Chapter 41

I see some challenges, feel them. The problem of fairness. Of eating. Of sleeping and waking. Of living among one another, lighting fires and breathing them in. I feel connected to these problems. Disconnected from them. I feel as though I do not have the yoke of the problems around me, and yet I feel compelled to engage with them, to defeat them. I wonder if this compulsion is a problem. I see people obsessed with solving problems manufacturing distilled problems. The problem of grain solved with grain alcohol. The problems of interactions solved with politics. The problems of living solved with taking money, giving out less. My feet are firmly planed on this tree and it doesn’t feel like a problem. The ants on my toes are not problematic. I don’t feel as though I’m surrounded by problems until the roar of a jet engine or the smell of smoke wafts over me. And the shouts of a child, calling out about problems in the river, but as a joke to her father. Students carry papers and look for animals, calling out to each other. A drop of rain may have just fallen on my chest, or it was a tiny bit of bird poop. Kayakers pass by and I want to join them. I drain my afternoon coffee and feel the flurries, buzzing, the straining inside of myself against bonds that are not there. Coffee tightens my imagination, squeezes out the unusual chemicals, and leads me to hear what I don’t want to hear. I hear the rage of the backpack wearing students, carrying their papers, and see a middle finger waved in a face. Jarring. I go back to listening to the birds. Are you in my stream of consciousness with me? Am I in my stream? I do feel as though I am going downstream. Each paddle stroke feels as though it’s accelerating me at a pace beyond the paddle moving water, so I must be propelled along. The paddling Wisconsin drinkers roll by. Talking about how clear the water is. They are in a stream. Are they conscious of the stream? They see the “big fish in here”. “They’re so big”. They are going upstream. I’m watching a chest-tattooed fisherman, who’s watching his daughter as he tries to tempt the fish that he’s standing in the water next to. He finds one to become his prey, unhooks, and releases. The sun appears to be cooking the stream. It’s better that I’m between the trees right now, rather than being inside the stream. I think of Holden Caulfield’s stream, his frenetic days of train conversations and world- & school-rejection. I think of the Confederacy of Dunces; more rejections of society, communicated in detail. I don’t think I see the problems as things to oppose, to fight, to rage against. I see both the potent and impotent rejection of society as a fight to the death, fishing for sharks that will come over the side of the boat. Freedom, solutions, needs-meetings, I believe these things will happen as people re-evaluate themselves and their own lives. Bringing greater awareness into one’s day, into one’s life, of one’s precarity. We are candles, lit by the grace of the windless night, and we must pray to each other, gathering together to re-light those who were not in the lee of the gust. Each other, as well. All life is in the lee of the wind sometime, threatened with the wind at other times. The green and the purple and the yellow must see into each others’ eyes and trunks, and the eyes and trunks of themselves, and see sparks that light the flames above the wicks, dying to add wax to fellow living things. Those who passed away for the oil fields must not see their lives wasted in an unthinking conflagration. We might thoughtfully light our way, wax our wicks, and re-light the flames that flicker out before the wick cools. I’m not here for solutions, a solution. I’m not a problem solver. I’m here to see the nature of my flame, know the wind when I feel it, and huddle close to the life, lighting the candles of my fellows.