(30 Dec. 86) Tomorrow night the New Year begins and Eniwetak could well be the quietest place on earth. Constable Patrick showed me a place in the trees, a moist area near the helipad, where he planted some taro. They wouldn’t get too large here, he said, because the rainfall is not enough. On Ponape, a mountainous island to the west of Kwajalein, some areas get four hundred inches a year on the mountain tops and taro plants can weigh several hundred pounds.
The black birds are nesting in the trees now, spending all day collecting leaves and twigs. I’ve noticed some dead birds on the beach, their feet stuck together or their wings stuck to their sides by a glue-like substance. This substance appears to come from the twigs and leaves the birds have collected for their nests and which are clinging to various parts of their bodies. I checked on the east side and the missile is still there, the sun glaring off the gray metal. The cool breeze from the lagoon waters tends to slow me down and a mellow, dreamy feeling takes over. Still, somewhere in my mind I think of things that I’ve done and witnessed and I can understand how distorted, how far from from the truth we are. And I remember those few moments when it all fell into place.
I was young when I met Jonathan, a black man who lived a few blocks from our house in a southern town. Jonathan wore coveralls and a straw hat. He had snow white hair and drove through the neighborhood in a buckboard pulled by a mule named Sadie. Jonathan smiled and told me he named the mule after his wife. Sadie wore a fedora and plodded along while pedestrians on the sidewalk passed him. My aunt would occasionally buy vegetables from him. In my eyes he was a saint.
A few years later I was fortunate enough to move to a place in the country. The car was packed with clothes and any items that would fit. We drove out of of town, south on Houston Avenue. Near the city limits I could see the Oak tree on the left side of the street, in an empty lot across from the entrance to Sylvian Drive. Something familiar appeared in the field beneath its branches. As we got closer, I stared at the scene and I felt a lump in my throat.
Jonathan sat on the ground, next to the tree, head hanging down, hands clasped around his knees, a few feet from the vegetable wagon. I squinted hard before I could locate Sadie. It lay on its side, all four legs straight out, still attached to the wagon it had pulled faithfully all those years. I turned to say something to my aunt but she and the driver had somehow not noticed the tragedy by the roadside and we had already passed the tree. I focused out of the rear window in time to see the death scene growing smaller.
It was then that I understood but could not put it into words. It appeared without fanfare. It is, a mentor later told me, the gateless gate, and those who pass through it “walk freely through the universe.” That is from the Mumon-Kan.
I only knew at the time that a great burden had been lifted from me. All the contradictions, the things people believe in, the ideas that cause some to hate and to kill-were all swept away.
Jonathan sat under the tree mourning his companion. And Sadie was just a memory. The present moment is all that we have. In that moment the universe is being created. And in that moment the universe is being destroyed. That is from The Spirit of Zen, by Alan W. Watts.
Unfortunately, those special moments are fleeting and we all must return to the world of contradictions and confusion.
Filed under: Almost Paradise Volume 2
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