Every now and again, I still get a postcard from her.
THE SPECIALIST IN TRUTH
Once there was a woman who lived in the backcountry of the American West. She was skillful in many different kinds of activities. She did mechanical work with automobiles, and she could read Sanskrit, as well. She could milk a cow and do calculus. She could sail a boat, and she knew the names of all the families of flowering plants. But however efficiently and happily our friend studied, or worked at different tasks, it seemed that her ignorance increased at a faster rate than her knowledge. What was worse, she was compelled to practice unremittingly both her old and her newly learned skills, and review the whole stock of information she had acquired; all as if she were burdened with a child always growing, but never growing up.
After considering these difficulties, one bright morning this woman decided to abandon her way of life and become a specialist in truth. Such a profession is not common, and because in the time our friend lived, there was (as usual) an infinite supply of truth, but little demand, the pay was very low. But our friend countenanced these hardships because sometimes the pay was so low it made her wealthy, and because her career was successful by the most old-fashioned standards of worldly accounting; that is, it was recognized by coyotes, and accepted by her friends and by the beautiful afternoon thunderheads.
It must be said that this change in real work did not result in any apparent change in her labors. She still traveled about the country and took whatever job was at hand, and she always had many choices, because she could do so many things. But her real work was contained secretly within her apparent work, just as the branching network of human veins, if understood aright, contains the river systems of continents.
And so did she live, practicing her specialty. When, for example, she repaired a car, she would make certain to align her work with the real necessities of the car’s owners. One time she overhauled an engine so that it would break down precisely two years later, stranding in a small country town a man and woman who, having there the time and one another alone, finally gave themselves up to love. They were meant one day to find out more than just the nature of sweetness, but what is more essential—to find out where sweetness is meant to lead us.
Another time our friend went to work on a cattle ranch and in the course of building and mending fences created patterns of wire and wood so dazzling that the old ranch couple were visited by an unfathomable joy. It was as if the land they loved had written a letter to them, at last. They broke out the whiskey, invited over their friends, clicked glasses, and rollicked all night; and thereafter the whole community lived in such a way as to make their houses in later years honored among mountains.
These effects, of course, were not generally observed, and so our friend was able to live free of the fanfare of other people’s attention, and move about at her liberty. Once for a joke, while teaching science in high school, she described the equation for the chemical transformation that created jewels in the earth; then she showed how the selfsame formula could be used to describe the coming of clarity and beauty to a conversation between friends. And she developed another set of equations, for stories and poems, that allowed her students to calculate the velocity of a text in the direction of paradise. This work will become the foundation of a new science in the humanities, to be known as the vector calculus of eschatology.
From this manner of working, she concluded that to get ahead in the world, it is only necessary that the world get ahead in your understanding. Or to put it another way, to be a specialist in work, it is necessary that your work, whatever its form, make you a specialist in all the cardiac proprieties and secret generosities. To put it another way, we are all on the payroll of this planet, or to put it another way—there’s another way.
Told to me by an investment banker in New York City. She lives in a raucous tumult of numbers and commerce, yet she seemed always to take the long view, and play the long game. There is some way that, for her, facts unfold in space, and so a single data point is never isolated; it is, rather more like the aleph, the point that holds the entire universe.
We were talking about money and death.
THE LETTERS EVERY DAY
Once there was a busy woman who was a banker and a merchant. Day after day she watched over accounts, made loans, analyzed the social and economic evolution of the time, and presided over the labor of hundreds of her fellows. All the while, she was adjudging the quality of the goods she traded, keeping in her head information she needed to ascertain just prices, and calculating the most opportune times of participation in the markets. During all this high industry, she received many letters on business matters, some of which influenced crucially her decisions.
It was in midlife, at the height of her powers, that she began receiving letters that bore no return address. These carefully sealed mailings, of elegant stationery, carried on the face of an envelope her address (correct even when she was traveling, and even after she had changed her post box); and, inside, a single sheet of paper folded precisely, but bearing upon it not a single word. Day after day, wherever she was, she received these extraordinary mailings amidst the analyses and solicitations, bills, remittances, friendly words, challenges, numbers, and summaries.
At first she was mildly irritated, and tossed out daily the blank, remarkable, unexpected letters. But as time went on she was visited by an inclination to save them, and, as her affairs began truly to prosper, she placed them, one by one, in a locked drawer in her private office. And she began to look forward to the arrival of these letters, lying there correct and undisturbed in the fever of correspondence. Finally, one day, at the end of an especially mercurial period of trading, she began to read them.
She began to read them after she conceived the idea that just as there are many kinds of letters, there are many ways of reading. And just as it was necessary, by the use of vision, to understand a letter, so she needed now, by the use of understanding, to envision a letter. The trouble is that understanding—the clear, unified, direct perception of reality—usually has no open place to work with full potency, no place not already congested thickly by the commotion of human affairs—our days full of appointments, air full of smoke and noise, letters full of words.
Beset as she was, she understood that the blank letters presented to her a field where another kind of idea could appear, informed by that which is blessed beyond language. That is, following an old pattern of learning, she revisited the source of language, a place where language is clear because it is pure understanding; and she changed herself. She brought her literacy to its natural conclusion: she began to read the original words, from which all the others are derived: they are to ordinary words as the foaming and moonstruck ocean is to a quiet forest pond.
Such ability brought indescribable changes to this woman’s practical life. Suffice it to say that she began to work for subtle, certain, far-reaching purposes, and wielded her uncanny authority according to more playful, almost musical rules. In addition to the many businesses she analyzed, she came to study another kind of enterprise, more unified, of more worldly scope and reference—call it the enterprise of sunlight. So it was she came to concentrate her labors, in hopes of learning a work that would always be hers.
After her death, the man who administered her estate was surprised to find among her effects, in a locked drawer of her desk, many letters that seemed to be perfectly blank, but that were nonetheless creased and worn by the hands of a woman, folded and refolded, indented along the edges by the vigor of her grip. Some of them, especially the ones received toward the end of her life, showed few signs of having been handled—as though they had been opened with infinite care and longing.
So few knew the truth; everyone remembered her joy.
Cool in a summer dress, I choose From among heaped piles of books.
Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat . . . Every place the wind carries me is home.
—YU XUANJI (9TH C)
O wind, do not stop—My little boat of raspberry wood Has not yet reached the Immortal Islands.
—LI QINGZHAO (12TH C)
Those that are worthy of Life are of Miracle, for Life is Miracle, and Death, harmless as a Bee, except to those who run—
—EMILY DICKINSON, IN A LETTER TO HER SISTER
I will not serve God like a laborer, in expectation of my wages.
—RABIA EL-ADAWIA (8TH C)
PART II
Told to me in Boston, at dinner near the sea, by an elusive woman I had known for about a month. The storyteller, as it turned out, if she was willing to go with you to some solitary place at night, played the flute and spoke so clearly that it was as if one could see starlight through her phrases. I had found out just how much she loved candlelight, but until she told me this story, I did not fully understand why.
CANDLETALK
Once upon a time a woman in her study lit a tall candle and found to her surprise that it did not, as she expected, spread a uniform light around the room. The candle, in fact, would sometimes cast all its light in a particular direction, at other times flash rhythmically, as though to some unheard music; and occasionally it would illuminate itself only. All this contrary behavior, needless to say, gave our friend the willies; but her curiosity prevented her from throwing away the truculent column of wax.
One night after the little candle had done all sorts of eerie tricks—shooting light playfully about, putting itself out and bursting back again into flame, and twirling on its stand (our friend half-expected it to sit down and read the newspaper), it seemed like the time had come to address a question to this strange light-maker.
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat (for she had never before conversed with a candle), “tell me, why don’t you behave yourself?”
“Well,” said the candle mockingly, “why don’t you? You took me into your study days ago and finally you say a word to me! Never mind that it is only to ask a rude question, at least you are showing some signs of being a human. It’s about time. I was afraid I had been purchased by a bread fungus or something.”
“I beg your pardon,” said our friend, incensed at being reprimanded by a candle. “It’s you who are rude. How can I read by a light like yours, running all over the room like a dog? And what thanks do I get for giving you a home here with me—none at all, none at all—you do whatever you please, even though you are only wax. I support you and you take advantage of me; next thing, you’ll want piano lessons or something.”
“If you will permit a comment from someone who is merely wax,” said the candle with dignity, “there is more to candlelight than you know, and the more you know, the better we will get along. You should consider yourself on notice that I associate only with the knowledgeable among you.”
And so, far into the night, and confronting by the way a number of the most humdrum matters of beauty and work, of mind and body, of light and the strategies of light, our friend and her candle debated, insulted, entreated, cajoled, taunted one another, and generally had a high time; until they felt enfolded in the bright sympathies of an otherworldly friendship.
She learned, as the candle burned down, that she could preserve its volubility and intelligence by using its flame to light another candle. By such care, she kept her little companion alive.
So it was that, by such bemused partnership, our friend continued her life with a rare sense of participation. Sometimes the candle flame would lead her to shape her ideas differently—she could, for instance, test the quality of her ideas by adjudging how exactly they fit in stencils of light the candle provided. Sometimes the candle would fall across volumes in her library whose contents bore importantly on her preoccupations. When it was more proper to greet the stars than remain indoors, the candle would dim to a mere brushstroke of light, until our friend had gone out and made the necessary salutations. Best of all, the candle sometimes spread a curtain of flame across the room, and when she drew aside that curtain, she was able to see visions of great practical value, which taught her many eccentric skills. For example, she learned how to walk the earth at night and turn the slow voltage of messages she received from the soil into prophecies useful and electric in the morning. She learned also how to discover and use her knowledge of the future, yet keep herself anonymous; so that, when terrible perils were turned aside by means of her foresight, she never was disrupted by people coming around to be grateful.
It amused our friend that some folks she knew took pride in thinking the course of their lives resulted from their own decisions, their personal strategies, the rightful imposition of their will on the world. Especially funny to her now was an idea held dear by many of them—the idea that just humankind, and not each thing in this world, is alive.
A securities attorney in Palo Alto, California, told me this story over a glass of wine. I knew she had worked with many remarkable entrepreneurs, but I had no idea how far afield some of her colleagues had gone. It may be that for some investors, participation in the venture capital community leads to ventures of soul, in ways that are often hidden, so that they might be more effective.
THE PROBLEM WITH COMMODITIES
Once there was a woman who made her living by selling places in heaven, as one would sell reserved seats. Since heaven is eternal, the interest was high; but since she could not guarantee the seats, the price was negotiable.
If she just could guarantee the seats, she felt sure of prosperity. And so our entrepreneur, who had the most detailed, outrageous aspirations, and wanted simply to do her work as well as she could, set off upon a quest to make herself the woman who could provide such assurance. After many a journey to the ends of the earth (some of which did not require her to leave her house); after talking to many a wayfarer of boisterous sagacity (even though these conversations were sometimes no more than a few whispered phrases); after reading whole skiesful of poetry, until the words on the page danced, until the words went off in a pyrotechnics of meaning (even though this is how everybody reads anyway); after taking lovers whose ministrations on clear summer days set off through her flesh prolonged and remarkable displays of heat lightning (even though this had been her habit in any case for some years); after all these ordinary efforts, she came into a calm and exact knowledge of the configuration of heaven.
Unfortunately, it proved harder than ever to sell her seats, which she could now guarantee with aplomb. Those who had spiritual interests of their own did not want her seats, because they knew she had obtained her knowledge by trying to become a better businesswoman—and who could become wise with such vile and crude motivations? And others turned her away because if there was no risk in their purchases, they had no interest; it just wasn’t thrilling enough. Yet others rejected her because she was an independent woman who had her own sources of wealth and life, and that angered them. But most of them turned her away because in order to purchase a guaranteed seat, they had to become more like her—focused, efficient, businesslike. This they were unwilling to do, because they had all learned long ago in school that commerce and soul have nothing to do with one another.
From these difficulties our entrepreneur came to understand the confusions in economic and metaphysical affairs, and the general decline in professionalism that resulted: people thought that buying and selling was a matter of calculation and survival, and not simultaneously a matter of subtle reckoning and invisible purposes.
She did, incidentally, one thing even more baffling to her customers. Sometimes, instead of selling the seats, she gave them away—but only to those who could afford them.
A story from Eureka, Nevada. The bar mentioned is a splendid one—a place of wild coincidence and strange visitations. That is, a standard country bar in Nevada. The woman I met there later took me for a ride in her pickup truck, which she drove as if she were piloting a rocket. I expected any minute to be weightless and looking in wonder down upon the earth.
She told me that afternoon: “We live in such ran
corous times. When men hear us tell of any good thing happening, they call it sentimental. Such men, of course, are doomed.”
THE ENGINEERING OF FATE
Because of a red-tailed hawk, a worn bolt on a pickup, and a tune played on a country fiddle, I gave birth to a girl on the first day of spring.
This is my story: one day I was driving along the dusty roads of backcountry Nevada, and that was when I saw the hawk. He was riding a steady wind out of the west, still and marvelous, as if he had married the air.
As for myself, I’d been living in a line cabin, trying to restore some order to my mind. I had been happy enough, and prosperous enough, working as an engineer at the University of Nevada; but I felt some terrible, acid shadow within. I felt as if everything was going exceptionally well, but that, lamentably, I was wasting my life. My mind was losing its suppleness and its future.
I took a leave of absence, moved to the line cabin near Eureka, and started to take my time with the world. I finally had a chance to read, for long hours, in joy. In the late afternoon I’d watch the sagebrush, spread out like a fragrant coverlet upon the desert, and attend to the light as it withdrew into the sky. I studied the coyotes. I followed the wind. I sought out the smallest insects.
It all led to that hawk. There he was, so inviting, because of his buoyancy and blessed concentration. I pulled over and watched, determined that I would stay with him, as long as he was there, even if it meant that he was waiting to fly among the stars. He hung there, gathering the grace of the blue desert sky. He looked in my direction, I swear, then let the wind turn him around in a long patient arc of wings and accomplished beauty. I headed on into Eureka.
The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace Page 4
