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| Ithuriel's Spears, Tarweed (All photos April 26, 2015) |
I am a fortunate man. I have a place where I can go to relive my childhood, a place that contains a kind of magic that few people believe. In that place, I feel like I am eleven again, and my adult life is only a strange dream. At the same time objects around me, especially human structures, take on a dream-like significance. And, for reasons that I have never understood, sometimes when I am there my daimon communicates with me through a voice or a vision or an intuition.
While exploring the single-lane road next to the North Fork of the Kings River last weekend, I noticed a cable extending across the river. Curious, I found a path down to an odd metal contraption. After climbing down a short path, I discovered that the metal object is a crude aerial gondola or tram that can slide along the cable to the other side of the river.
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| Aerial Gondola |
That day over forty years ago, I climbed into the contraption and attempted to stabilize it as it bounced from side to side. Then, after imagining for a moment that I was sailing across the river, I tried to get it to move. I had no success, so I examined it carefully to see if I could pull some lever or hit some button to free it and soon discovered that it was chained to a metal post.
Disappointed, I got out of the gondola and grabbed the cable, tempted for a moment to swing like a monkey across the river, but when I hung above the ground from the cable for a moment, my arms felt like they were about to disconnect from my shoulders. I gazed down and realized that if I fell into the river below, I would be seriously injured or killed. I knew that my arms would get tired at some point, and I would be unable to go any farther, so I would just hang there ridiculously until I dropped, and my family would not know that I had been swept down the river until someone found my body hung up on some branch or rock. And what if, I thought to myself, I could swing all the way across the river only to find that I had just reached another rock, and I had not unraveled any mystery or achieved anything noteworthy?
Nevertheless, I had the feeling that the contraption would someday have significance for me, like a symbol that I had dreamed and suddenly remembered.
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| Ithuriel's Spears, Chinese Purple Houses, Tarweed |
Last weekend, I again felt inspired for a moment to swing hand over hand across the river, but this time I couldn’t help viewing the struggle in terms of a major life-choice, such as pursuing a career or a relationship.
Then I remembered a dream that I’d experienced that morning. In the dream, I was a young man, with short, blonde hair, and I wore a Nazi uniform. I turned to a man next to me and stated that I was through with this life. In the previous scene, I was working as a substitute teacher, leading children in line from the playground to the classroom. I was haunted all morning by the statement that I was through with this life because I have celiac disease and have been facing my own mortality for over a year now. Something about the statement, however, didn’t make sense.
Suddenly I realized as I gazed at the aerial gondola chained to the post that I was through with my life as a substitute teacher, during which I had often had to act like a Nazi. The past few weeks I had been happy and optimistic: I was finally healthy for the first time in over forty years because I had stopped ingesting gluten. Next to the aerial gondola, I felt like I was eleven again, with a bright future ahead of me. I could be anything, and this time I could make a meaningful choice. I might no longer be chained to a dead-end job due to chronic illness.
Just as I was feeling so hopeful, I looked up the hillside and
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| Fairy Lanterns, Wind Poppy |
Last weekend I developed a theory about the aerial gondola: the cable crosses the river about fifty yards south of a gauging station. On the other side of the river, a faint trail heads north from the rock to which the cable is connected and disappears in the grass, and a faint trail also appears south of the gauging station. When I was eleven I had no clue what the gauging station was; it appeared to be a small rocket or silo or smokestack extending out of the water next to a cliff. The aerial gondola was positioned so that people can’t easily see it from the road, perhaps to avoid tempting anyone to use the cable in some ill-conceived manner or perhaps to keep thieves from finding the way to the gauging station.
Two mysterious posts, which have always baffled me, stand next to the road across from the gauging station. Last weekend I noticed holes that suggest a sign was once screwed into the posts. Over forty years ago someone must have ripped the sign away, perhaps realizing that it drew too much attention to the station. Only the two posts remain, without any information or reason for their existence.
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| Aerial Gondola |
As I stood on the road above the aerial gondola, I suddenly remembered one week in particular.
My posse was racing towards Firebaugh, ready to take the town by storm, five in my vehicle, eight in the company van. The fields stretched out endlessly in every direction without another human being in sight.
Hundreds of pale yellow butterflies were fluttering across the road from one field to another, many flopping around or unmoving, like ripped-up pieces of paper, on the asphalt. More than once, I witnessed butterflies dipping down to fluttering comrades on the ground, as if to offer help, just before a car rushed over them. One suddenly slapped against the windshield, leaving a streak of transparent jell spattered with yellow powder.
"This is a massacre," I mused.
Another butterfly slapped against the windshield. "What was the last thing to pass through that bug's mind?" a canvasser asked.
I stared at him in the rear view. "Good question," I replied.
"It's asshole," the canvasser dead-panned.
I chuckled, noticing a crop duster banking toward the road. The plane, about a hundred yards in front of us, managed to clear the telephone wires.
"You know," I said to my crew, "if an Indian somehow time-traveled to the present, he wouldn't know where he was. Instead of grasslands with herds of antelope and elk and deer, he would find farms. Not knowing that he shouldn't trespass, he'd probably forage for food, but, of course, all he would find around here would be grapes and almonds and pasture grass and cotton--not really the bread basket of the world, now is it? He would probably become sick from the pesticides if he did eat the grapes. Then they'd throw him in jail for stealing and tell him that his sickness is all psychological. But if he did manage to survive undetected, he might look for water. The San Joaquin River, once a mile wide in places, is now just a trickle of polluted water. In fact, Andrew Firebaugh established a ferry over a hundred years ago so people could cross the river and that became what is now the great city of Firebaugh. Anyway, our Indian friend wouldn't find a salmon run, just a few fish belly up and a lot of trash. He wouldn’t know, of course, that most of the water from the river is being used to irrigate the fields on which the farmers are dumping voluminous amounts of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Look, there's a plane about to strafe us. Roll up yer' windows. A hazard of the job, folks."
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| Indian Paint Brush |
We rushed through viscous rain falling from the crop duster, the wipers smearing the drops on the windshield.
"That pilot’s a good shot," I smiled. "I guess he heard we were coming. We should remember to bring our anti-crop duster artillery next time."
Lynn smiled even though she had heard that joke before. We were nearing Firebaugh, so she turned to the back seat and stated flatly, "It's time to do some raps." Everyone took out a clipboard and soon we were talking about "The Right to Know More," a recently proposed piece of legislation that would require industries to disclose more information to the surrounding community about the pesticides they were using. When a new canvasser weakly asked for money and then muttered "okay" after the first blow-off, Lynn snapped, "You've got to target high and then scale down. Don't just take the first blow-off and leave. It they're concerned at all, they can give a few dollars at least. Everyone can give a couple of dollars."
"Look, man, we're in the belly of the beast," I chided the canvasser. "This issue affects everyone in the community. Don't be ashamed to ask for money. You're here to help these people. But we can't help them if they don't help us a little. They've got to give a little, and I mean, they've got to put their signature on your petition, they've got to write a letter to their congressman, and they've got to give you some money if we are going to keep doing this work. Nobody else is out here doing this for them, man. Nobody else is out there working in their interest. Don't be shy!" Lynn and I and the other managers had to go through a variation on the same theme practically every day.
"Look out there at those fields, man. A few corporations own all of this. A few people are getting obscenely rich, but is their main concern feeding the world? They're going to turn the grapes into wine for alcoholics. They're going to put the almonds in little chocolate kisses. They're going to feed the the hay to the cows so that you can have your fast-food hamburger even though it takes as much water for the feeding and care of a cow as it takes to float a battleship. They're going to keep dumping defoliants on you until there's nothing left but your clothes. They're taking the water out of our river to flood irrigate crops that have no business being grown in a desert, and they just keep dumping their chemicals on everything. They just keep dumping away. And our politicians are making damn sure (pun intended) that you and I subsidize their water and their crops with our tax dollars even though we'd get our asses shot off if we dared to step into those fields. We are paying them to continue polluting our water and air, and they, strangely enough, don't want anyone to know what chemicals they're using. You, man, you are out there to tell those people they have the right to know. You've got to get fired up! You can't be wimpy about mobilizing the public out here. This is the belly of the beast."
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| Tarweed, Fairy Lanterns |
Lynn asked the canvasser to try again. The second time he tried harder and she rewarded him with a pretend contribution. Then another new canvasser tried, butchering the rap badly.
I had hoped to end the rain of poisons, to put some water back into a dead river, to preserve the foothills and the last wetlands, to end urban sprawl. My organization had blocked the effort to site massive toxic waste incinerators all over the valley, had stopped the attempt to ship coal from other parts of the country into the valley for coal-fired power plants, had forced the oil industries down in Kern County to follow the same permitting and enforcement procedures as the rest of the counties in the valley. All of that could be reversed any moment depending on the level of corruption, which was always extremely high in the valley. The accomplishments were nothing compared with what needed to be done. My career choice had been a mistake, considering all the other threatened, blackballed, and ruined political activists in the valley, and I was sure that I would pay in one way or another for a very long time.
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| Posts across from Gauging Station |
Fast forward: I would indeed lose my job and become vulnerable to a person named John Blackmore, who let my family live rent-free in one of his rental houses while my wife worked for a teaching credential. My wife and I reunited after a rough patch caused partially by little pay and the stress of my job as a grassroots organizer, and partially by the intensity of my relationships with the other organizers, one of whom, Lynn, became my lover during a work-related conference. I had met Blackmore during public meetings on community issues, and I thought I could trust him because we had the same aims. My wife, coincidentally, had also met Blackmore at meetings while she and I were separated, and they had become friends. I had no idea then, of course, that he would allow us to move into his rental house so that he could let himself in with his key at night and murder me in my sleep when no one else was there.
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| Stone Crop |
Rewind: I listened to the raps. The same format over and over--I am, we are, we do, we want. The same mistakes by inexperienced canvassers over and over. Only the cleverest and most articulate, many of whom had never even gone to college, survived. I had witnessed graduate students washing out in a matter of days. You had to put quota, $600.00 a week, in the bag, every week, or you were back out on the street, nothing.
It was absolutely freaking poetic that a progressive organization was now being taken down by a bogus sexual harassment lawsuit tantamount to legal extortion. The woman was a total liar and didn't have a leg to stand on, but the organization was going to pay tens of thousands of dollars to make it go away, instead of going to court, which would be much more expensive in the long run, and the doors of the Fresno office were going to close forever, in a matter of weeks or months. None of the other employees knew. The same freaking enthusiasm, false and otherwise.
Another butterfly slapped against the windshield. We were approaching the San Joaquin River. I gazed into the rear view mirror and actually saw hope in the eyes of a few canvassers, or at least what I read as hope. I had crossed the river so many times, with so many different people who had felt hope for their job, for their families, for the world. We were all nothing as we crossed the bridge over a trickle of polluted water that just kept flowing, the water unaware that it would never reach the ocean.
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| Indian Pinks, Madia |
"Remember," I demanded, "I am, we are, we do, we want. I am, we are, we do, we want. Follow that basic format and you'll do fine. Don't worry, everyone's a little nervous at first." The canvasser tried again as we were driving into town. "You're doing fine," I reassured him as we pulled into a Taco Bell. The canvassers had an hour to eat while the field managers cut turf, allotting about eighty houses to each canvasser. I cut turf with Lynn even though I was the program coordinator and should have stayed at the restaurant to boost morale.
Several weeks ago, my supervisor had made me swear not to tell anyone about the lawsuit.
"Ingrid is suing the organization for sexual harassment," I told Lynn, as I was driving through a "boozshie" (canvasser slang for "bourgeois") neighborhood.
"What the hell?" Lynn muttered.
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| Ithuriel's Spears, Chinese Houses |
"Pat was a lousy field manager and said some pretty stupid things, but I don't see how she could claim that he sexually harassed her. I really doubt that anyone would believe her."
"You never know. They might get you up on the stand and have you explain your relationship with me, you know, how you're having an affair with a married man. I'm sure everyone would love that."
"I didn't think of that."
"She might even say that I created a hostile environment in the workplace. She could claim that I was sexually harassing you, for instance, especially since you had a boyfriend who was also working for the organization when we first got together. Imagine a lawyer asking you how I first expressed my affection for you."
"Oh, my god, and I bought pot from her on more than one occasion."
"I doubt that she'll want that to become public knowledge, but she will claim that 'party night' has helped lead to sexual harassment."
"It has been getting a bit wild on Thursday nights. Damn, what are we going to do?"
"I don't know, but she wants $200,000.00. She won't get that. She'll have to scale down, of course, but she could nail us for a big chunk of money, just because the organization, which is almost broke anyway, will want to settle out of court to avoid the court costs. It has some insurance, but not enough to cover what she wants. This is nothing but legal extortion, but she’ll probably get away with it. What do you know about her, Lynn? What can you tell me about her?" She had stopped counting houses. "I really don't know anything about her. I just thought she was cool."
"She is not cool. She is very, very uncool. Don't ever think she is cool, ever again."
"Remember when Dora let us use her room that first time at the conference and Tom came looking for me? What if all that comes out?"
"We're screwed."
"Wait a minute. Dora might not even live in Fresno anymore."
"Yeah, but they could find her and depose her and maybe even ask her to take the stand. She was a program director and she encouraged sexual misconduct."
"We're going to be sweating until this is over, aren't we?
"And it could take a long, long time."
"How much are you going to tell the regional director about us?"
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| Hooker's Onion, Tarweed |
"Just one more," she replied. "This is the worst god-damned timing."
"You think this is all coincidence?" I gazed at the clock while Lynn quietly stared out the window. "Look at all the other crap piling up on the organization. We just got an eviction notice last week for overdue late charges. Not for late rent, mind you. For overdue late charges. The 'Fresnoid' Chronicle published that article claiming that the organization keeps one hundred percent of the funds that we raise, which is total bullsh-t, and it’s publishing our recruitment ad in the sales section of the classifieds, even though we are a political organization exercising our right to free speech. We've stopped a hazardous waste incinerator and coal burning power plants and have helped create a regional air quality control district. Now, we're scaring the crap out of the farmers and the pesticide companies. We’ve become effective, and the powers that be are coming down on us."
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| Ithuriel's Spears |
"We've got to cut that last turf," Lynn stated flatly. She didn't say another word to me until after we had dropped off the other canvassers. She refused to canvass the same turf with me because I distracted her. Before we split up, she said that she wanted to go out after work. She was ten years younger than I am. I wanted her to be with her friends as much as possible, so I shrugged, "No problem."
A week later, after we got home from work, I stated, "You know, I was going to go into teaching when I graduated from college, but I realized that schools are just maintaining the status quo, churning out good little wage slaves who get way over their heads in debt by the time their twenty-five and can't do anything but struggle to dig themselves out of it the rest of their lives, and all the while big corporations are stealing the last resources and poisoning us out of existence. Now I don't know what field I'm going to go into. This was the perfect job for me, at least until recently. I think I'm going to take it one day at a time. I'm going to hang in there until it all falls apart, if it ever does."
Lynn gazed at me with a weak smile. "Well, I'm going to go back to school to get a degree in social work. I'm getting out of this town. I might go to Santa Cruz."
"But isn't Tom going to Santa Cruz?"
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| Fiesta Flowers |
I stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate. "Why do you just close me off? I never know what you're really feeling about the important stuff. Moving is something huge for me because my kids are here in Fresno. What are you trying to say to me?"
"Did you ever see this as a long-term relationship? Were you ever planning to divorce your wife?" she asked.
I couldn't answer for a second. "Well, I never thought of it as temporary. I left my wife, you remember." I looked her over carefully. "Wait a minute." I glared at her. "You haven't seen Tom, have you?"
"Well, yeah, I did, like a week ago."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She didn't say a word.
"Oh," I groaned. "That was the night you stayed out late." I stared. "You went to bed with him, didn't you?"
She didn't answer.
"Did you?"
"He told me that he took acid, and when he looked at his eyes in the mirror, he saw my eyes. He said he realized then how much he loved me."
"What the hell are you saying? Did you go to bed with him or not?"
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| Wind Poppy |
"You did, didn't you. I'm going to take your silence as a yes."
Flustered, she finally answered, "All right. I did. But the whole time I was asking myself what I was doing."
"He asked you to marry him, didn't he?"
"Yes, he did."
I was genuinely shocked by my intuition as well as by her sudden willingness to confess. "And what did you say?"
"Look, you've had a long day. I really don't want to talk about this anymore."
"What did you say?"
"I said yes."
I plopped down in the dark on her couch. "You know I read recently that the universe is composed of energy fields--energy fields upon energy fields. Each person is an energy field that is part of all the other energy fields. We are all just connected, inter-penetrating energy fields, and yet we believe that we are separate. Maybe the energy fields flow on forever, but why does it all turn to shit?" I started sobbing. She scooted next to me and placed her arm around me. I wept for almost half an hour while she held me. When I stopped, I said, "I better go." I got up in the darkness, turned, and, without saying another word, walked out the door.
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