(Just) Who Are You?

     Something seemed to change in me as I returned from my recent trip, a spark perhaps diminished a bit.  Was it the crowds of Spring Break (my friends and others we spoke to kept saying, "we've never seen it so crowded") or the rainy and cold weather that seemed odd for this time of year (some days we simply didn't hike due to the inclement weather); or was it just what was going on in my head?  Why was this desolate landscape of eroded stone again drawing me into its clutches?  My friends kept commenting on the beauty of it all but I had to remind them that we may be noticing that "beauty" because we knew how fortunate we were...we weren't lost or searching for water or growing desperate for food; we had a car parked at the end of the trail.  I couldn't help but think of the first settlers or even the initial group of Native Americans who looked over this great expanse in both awe and in fear.  Where to go next?  Where might game and water be?  Where to find shelter after traveling for days to months?  How does one make the decision to stop, to plant roots and say "here" (said one Park sign along a trail, after the Native Americans had long left the area early Sedona gained a reputation as a destination for "retirees").

     Ann Patchett wrote an essay in The New Yorker about clearing out, not quite physically moving out of her home but going through her things as if she were about to do just that, an acknowledgement by her that: ...possessions stood between me and death.  They didn't protect me from death, but they created a barrier in my understanding, like layers of bubble wrap.  She begins to go through her things, room by room, checking (and chucking) out her 12 crystal champagne flutes and other glasses, her too-many dish towels and mixing bowls.  As a famous writer and champion of saving small independent book stores, she asks: Who did I think I was going to be next?  F. Scott Fitzgerald?  Jay Gatsby?  Would I drink champagne while standing in a fountain?  Would I throw a brandy snifter into the fireplace at the end of an affair?...I found little things that had become important over time for no reason other than I'd kept them for so long: a small wooden rocking horse that a high-school friend had brought me from Japan; two teeth that had been extracted from my head before I got braces, at thirteen; a smooth green stone that looked like a scarab -- I couldn't remember where it had come from.  I got rid of them all.

200 yards into one of the less-popular hikes of Sedona

      Admittedly I was not much different.  When my state-run liquor store began closing out a scotch I tend to enjoy, I bought a case (in my defense, and lest one gets the false impression that I am either rich or an alcoholic, the store was closing the scotch out at nearly one-third the price and was not planning to re-order any more; as my friend told me, "that will last you a lifetime," which was true should I perish in the next 2-3 years).  My wife was aghast, even if she knew that a single beer or a ice-filled half glass of scotch was generally my limit and my evening pleasure (except on those rare days when company arrived and I would have the "extra" beer or cocktail, only to realize the next morning that I was simply not the young man I used to be).  As author Patchett wrote: I didn't need the glass or the silver, those things that represented who I thought I would become but never did, and I didn't need the dolls, which represented who I had been and no longer was.  As I less-proudly stared at the case of scotch that caused me to yank out my Visa card and sign the bill, I wondered if that was me as well, clinging to the idea that I could and would still pound those drinks down with regularity...and if not, why was I buying them?  

     It drew to mind a skit from decades ago when Monty Python faced off at the Prince's Trust charity event for Amnesty International, a crowded affair with the usual seating and ticket prices.  They began by thanking everyone for attending and supporting the good cause of the charity, even those in the "cheap" seats of the balcony, all well and good; then one of the group's members stepped out and said, "hold on, at least those people up there worked hard and actually paid for their seats...whereas," and he glanced down at the front rows commenting on the "privileged" (to which the rest of the troop began ragging on the wealthy); at that point, another member stepped forward and said, "hold on, at least these people made the decision to spend a little more and get up in the front...whereas," and he glanced at those in the middle, citing how they tended to vacillate back and forth on spending money and on making decisions, and how it was likely how their political views were formed as well.  It split the audience into their respective divisions, and perhaps hit home a bit harder than expected (all to a good, if a bit uncomfortable, laugh).

     

Somewhere in these rocks I felt a hidden calling...

     A few articles about the wealthy, as in the really wealthy, caught my eye in the past few months.  First there was this from Bloomberg about the charitable giving of Jeff Bezos and his former wife, MacKenzie Scott: Now about $7.2 billion of the Amazon fortune has been given away, but the largest chunk of that has come from Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott.  Since their divorce in 2019, she’s become one of the most consequential philanthropists of her generation.  Scott, who now controls one-quarter of the former couple’s combined wealth of more than $250 billion, gave away almost $6 billion last year to working charities—organizations that do good on a daily basis, rather than just steward philanthropic money.  In contrast the article noted that over his lifetime, Jeff Bezos: ...distributed about $1.4 billion, including about $200 million donated as a couple with Scott...Last year the combined Bezos and Scott fortune, held largely in Amazon stock, grew by $97 billion as the world reeled from the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns threw millions out of work.  Another piece in the NY Review of Books wrote of Teton County in Wyoming where wealthy executives and politicians (former vice-president Dick Cheney is one) choose to have one of their homes, often staying in them for only a few weeks each year, said the piece; the average annual income for the top 1% there (the wealthiest county in the U.S.) is over $28 million (for the top .01% the figure jumps to just shy of $369 million).  With so much money arriving each year, the question became where to put it...the article mentioned that Sedona is now on the list.  We accidentally discovered this when we drove to the end of a canyon road that once led to a nice hotel whose public restaurant featured a scenic deck, perfect for cocktails...the security guard at the gate politely informed us that the place we were thinking of was now in another area and that we had instead entered a private resort, complete with its own golf course and homes carved into the landscape.  Stunning, we said, and as he noticed our dusty hiking boots, well out of our price league.

    

    I contrast this with another piece in the same magazine, an article that reviewed two books.  One told of an author spending his lifetime trying to capture the stories of old Ireland, to "save fading memories from oblivion."  Said the piece, quoting Tom Robinson's book, Listening to the Wind: Irish placenames dry out when anglicized, like twigs snapped off from a tree. And frequently the places too are degraded, left open to exploitation, for lack of a comprehensible name to point out their natures or recall their histories.  The reviewer then adds: Sometimes in these researches, Robinson says, he feels “like a priest bending his ear to the mouth of a dying man.”  He treasures others’ stories as if they were his own.  While trying his hand at the old, dwindling practice of turf-cutting—slicing the sods by spade for domestic fuel—he listens to the memories of the men around him, and “the breeze seemed to fill with gossiping shadows.”  The older stories are sometimes touched by the supernatural, and full of premature deaths.  Their lack of moral messages, to Robinson, suggests a greater authenticity.

    The same piece co-reviewed Heaven's Breath by Lyall Watson, his telling of wind and how it proves as mysterious as it is life-giving to our planet: It is through turbulent winds, even more than insects, that the vast majority of plants are pollinated, and their means of dispersal—as seeds in a diaphanous haze like thistledown, or on their own tiny wings—are cataloged vividly by Watson.  Their range can be huge.  Spruce and birch pollen may blow hundreds of miles from their parent tree.  Clouds of Scandinavian pine pollen have flown more than seven hundred miles before raining down on Arctic Spitzbergen.  Saharan dust has fallen on Barbados.  Stranger still, and less known, are the primitive insects that—against all expectation—inhabit the Earth’s snowline.  Jumping spiders have been seen bouncing across the ice on Mount Everest.  “The secret of their success,” Watson writes playfully, “is that they have their food sent in…airlifted from the plains.”

    To be honest, I have nothing against those who have an exorbitant amount of money.  Quite likely, my purchasing of a bottle of scotch, much less a case (even at a bargain) would seem excessive to those just trying to pay their rent or feed their children.  There is inequality in the world, not only in where we live but how we live and what we have.  Author Patchett asks herself why she kept so many reminders of who she both was and who she wasn't.  A story in The Atlantic told of a stereo/repair store, run by a single man for 45 years; the store was the love of his life.  Said part of the piece, told by the man's son: On March 17, [2020] the Bay Area became the first region in the U.S. to institute a shelter-in-place order, breaking my dad’s 45-year routine—for his safety.  But he couldn’t stop himself from driving to the store almost every day, which was allowed because repair work was considered an essential service.  He kept the lights off and the front door locked and went to the back, where he tinkered with soundboards and soldering equipment...Last year, in San Francisco, a city flush with tech wealth, my dad paid himself only $12,000, preferring to reinvest in the store and dip into his retirement funds to pay his bills.  The father struggled to get federal funding, watching in frustration as CARES monies: ...tended to favor the large corporations they’d already worked with.  Harvard University, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Shake Shack, and various hospitality companies controlled by the Trump megadonor Monty Bennett got tens of millions from the first distribution; countless small businesses were told there was no money left. (These big organizations returned the funds, tail between legs, only after public outcry and refinements to federal regulations to prevent this kind of exploitation.)  Adding insult to injury, Congress used the CARES Act, which instituted the PPP loans, to pass $174 billion worth of tax breaks that had long been on real-estate-developer, private-equity, and corporate wish lists.

    The world is changing right in front of our eyes as photo stores close (both Costco & Sam's have thrown in the towel citing "lack of demand"), and the Republican Party passes more restrictive voting laws to hold on to power (the GOP has lost 7 of the last 8 popular votes for President, but maintains majority control of state legislatures).  The pendulum continues to sway back and forth as both we and our country and home all age, staring at who we once were and who we wanted to be.  One thing we're finding is that we are not entirely human (8% of our genes are viral*).  We perish not with our silverware and champagne flutes but with our memories, a practice now revealed as a common practice as "memory" jars are uncovered in the graves of early African Americans in the South.  Said the magazine's article: The stories of the lives of ordinary African Americans and their forebears are often distilled into a sweeping narrative—invisible, monolithic masses questing for dignity and recognition of their citizenship or humanity.  The jars reveal buttons and keys and shells and lace, simple items, but certainly not a bottle of scotch.  

    "For it is not light that is needed, but fire;" said Frederick Douglas, "it is not the gentle shower but thunder.  We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."  My time in Sedona was not focused on the crowds or the new money that was filtering in the back canyons; it was in the stones.  I couldn't help but again admire their patience and history, their "memories" amidst the erosion, their towering size overshadowed by equally massive changes, their geologic shifting from cliffs to dust.  Perhaps one day I would be worthy enough to become one of them, to be firmly planted and to face the wind and cold, the blistering sun and the freezing sleet; perhaps I would be growing somewhere unknown, not visible to most, once-covered in an ocean that was now just drying in the heat, eroding, my "being" soon to return to the ground.  

   It was the late author Ursula K. Le Guin who summed this feeling up in a far better fashion: I think...that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live.  I can give back to the world all that I didn't do.  All that I might have been and couldn't be.  All the choice I didn't make.  All the things I lost and spent and wasted.  I can give them back to the world.  To the lives that haven't been lived yet.  That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.

*From the rather intriguing book, If Our Bodies Could Talk by James Hamblin, M.D.