David's Inferno

by David Blistein

  I thought about this bridge a lot. I mean, a lot. I mean, a real lot. As I drove and biked around, I looked carefully at other small arched footbridges. I studied pictures in books. I measured the span several times a week because I kept forgetting the numbers or where I’d written them down. I settled on a width and then realized it wouldn’t be wide enough for my lawn tractor. I decided to put in railings and then realized that the lawn tractor cart might occasionally be loaded with sprawling saplings and brush and the railing would get in the way.

  Occasionally, I’d try to reason with myself: “Dave, calm down, it’s just a little footbridge.” But the other voices in my head refused to listen. Eventually, through extraordinary engineering insight (which is to say I found some graph paper), I realized that if I bought three rough-cut 2 × 12’s that were eight feet long—no, better make it ten feet; no eight feet will be fine; no ten feet, just to be safe—I could cut arcs in the tops and bottoms, nail down some planking, and be done with it.

  But where could I get rough 2 × 12’s? And, if I went up to ten feet how would I transport them? Did I need to dunk them in a high-powered preservative? Was there something less toxic to use? What about the arc? It looked good on graph paper, but what would it be like to walk across? Most, importantly, how the hell was I going to layout and then cut eight-foot arcs in a 2x12? Okay. I think I got it! But wait … I’m going to have to dig up a couple of those stepping stones I just put in! I could go on and on. And did.

  Eventually:

  1. A friend not only knew where to get the boards, but convinced me that if I used hemlock, the bridge would last a long time even if I didn’t use preservative. Of course, it took two weeks before we were able to be in the same place at the same time as the sawmill guy. But eventually I drove the boards to my house—sticking out of the passenger-side window with red flags on the ends, like hostages trying to get the attention of passing cars.

  2. I figured out how to mark the curve. I laid the 2 × 12’s against one wall in the basement, put a nail in the floor on the opposite side, tied a long string to the nail, and attached a pencil at the other end. After fiddling with the length of the string a bit, I was able to draw roughly similar arcs on all three boards.

  3. I convinced another friend that someone as unstable as me could be trusted with his Sawzall.

  4. I bought brand new ripping blades.

  5. I cut the arcs—which, while not easy, was enhanced by my demonic mood.

  6. I got the first friend over to help me prop up the three 2 × 12’s as I laid a few 2 × 4’s on top to hold them steady.

  7. I nailed the rest of the 2 × 4’s down. And only bent a few nails in the process. Although, I did end up a couple of 2 × 4’s short, of course …

  I walk across that bridge almost every day. From where I live to where I write. And back. Over the last few years, the water, as is its nature, has started eroding the banks below the ends of the bridge. So, a few weeks ago, I reinforced that area with heavy rocks. I still need to put some flat rocks under the ends of the bridge. It’ll never be completely stable. But what is?

  Project #3: The Invasive. July, 2006. From my perspective, humans are the only truly invasive species. After all, an “invasive” is described as a “non-native species whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic harm, environmental harm, or harm to human health. These species grow and reproduce rapidly, causing major disturbance to the areas in which they are present.” Need I say more?

  One of the more common invasives around here is the multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora)—a beautiful, crawling vine, full of tiny fragrant rose flowers. Crawling is a polite word for it. This vine can overwhelm just about any tree or bush it gets its prickly tendrils around. I didn’t really get what the big deal was until one day I biked past a neglected field that had mutiflora growing in one solid mass all the way up its hillside. Still, it’s not quarantined in Vermont. Just on the watch list. Dwight Miller, the aforementioned late great patriarch of the orchards that surround us, used to watch it all the time. And, in his inimitable ADHD way, tried to control it using a combination of his beloved “Brush Hog,” Yankee wit, and, if all else failed, benign neglect.

  We had one major multiflora rose on our property which had begun to envelope a tree that, at the time, I thought was a young multi-trunked black birch. Over the previous few years, I’d grown kinda guilty about letting the vine keep growing. Not just because it looked like it was subjecting the tree to a long, slow strangulation, but because I knew that birds were happily eating the berries and depositing the seeds in Dwight’s orchards.

  In 2006, “feeling kinda guilty” meant “thinking obsessively and feeling overwhelmed with guilt.”

  After consulting with Dwight, I learned that the vine propagated through its roots as well as its seeds. So I couldn’t just cut the thing down, I had to dig up the roots—which were busy underground doing the same thing as the vines were doing up above.

  I started by pulling away all the vines I could without ripping my arms to shreds. Then I went at the thing with a shovel and pick axe, following the distinctive roots—inside they’re a bright mustardy color—until I was confident I had removed every single trace of this “unwanted” plant that had invaded our personal piece of paradise. I don’t remember how long it took. In my memory, it was days, weeks, months. So it must have at least been a few hours.

  Eventually, I was done. Having spent an extraordinary amount of time sweating mentally and figuratively over a project that really could have been ignored—or taken care of with a chain saw (and a brief yearly follow-up) in less than a minute.

  I’ve always been good—some might say too good—at identifying with plants, animals, and inanimate objects. In any event, looking at that multi-trunked tree, freed at last from its crown of thorns, gave me a feeling bordering on freedom … release. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

  I learned later that the tree I liberated was a Japanese Bayberry, which is also considered an invasive. But, I don’t worry so much about things like that anymore … even though it sure seems like there are a lot of berries on the thing … even though a few small seedlings appeared last year in the middle of a cluster of ferns 100 yards away. I just dig them up before they get out of hand.

  Project #4: The Septic Tank. Yes, the Septic Tank. November, 2006. Every old house has its rituals. You learn them one by one. When to get the chimney cleaned. How to install the idiosyncratic storm windows on the screened-in porch. Which pipes lead where and—most important—where the shutoff valves are. If you have a septic tank, where it is and how often to get it pumped out.

  Setting a series of heavy stones in place to make a walkway that didn’t quite lead where I wanted it to go gave me pause.

  Building a footbridge from the house to the cabin—connecting a narrow stream but wide psychological divide—gave me hope that one day I would get to the other side.

  Digging down deep to get out all the roots of an allegedly invasive and definitely thorny bush, reminded me it wasn’t easy to get free—but that it was possible.

  The symbolism of having our septic tank pumped, however, simply made me smile. Still makes me smile.

  I knew where our septic tank was—at least I had found a treasure-type map with obscure symbols and bad spelling. But, six years in, I still hadn’t had it pumped. And November 2006 was the perfect time. I wasn’t doing a whole lot to contribute to our little family’s health and welfare. And, while I wasn’t sure that having the septic tank pumped would necessarily endear me to Wendy, I knew that by then she (and I) appreciated any gesture at normalcy.

  This is how to get your septic tank pumped: (1) Call septic tank guy. (2) Make appointment. (3) Find septic tank. (4) Dig gently until the top is exposed. (5) Wait for septic guy to show up.

  Five steps that anyone old enough to pick up a phone and a shovel should easily be able to do.

  It wasn’t easy. Not for me. Steps #1 & #2 were the hardest. Primarily, bec
ause I had to speak coherently on the phone and commit to being home and functional on a specific day at a specific time—ready to deal in a grownup way with a total stranger who was holding a rather large hose with a rather large diameter that could suck up everything within reach.

  Having dodged the appointment bullets, I had to bite the next two: find it and dig. Frankly, I didn’t know what to expect. I went online (seriously!) I wanted to get an idea of how deep it might be … what diameter … how you actually got the top off … questions that, really, you don’t need to know to expose the top of a septic tank.

  Imagine my euphoria when I finally hit pay dirt … actually, pay cement! Imagine my pride when the guy with the big hose came and I was able to show him the top, exposed for all to see. Imagine the relief I felt when I confessed I couldn’t get the top off, and he said no problem—that was his job!—at which point he materialized a special long, hooked, iron rod designed specifically for this purpose. Imagine the thrill of standing there shooting the breeze, and then some, with this consummate professional; calmly asking obsessively detailed questions about sewage:

  “So, how often …?” “What’s the deal …?” “What’s that for …?” And, “What’s the worst …”

  I’m going to spare you the answers … okay, fine, the answers are:

  (1) Depends how many teenagers live in the house, (2) Whether you’re grandfathered, (3) Gray water, and (4) Dental floss.

  At the top of Mount Purgatory, after ridiculing the stammering and stuttering Dante for being so clueless, Beatrice takes pity on him and lets an ethereal woman named Matelda bathe him in the River Lethe in order to erase the memories of his sinful life. (More on that later!)

  Similarly, as I, stammering and stuttering, thanked the septic guy and watched him drive away, my irreverent inner adult looked at my manic inner child and suggested, with a devilish grin, that we too had been cleansed.

  To take serious liberties with Dante’s last lines of Purgatory: “I returned from this most holy of waters regenerated, just as trees are renewed with new foliage after harshest of winters, more than ready and willing to mount unto the stars.”

  Life wasn’t going to get much easier for a while, but my sense of humor was recovering.

  FOR DANTE, EVEN THE GARDEN OF EDEN IS IN PURGATORY … a place where you have to pay some final dues before being allowed into Paradise. It’s here that Dante finally sees Beatrice. Instead of the rapturous reunion he’s been dreaming of all these years, she puts the hammer down. She insists that he admit that he’s guilty of all kinds of sins and random idiocies—particularly the fact that back when they were mere children, he mistook his puppy-love fantasies of her earthly flesh for the radiance of God. She also explains that the only reason she went to the trouble of sending Virgil down to get him was a touch of pity and, more important, that one of her jobs was to reveal The Truth to some half-decent poet so he could go back and share the good (and bad) news with the rest of humanity.

  After a while, you wish he’d tell her to, well, shut up! Since when did beings of pure light become such nags? Enough already! But no, Dante just takes it as pitifully as an adolescent who’s been caught by his dream girl satisfying his more carnal desires with a girl “on the wrong side of the tracks.” He keeps groveling. And not just for one purgative scene. But for canto after canto. Even into Paradise where he simply trades in guilt for self-deprecation.

  Oddly, back here on earth, this is the period when Dante begins to act a little more empowered. He’s around 50 years old. Still in exile. Still wandering the roads of Italy, following the path of his own private purgatory. While usually less than 100 miles from Florence, he remains a world apart.

  But, then he gets a message from back home. The City Fathers say he can return. But there are two catches. One, he has to pay a large fine. More significantly, he has to admit he was wrong. He refuses.

  Here’s a guy who walked stooped over on the First Terrace of Purgatory in solidarity with people guilty of the sin of Pride, but he still has too much pride to make a simple apology?

  Actually, you couldn’t pay him enough to go back to Florence, let alone have him pay you. And as for being wrong, those people don’t have a clue what it really means to confess. Plus, Dante’s no fool. He knows now that his reputation is growing, the Florentines want to claim him for their own. Even after he dies, they spend years trying to get their hands on his remains.

  To paraphrase Elvis Costello, Dante would have been disgusted. Now he’s just amused. He doesn’t have time for this any more. He’s no longer dreaming about going back. He’s dreaming about going forward.

  But before Beatrice is willing to escort him into Paradise, he has to drink from the waters of the rivers Lethe and Eunoe. The first, as we just mentioned, washes away all his recollections of his sin. The second firmly implants the memories of how good he’s been (which might imply that you have to be in total denial to get into Heaven).

  How can you write about things you don’t remember? This conundrum has vaguely troubled Dantean scholars for many years. Some point out that Beatrice was really just saying he had to forget his own sins—to hold firmly to his own goodness in order to have the clarity and stamina to rake everyone else across the coals. Others suggest that since his memory was good and he was allowed to hold onto his strengths, he can remember his memories … an argument that, if nothing else, explains why I wasn’t cut out for academia.

  All I can say is that after major cataclysms—whether inner or outer—you are literally no longer the same person. Many aspects of yourself—fears, troubling memories, resentments; all those little things that you feel have been tucked away, holding you back, making life more difficult in so many different ways—have been dislodged. This is your opportunity to let those “sins” go, while setting more firmly the foundations of your life going forward.

  It would be nice to think that a quick dip in two rivers would take care of all this. I suppose, in the case of “spontaneous enlightenments,” that may happen. But I daresay for most of us it’s an ongoing process. We may only have a few “major cataclysms” in our lives, but we always have opportunities to acknowledge, embrace, or make light of our thousands of unnecessary sufferings. In other words, ours is not one long descent into Hell and another long climb up Mount Purgatory. Rather, we go a few steps forward and then some back. Admittedly, for many people, there seems to come a time when they just hunker down for the duration. But, whether for the first 10 or first 100 years, for just one or many lifetimes, our pilgrim’s progress is an incremental process as we slowly get lighter and lighter, clearer and clearer.

  The Labyrinth

  It begins. It ends. It ends. It begins.

  —PAUL REPS

  A CENTURY BEFORE Dante began writing The Divine Comedy, some French monks 750 miles away were laying out their vision of a spiritual journey.

  For most religions and spiritual traditions, that journey leads to some ultimate goal. Whether it’s Heaven, enlightenment, a blissful merging with God, or a better life next time around, the general direction of the journey is up there.

  With all due respect to Jules Verne, the depths of the earth are fathomable. Every kid knows that … eventually you get to China. Or in Dante’s case, somewhere off the east coast of New Zealand. But the sky … that’s truly beyond any fathoming. If there’s a great beyond, it’s up there.

  Dante provided as powerful an image of this as anybody ever has. Down, down, down into the depths of Hell. Until you burst through to the other side, behold the Mountain of Purgatory, and start working your way up toward Paradise.

  In our ecumenical age, followers of just about any religion or spiritual path will graciously acknowledge that there are many paths that, ultimately, take you to the same place. The top of the same mountain. All that matters is that you keep going up and not in circles. In fact, most spiritual teachers would advise you not to follow my path—the Way of Dave—which involves crisscrossing all over the place ‘til
you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.

  So, what were those very Christian monks doing when they laid paving stones in the form of a labyrinth—a two-dimensional design that goes nowhere, on the floor of the nave at Chartres Cathedral in the early 1200s?

  They weren’t rejecting the idea that heaven is up there. One look at the Rose Window makes that awe-inspiringly clear. Yet, where the monks’ mortal feet hit the floor—almost invisible to all those eyes gazing upward—they built a labyrinth. A labyrinth. You walk to the center. You walk out. Seemingly no further along or higher up than when you started. You can make it a kind of pilgrimage—some walk it on their knees—but you still end up back where you started.

  As a living representation of a soul’s journey, however, it’s easily as powerful an image as Dante’s. In fact, having now seen the limits of perfection, he’d probably prefer it.

  The labyrinth at Chartres is the first one I ever saw. It was the summer of 1976 and I was with a group of people searching for enlightenment or some reasonable facsimile. We were there on the summer solstice because that’s one of the few days the labyrinth isn’t covered with chairs. It’s also the day that a fairly perfect circle of sunlight falls in a certain way on a certain flagstone that’s set somewhat askew.

  The labyrinth didn’t make much of an impression on me. Neither did the circle of light, around which my friends were crowded in the hopes of seeing the face of God. Thanks to too little sleep and too much cognac, I was in a fit of manic transcendence and saw God just about everywhere. In fact, I was beginning to wish he’d leave me alone so I could find some inconspicuous corner and take a nap.