The Shelf Life of Fire

by Robin Greene

  No one is around now, except for a guard who occasionally paces in and out of the room, leaving me to myself, head lowered as in prayer.

  As I think this, my head still bowed, I find that I’m mumbling a prayer: Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. Hear o Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

  During my one year of religious training—which consisted of attending Hebrew school taught by the Rebbetzin every Saturday morning for about eight months—I’d become a believer and thought I’d marry a Rabbi, maybe become a Rebbetzin myself. But even during the fervor of that early faith, I could never imagine God. Maybe that’s the point.

  A man comes into the gallery, sits beside me. He’s Hispanic, short, and seems oblivious to my presence or that he might be intruding. He watches the tree for the four-minute year with a rolled-up museum program that he bangs nervously on his thigh. I don’t look directly at him, but through the corner of my eye I can see that he’s young, probably in his late twenties, has a purple streak in his black hair and a large snake tattoo crawling up his wrist onto his forearm. When I look down, I see that he’s wearing canvas sneakers with the toes cut out. As he gets up to leave, he drops or puts down the rolled-up program on the bench. I say nothing.

  Distracted from my sad mood, I catch myself thinking, Yes, just like a man to leave his garbage behind. I pick it up. Litter in a museum? Rude.

  I pick up the discarded program and wander into the adjacent gallery, not the one the man has walked into, because I’m hoping not to run into him again. It’s the room near the end of the exhibition, and I realize that I’ve lost interest in seeing the rest of the show. There I see a trash can, so I head toward it, but as I do, I unroll the program to see that it’s not a program, but a glossy advertisement for low plane-fares to Europe, with flights leaving from RDU. I could fly roundtrip to Paris for $499, to London for $449, or to Barcelona for $529. l smooth out the ad, fold it, put it in my bag. A sign?

  Before I exit the exhibition, I return to the last room to quickly glance at some paintings, watch a short video, and stop at a sort of light sculpture with changing projected features, but then walk out of the time exhibition completely, back to the other building, thinking that I’ll visit the gift shop, then get a little something to eat in the pricey museum café.

  The gift shop contains many attractive, arty, expensive items. I handle beaded earrings with Alexander Calder-ish mobile dangling pieces, handmade paper journals, a hand-knitted silk sweater for $250, batik scarves.

  k

  In the café, I sit at a small back table by the wall, to collect my thoughts. I’ve ordered a portobello mushroom sandwich on panini with potato salad and coffee.

  The café is nearly empty. I see an older couple, perhaps in their late seventies, sitting at a table across the room. Also, there’s a well-dressed, middle-aged man, legs crossed, reading a large unfolded newspaper. And two younger women, college-aged, leaning toward each other conspiratorially across the table, engaged in animated conversation.

  I sit back in my chair, close my eyes for a moment, focus on my breath—to center myself, sharpen my attention.

  But the waitress comes and delivers my coffee, presented in a white cup on a square white saucer, with a small stainless-steel milk pitcher and sugar on a separate serving plate. She’s wearing tight black pants, a white shirt, both covered by a full black apron.

  “Your sandwich will be out in a few minutes,” she says, offering a smile.

  “Thanks,” I tell her, noticing that her nose and upper lip are pierced, and that she’s wearing purple lipstick.

  twenty-nine

  God, I think, and feel something stir within me. I breathe deeply, trying to return to my thoughts in front of the tree exhibition. As I breathe, I become aware of my physical self, and that takes me to a more cognitive place. Here, I feel centered and shift my attention to my coffee, which I mindfully sip. The flavor is robust, fresh. And there’s power in this moment.

  I take another sip of coffee, the hot liquid energizing, feeling wonderful in my mouth, throat. For a moment, I feel more positive.

  My waitress returns with a coffee carafe, smiles again, then without asking or speaking, fills my cup. Women, I think, know how not to interrupt. I’m relaxed now, better able to be with my thoughts. I think about God and faith, feeling a visceral connection to the universe. As I breathe, the universe breathes with me.

  My sandwich arrives. The waitress says nothing. I look at her, say “thanks,” aware that my voice doesn’t want to speak. I nod my head, we smile at each other, and I notice that she’s pregnant. Thin as she is, there’s a definite baby bump beneath her apron.

  I breathe deeply, feeling the core channel of my body hold air, then let it go. Now I’m thinking that there’s some black place I’ve been running from.

  I take a difficult bite of my portobello mushroom sandwich, which is thick, hard to get my mouth around. A tangy mayonnaise-based sauce drips from it onto my plate. I swipe the bitten end of the sandwich into the sauce, ready for another bite. My mouth is alive with the textures and tastes of this delicious food.

  Sensation—perhaps it too is sacred. The Buddhists believe that suffering can be alleviated by engaging in the present, the utter-ness of the moment, the acceptance of reality or what is.

  My pregnant waitress, coffee carafe in hand, makes her way to me. No words again. A slight smile, pour, nod.

  God in all things—even my sandwich and coffee. My present moment. I pour a dab of half-and-half into my coffee, take a sip, concentrating now on the experience of the coffee, its warmth in my mouth, its taste. I swallow, the liquid warming my throat.

  I do the same with my sandwich, except that I chew it thoroughly, feeling my jaw and mouth work. The complicated tastes combine. A joy—a spiritual practice, a living practice.

  Wasn’t it Ignatius of Loyola who said that God is present in all things? And that spirit is found through practice?

  That word again: practice. There’s so much we call practice. As a graduate student, I studied with the poet Robert Creeley, and he’d always say that life is a dress rehearsal, but he never said for what. Maybe he was suggesting that life is our practice, that we never get it right, that nothing exists beyond the rehearsal.

  I bite again into my sandwich—complex, satisfying.

  My waitress is back.

  “This is excellent,” I say, as she stands by my table.

  “I’m glad,” she says. “May I get you anything else?”

  “Just the check,” I tell her.

  Up and about in the museum, I find that I’m not quite ready to leave. I want to explore one of the permanent collections.

  I stand before the African tribal collection of masks and old religious artifacts. Some masks are huge wooden things, with terrifying faces. Were they intended to scare? Does fear create obedience? Do we need consequences to behave ethically? Is it fear, that most primal emotion, that guides, controls, motivates?

  In Hebrew culture class, the Rebbetzin told us that God always watched us, that whatever wrong act we committed, God would see and punish us.

  I’m in front of a grouping of artifacts: a terrifying mask, a huge carved totem, a grass and textile shaman’s costume. Did these items help reach God or bring people closer to the spirit realm?

  No answers.

  I’m walking now through some abstract modern paintings and sculpture. On one wall, a draped tapestry of used bottle caps and metal pieces cut from aluminum cans, by Ghanaian born artist El Anatsui, hangs like a glistening fabric. Lines that Link Humanity is its title. I stand there—first at a distance, then closer up, then at a distance again.

  A couple approaches. He’s probably in his seventies; she’s younger, I’m guessing. They’re dressed in coordinated shorts, pink tee-shirts, and white Nike athletic shoes.

  The man, hunched and in pain, tries to straighten his neck to see the entire wall sculpture.

  “Linda, we could do this,” he s
ays.

  “Start collecting your cans,” she replies, grinning at the man, who returns the grin—a pleased, intimate, knowing expression.

  I eavesdrop, move closer to them.

  “Yeah,” the man says. “We can do anything. We just need time.”

  They walk off slowly to another gallery room. I hear the thumping of his cane, the shuffling of his feet. The woman supports his other arm; they themselves look like art.

  k

  I get it into my head to return to the other building, go downstairs to visit the Egyptian collection. Exiting, I walk slowly, mindful of the fading heat, the thick humid air. As I enter, the cool air makes me feel like I’ve arrived in another country. I breathe it in and walk down the large, gracious stairs to stand in front of the small, about two feet high, “Bust of the Goddess Sekmet, circa 1390-1352 B.C.E.,” sculpted in granite or some hard stone, with a lion’s face and women’s breasts. The goddess of retribution, she and the dark forces she represents exist to take action against violence.

  Yes, we want justice. When wrong is committed, we want the wrong-doer punished.

  I think of Dennis and his wrong-doings—stealing, gambling, lying—and sigh.

  Now in front of “Inner Coffin of Djed Mut, circa 715-525 B.C.E.,” I study its painted hieroglyphs, intricate designs, intended to secure passage to the next world. Is my brother dying? Will he need passage?

  Suddenly, I’m very tired and know that I need to leave. I return up the wide staircase, past the information and ticket counters, and walk out through the heavy glass doors.

  thirty

  Outside now, I remember to breathe, to practice. I look at the sun, lower in the cloudless sky, and walk to a bench by the entrance to the other building in a small courtyard. I sit down to ponder. Ponder—a good word, but almost out of diction.

  Two pigeons land on the gravel near my bench. Their heads look Egyptian—stylized, erect, bobbing forward and back in staccato rhythm as they walk. Their feathers glisten, turn gray, green, blue. Then they fly off together, movements coordinated like the older couple in the gallery.

  I look up at the empty sky, then down at the crushed gravel courtyard. Yes, the universe has organization and energy. God, gods, and goddesses. Direction, faith.

  Thinking back to my childhood faith, I connect with something else. It’s as if I’m reaching back in search of original connection. I bend forward, take my head in my hands, where I smell the flesh of my palms, with their slight acrid odor, an almost chemical smell. I breathe in, welcoming it.

  Like Levin at the end of Anna Karenina, my intellect tells me one thing, my heart, another. Levin reconciles this contradiction by accepting faith.

  I stand up, decide that I’m done. I wipe my hands, a little sweaty, on my pants. It’s still hot outside, but already there’s a slight evening breeze. I begin to walk to the parking lot but then decide to take the long walk around the museum grounds.

  In front of Collapse I by South African artist Ledelle Moe, I pause. Here, the huge human form looks like a fallen colossus. Powerful yet yielding.

  Deeper in, I come across another piece, Untitled, by the same artist. It’s a low, compact boulder suggesting a person in fetal position. I stand by it, bend to touch its rough surface.

  Something stirs inside me, waiting to be born. But as I think this, the feeling dissipates.

  Walking, I see the sun hover over the horizon, a raised field of intentionally uncut clump grasses—wild-seeming, long-bladed. I decide not to read the botanical information on the plaque but rather to look. And as I stare, I see that it’s not chaotic, random; it’s ordered. I move closer. The grass is beautiful. I sink to my knees. Yellow, green, straw-colored, and red blades blaze against a darkening but open sky. Ecstatic dry energy ignites the soft light. A small insect buzzes and lands. I move closer, see its almost transparent, thin-veined wings flutter. I breathe deeply. For this moment, I’m both in and out of my body.

  k

  On the way home, I realize that I’ve turned off my phone. As I turn it on, I see that I have three messages and two missed calls. But I’m not ready yet to disturb my solitude.

  I drive I-40 with no music, no radio. Traffic is light, and I set the cruise control at seventy-three, though I need to weave in and out of the three lanes to maintain the speed.

  I’m thinking of Sonya, the friend I met when I was sixteen at Shimer College. We flew to Luxemburg and hitchhiked through Europe together during the summer of 1972. Now Sonya lives in Chapel Hill, so we speak to and see each other fairly often. Since that early trip, Sonya has been my sister-friend for all these years.

  Now, I understand. The rolled flyer advertising fares to Europe has reminded me of that trip. I think of Sonya and of taking another trip together, after almost forty years, back to Europe. Not hitchhiking this time, of course.

  I see Sonya standing in front of Bennett Hall, the women’s dorm at Shimer College, the small liberal arts college with its campus located in Mount Carroll, Illinois—a tiny town near the western edge of the state, nine miles east of the Mississippi River. Her long brown hair wraps around her shoulders. It’s February; Sonya wears an Army shirt but no jacket. She and a dark-skinned girl—Cossette? Casandra?—are walking downstairs to the dorm lounge. They’re laughing, chatting, and they don’t see or acknowledge me. I fall in behind them, but then the memory disappears.

  Sometime in February, I formally meet Sonya, in bed with a head cold. I’m bringing her some food, as a favor. She’s covered with a mostly orange patchwork quilt. I don’t really like her, but we talk briefly, and she tells me that she’s from Key West, Florida, and is unaccustomed to the intense Northern cold.

  By March, Sonya and I became friends. She stuck up for me when Billy and Eric, two boys from Texas, argued against me. We had been discussing Hamlet, and the boys were justifying Hamlet’s lack of action. Sonya jumped in to defend me, and our friendship began.

  Both loving to travel, we concocted a plan to hitchhike across America during the summer. But the plan changed. Sonya’s parents didn’t want her traveling across America because they felt it wasn’t safe. Strangely, my own folks expressed the same concern.

  So, Sonya and I decided to fly to Europe and hitchhike there. Both sets of parents agreed—believing at the time that Europe was safer than the US—and in early summer, Sonya flew to New York, where she stayed with my family for a few days before we flew out from Kennedy Airport to Reykjavik, Iceland, then to Luxembourg.

  I’ve bumped up my speed, now have the cruise control locked in at seventy, the speed limit on this part of I-40. I’m in the right lane, with cars zooming past on my left. The sky, mostly dark, glows dully with only a hint of light remaining. Still no radio. I’m enjoying my thoughts about Sonya and that summer. I take the metal peppermint Altoid case from my bag, remove a mint, place it on my tongue.

  Adjusting myself, I realize that my back is stiff. Then I have a clear memory of Sonya and me, walking in my neighborhood and talking about the trip. We decided that taking a trip together would either make or break our friendship.

  I cycle through snapshots of memory:

  Sonya and I stand in a sweater store in the Reykjavik airport, the one stopover on our trip. The sweaters are beautiful, and I covet one. But they’re too expensive and bulky to fit in my small knapsack, so I pass.

  Sonya and I walk through Luxembourg City. Remnants of an old wall encircle the city, which goes back to Roman times when two important roads crossed at its center. At some point, those walls came down. Later, in the early medieval period, more walls were constructed, then during the Renaissance, another defensive wall went up. Walls were dismantled and built again. In fact, the history of Luxemburg could be told by its walls.

  I think of “Mending Wall,” in which Frost writes: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall / that wants it down.” I open the Altoid tin with one hand, popping another mint in my mouth, as I slow the car into a traffic jam ahead.

  At t
he edge of the city, Sonya and I walk a road near an open field, look down on railroad tracks, then, walking further, where buildings no longer obstruct our view, two rivers converge around what appears to be the old city. I’m moved by the stone architecture, crumbling walls, the city’s visceral history.

  Now, a series of linked snaps: By the end of the first day, Sonya and I are sitting in the back of a car, traveling the autobahn, zooming toward Paris. Wolfgang and Helmut, two German boys, laugh in the front seat as they offer us cigarettes, which we refuse. The boys are charming, if grotesque, caricatures. Wolfgang wears huge square-framed glasses, and Helmut has thick rubbery-looking Germanic lips.

  Neither boy speaks good English, and neither Sonya nor I speak good German or French. So, we laugh, trying to communicate in three pigeon languages.

  Soon, however, we realize that “Helmet-Hair” and “Wolfy,” the nicknames we’ve given the boys, expect us to sleep with them. When we make it clear that that’s not part of our plan, they abruptly let us out of the car. But by this time, however, we’re already in Paris.

  I remember the traffic as we enter the city. One road, in particular, part of a Parisian suburb, reminds me of Queens Boulevard. Seeing it so clearly now unsettles me, and I feel a wave of nausea. Snap. I pop another Altoid into my mouth.

  There’s been an accident on I-40. A Ford Explorer has overturned onto the grassy shoulder. An ambulance and two police cars attend the scene, and although both lanes of the interstate are clear, drivers are rubber-necking, causing the slowdown.

  I’m interested, too. As I glance toward the shoulder, I see a young woman, an older man—her father?—and a Yorkshire Terrier on a leash. But I can’t see who’s hurt or how serious the injuries are.

  In a moment, all the cars pick up speed, and I accelerate.

  Another snap: the Paris YWCA. Sonya and I share a small room with two sets of bunkbeds. I look out the window to a spiral fire escape. Sonya, a great photographer, takes a wonderful black and white photo of the staircase—a photo I still have.