Aussie pawing the ground wanting her treat. Once on top, I looked down again and there it was, massive, black, undecipherable. Seeing it from the other side is what gave me coherence and clarity: Oh, so that’s what happened. The other side gave me the story.

None of which I’d have known had I stayed up on the path and just looked down.

Life, I thought. Something appears—a color, a cloud, an unfamiliar sound—and my brain rushes around trying to figure out what it is and often, what story it could weave around it. I don’t regret this, creating stories is what I do. At the same time, something else is at work here, raw and intuitive. Something to take in before discernment and investigation, before reassuring myself: I see now.

Can I be content without the analysis, without assigning some meaning and story to everything? I keep Thomas Merton’s words in mind: “The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there . . . [I]t beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.”

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On Saturday we did a one-day retreat. A small group of us sat together. I gave a talk. We ate lunch and rested (it was raining outside). I met folks face-to-face in the afternoon and sat some more. At the end of the day, we shared thoughts and feelings, mostly gratitude, cleaned up, and left.

It was a day of ease.

For a change, I let life come to me rather than going after it, my head craning forward like a turtle’s as it emerges from its shell, aimed relentlessly forward. No wonder I slump. But less so now because I’m more at ease.

Usually, I’m propelled to move forward by events and deadlines: time to feed the dogs, go down to the cellar to check on the dehumidifier, do emails, call this person or that, go to pick up the car from the garage. It’s led to the habit of being in constant motion, and getting suspicious when I’m not. I, who have sat still in Zen meditation for so many years, am conditioned to move, look around, sniff the air, look for what’s the next thing and the next thing, and the next after that.

Recently I read an article about why people, middle-aged and older, always feel younger. 20% younger, as a matter of fact, scientific studies have shown. At the end of the article, I closed my eyes and thought: I don’t feel 20% younger than I am, I feel my age. Not because my body hurts or I have a serious illness, I enjoy very good health, but because my mind feels older.

I don’t rush to judgment as I used to, I don’t rush to gratuitous, harmful emotions, I speak thoughtlessly much less than before, and even as I look at and listen to life around me with curiosity and gladness, I feel quiet and still inside.

None of this was true for me 20% of my age earlier; I have no nostalgia for the young years when I blew off my mouth without thinking, snapped at people, judged them harshly, and obsessed about myself. I deeply appreciate the contrast and am glad for a settled mind and a lighter heart.

Time is loosening up, bringing me a revelation: There is something like ease. There are moments (hours?) when the perpetual restlessness and its accompanying anxiety are no longer there, when you no longer need to hop up on the stage to make sure you’re part of the action or peer around the curtains to see what’s hidden. I can sit back and let life come to me.

Some scenes will beckon, others won’t, and it won’t matter because I won’t be at the center of it and will certainly have very little control. I give up those delusions in exchange—for what? Ease. No hurry to get somewhere. No fluttering question: What’s next? No inclination to clutter up the space and time of my life. Instead, I’ll have ease.

And ease ain’t easy for this woman with the forward-slumping shoulders and the perpetual urge to check her calendar and to-do list. It’s why I love our monthly, simple one-day retreats. They make up a formal invitation to enjoy ease. No computer, no phone. Who else but me needs a structure for ease?

I watch Aussie lying on the top step behind my office, soaking up the afternoon shade. She’ll jump up and bark if people or animals appear on the road above the house; otherwise, she’s at ease. She trusts the world to come to her: squirrels, birds, a car, Henry, supper. The couple that lives two houses down is walking on the road and she barks, but the last bark fades into a question mark, as if she thinks: I know these guys, I plunder their compost all the time, so why bark?

I look at the snow melting and receding. Its life is ending slowly for this season, but there’s no grabbing or clutching, no last wishes. Even dying, the snow is at ease.

Ease is a gift that’s always been there, but for much of my life I couldn’t locate it. Like all life’s great gifts,–love, joy, and creativity–it’s always right in front of me. I don’t need more ease, just to fit my body into it like I do into Bernie’s navy Greyston jacket that’s still hanging in the closet. It’s been hanging there for a long time and it always felt big on me.

Less so now.

 

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“’The wackadoodle email is a classic example of such evidence,’ Pyle said. ‘The person you’re having on is forwarding without irony an email from a person who claims to be a time traveler. That is a red flag as to the reliability of that source.’”

The above quote is from an article on Fox News’ stories about how the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and specifically how Texas lawyer Sidney Powell described on Fox News an email she received from an artist who claimed eyewitness proof that the election was stolen. The artist also claimed to be a time traveler herself.

The Washington Post asked Jeffrey Pyle, a Boston lawyer, about this, and Pyle responded above. It seems that Jeffrey Pyle believes that claiming to be a time traveler clearly undermines your reliability as a witness.

Does that mean that everybody who believes in time traveling is wackadoodle? I do time travel all the time. There isn’t a day when I don’t think of certain scenes Bernie and I shared. My brother called today to inquire if I would come to Israel for our mother’s 1-year memorial, and instantly I thought of her and me together: lipsticks, jewelry, talking to her as she lay in bed across a sea of Israeli newspapers (mostly right-wing). I look out and think of past spring seasons when hundreds of goldfinches descended on the birdfeeders all around the house. Who doesn’t do time traveling in their mind?

It’s true that a few may put on a maroon dressing gown to fly them over to Michelangelo’s studio where he works on David; others punch a few buttons before going through a secret door in the cellar of their home to spend a few hours with Cleopatra before she commits suicide via asp. Does that make anybody unreliable?

What about the people who are up in arms after seeing an AI-created video of Trump being led away from Trump Tower by police? Do we bar them from jury duty forever? Or those who know for sure that we’re visited by extra-terrestrials every night of the week?

What about toddlers who turn round and round, little arms up in the air, making tweeting sounds? “Are you a little girl?” “No, silly. I’m a bird.”

Of course, she’s a bird! She doesn’t bother with Linnaean classifications, that’s for the birds. She’s a child, wide-ranging, sky-circling, and free as a bird.

Poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote: “Whatever has happened, whatever is going to happen in the world, it is the living moment that contains the sum of the excitement, this moment in which we touch life and all the energy of the past and future. Here is all the developing greatness of the dream of the world.”

The linear story, the primitive arithmetic we use to explain things (this happened because that happened), the tools we use to restore order and control—okay, they may be needed to stop people from killing each other, but I like wackadoodle. I want to be more wackadoodle myself. Burst out of the drawstrings of logic and intellect, prise my brain open and welcome myth, fantasy, fear of the gods.

To this very day I’m frightened of lightning and thunder. Thunder beings, the Lakota call them. Spring is here, and with it the promise of their approach, maybe to the tune of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. At night I hear the distant rumble in the west announcing their intention to head east to the ocean, knowing they will cast their wrath on this valley, on this house, and no matter how hot it is I will go under the blanket, head under the pillow, shaking in the boots I’m not wearing.

Others laugh at me, shake their heads: There she goes again. As far as I’m concerned, only crazy people don’t cower when the gods are angry. Bernie, bless his heart, used to put his arm around me even as he slept to comfort me.

In The Gods Must Be Crazy, Xi, a member of the San people in the Kalahari Desert, finds a glass Coca-Cola bottle and is sure it’s a gift from the gods. There are lots of adventures and mishaps on the way, and the movie audience laughs at his gullibility, but that gift takes him to the very edge of the world, and how many of us sane people can claim to have been at the edge of the world?

As a Buddhist, I make the vow to free all beings. That’s way more wackadoodle than time-traveling any day of the week.

 

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“Look, Aussie, I got an email from Wisdom Panel. They’re the people who studied your DNA a few years ago, that’s how I heard you were half German Shepherd.”

“Am not. I’m a pacifist.”

“This email asks me if you want to meet your siblings or parents: Ready to Give Your Dog a Family Reunion? What do you think of that? We’re now not only being invited to reunite with very distant DNA relatives around the world, now you, canine Aussie, are being invited to get together with your DNA family, too.”

“What’s that word you use about ten times a day? Meshuga?”

“I laughed for a long time over that email, Aussie. But then I thought about it again.”

“Big mistake.”

“It’s interesting how far away we get from our birth families. You know, people and dogs used to live together in big families years ago. It was a different way of life, see? Everyone had a role to play in helping the family grow and prosper. When I spent more time with Palestinians years ago, one of their biggest complaints was not getting permits to enlarge their homes when someone got married. One friend told me that he wanted to add another floor to his house on the Mt. of Olives because his son was going to get married and the plan was for each of the men to marry and live in the same house, only each on his own floor. Kids weren’t supposed to move away from home.”

“I can hardly wait to get away from you.”

“Why, Aussie?”

“Because I have to fulfill my destiny.”

“What destiny, Auss?”

“How should I know? Once I run away, I’ll find it and let you know.”

“That’s a very individualistic way of looking at things, Aussie, maybe even a very American way: To find out who I am, I have to leave my family and home and go far, far away.”

“You did that.”

“Right. And you know who else did that? Our ancestor, Abraham.”

“The Wisdom Panel told you that I have an ancestor called Abraham?”

“The Bible told me I have an ancestor called Abraham, and God commanded him to leave his family and country and go forth to where God leads him.”

“Exactly. I’m being called forth to discover my destiny. In order to do that, I got to get the hell out of here. By the way, what’s God?”

“Aussie, there’s a price to be paid when you leave your family behind.”

“Name one.”

“Not seeing me day by day. Maybe never, Auss.”

“I’ll live.”

“Not seeing Henry day by day.”

“Party party party.”

“Not seeing Leeann, your favorite human in the whole wide world.”

“I’ll send her a Christmas card.”

“No Paul Newman Peanut Butter treats, Auss.”

“I think I’ll make it. With any luck I’ll find a Big Mac someone threw out along the way.”

“No Buddy Biscuits Assorted Flavors, including grilled meat, roast chicken and bacon.”

“Not even bacon?”

“Aussie, there’s a price for everything. You want to take a journey and discover a new frontier, go right ahead, but you may be leaving important things behind.”

“Like what?”

“Love. A sense of belonging. A sense of being cared for.”

“If I send you an address, could you send me a care package every month? Let’s see: Buddy Bacon Biscuits, Organic Crunchy Duck Treats With Blueberries leave out the blueberries, Killer Chicken—”

“Forget about it, Aussie.”

“You know what? I don’t care. I’m leaving home to discover my destiny and live my life. California, here I come.”

“Aussie, there are big thunderstorms in California nowadays.”

“How big?”

“And don’t forget, when you go west, young dog, you’ll pass The House.”

“The House? You mean—you mean—the one with the two big German shepherds?”

“The very one, Aussie.”

“Can you walk me to the corner on leash?”

“They’re always indoors, Auss, they don’t bother you.”

“I can smell them. They’re waiting in the woods to jump me and—and—and—I changed my mind. Destiny can wait.”

“Why are you giving up so quickly?”

“First rule of survival: You see two big German Shepherds lurking in the forest, head for home.”

 

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“Aussie, where were you? Did you run through the frozen stream? Don’t deny it, just feel those hairs. They’re full of frozen water and mud, your chest is turning into an icicle!”

“Who cares? I was chasing deer and it ran across the water!”

“Aussie, you’re crazy. Do you know how icy that water is?”

“Of course, I know, I’m the one who ran through it. Who cares? When I chase deer, I’d go through hell. Have you ever smelled a deer? It’s the best smell in the world: warm, thick, sour milk, oil, and urine. Man, what a milkshake!”

“Aussie, you have to let some of that stuff go, otherwise how will the light shine in?”

“What light?”

“You know what light. The light of not-knowing.”

“Does it have a smell?”

“It’s the transparency all around us, the air, the space, the emptiness.”

“Does it smell better than sour milk and urine?”

“I’m not sure it has a smell, Aussie.”

“Then I’m not interested.”

“Aussie, you got to let go of your attachments.”

“My attachments are what make life worth living!”

“I also feel bad for that deer, Auss. It’s March with lots of snow on the ground. We’ve had a late winter, and this is the time when deer really starve. That’s probably why that deer was so close to the road, it was looking for something to eat. I’m sure it wasn’t particularly strong when it ran.”

“Fooled me.”

“The cold temperatures and snow have extended the winter famine for them, they’re not at their best. And look at you!”

“I’m looking, I’m looking.”

“You’re well-fed and warm, you don’t worry where your next green meal is coming from.”

“I hate greens.”

“You’re at the peak of your powers, Aussie, and they’re not. It’s not an even contest.”

“That makes it more fun!”

“Oh, Aussie.”

“Oh, Eve. Besides, why are you always going on and on about this sad thing and that sad thing? The poor trees sagging under the weight of the ice and the winds. The deer starving in winter—boohoo!  Why can’t you just sit back, or stand back, and enjoy life? Go chase some deer.”

“I do enjoy my life, Aussie, but it’s important not to lose connection with the grit, you know what I mean?”

“I have grit in my life.”

“Like what, Aussie?”

“Every time you say Stay! and won’t take me with you.”

“That’s grit?”

“Of course, that’s gritty. How about when you do take me in the car but leave me there when you go into a store? Stay! Worst word in dog language.”

“I take you to the farmers co-op where they sell dog supplies, don’t I? I say: Come on, Aussie, let’s go shop-ping.”

“Shop-ping! My favorite thing after eating, chasing deer, and mauling Henry! And yes, when you don’t take me shop-ping life gets gritty.”

“Oh Aussie. If you saw the hungry dogs in Bahia, you’d know a little more about gritty.”

“They didn’t go shop-ping in the dog stores?”

“They sniffed around the garbage, Auss.”

“I love rummaging around the Kings’ compost next door.”

“In Bahia people are too hungry to throw out much food, Auss. The dogs lie down a lot on the hot pavement.”

“Like me! I love to doze off under the sun.”

“Not quite like you, Aussie.”

“Do they have friends to play with?”

“There are other skinny dogs around, but they’ll fight over every scrap of food they find.”

“Just like me and Henry. I kill him the minute he makes a move towards my food bowl.”

“You don’t understand, Aussie. Not like you and Henry at all. You can’t see beyond your own life so you’re making crazy comparisons. You know what this reminds me of?”

“Do I have to listen?”

“When my mother came to the United States, sometimes people asked her how the war years were for her where she grew up. At first, she tried to tell them of the hunger she went through, of the starvation in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, even of how she was so sick there they removed a tooth without anesthesia. Do you know what her American friends said to that?”

“Did they say they were sorry?”

“If only, Aussie. What they said was: We know just what you mean. Here we couldn’t get chocolate, we couldn’t get sugar, and not enough coffee. After that she never said another word to them about what she went through.”

“Why?”

“Because what they meant by grit and what she meant by grit were entirely different, Aussie. It’s hard to understand that without some kind of direct connection, if not experience.”

“Watch me murderize another squirrel, you’ll see grit then.”

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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.