DOW' NUNDAH! -- June 13, 2017 – Many Meetings (Aussie Edition)

The Spice Girls greeted us in Brisbane. At least, as soon as the plane landed and the “seat belts on” light went off and the cabin lights went on, the radio started playing, and I heard those sonorous sounds of the 90’s:

I’ll tell ya what I want

What I really really want

So tell us whatcha want

Whatcha really really want...

Ok, so "Wannabe" was always a stupid song. But it welcomed us to Australia.

I figured you'd rather see a sunset than the Spice Girls.

A bit later, the power unexpectedly went out in the plane—come to think of it, it’s scary to think it might’ve a few hours earlier—and everything went silent. Just then, the lone, lonely voice of an Aussie broke the silence:

“Awh, the Spoice gihls uh roff!”

I swiveled my head and saw a dryly grinning steward. I liked that guy. Soon the power was restored and things went on as usual.

Speaking of things you might rather see than the Spice Girls:

"Friendship never ends" - The Spice Girls

*

After passing through customs, the airport corridor forked and we were forced to choose between a sign that said “Pilots” or “Airline employees” or something on the right, and a huge, glamorous display of liquor on the left. Couldn’t see another door anywhere. The lady in front of the liquor display saw Mom and me looking confusedly around and pointed through her store. Apparently, we had to run the gauntlet to get out of the airport.

“How’d you know [we were wondering where to go]?” I asked her.

“Jist a woild gies,” she said, smoiling charmingly.

*

Soon we met a car rental employee whose English was hard to make out (it wasn’t his first language, and an Aussie accent to boot made it a little tricky for us). Eventually he said something condescending, as if we were a bit slow to not be understanding him, which irked me a bit. We were trying to wade through his perhaps oily attempts to upsell us when he made the comment. My mom brokered peace and settled on a higher rate than we probably wanted for insurance (which we hadn’t been told about when we’d booked the car in advance), then told me not to let it bother me. It wasn’t worth it. It’s easier to write about now since I got Qantas to revoke his VISA. 

(I'm actually a conservative, but I thought this would be funny.) 

Actually, the rental company asked later about our experience and that led to things smoothing over. Much calmer by then, we still weren’t sure how to put it and the manager insisted on a true report. I said the guy probably shouldn’t suffer any sort of punishment, but just a tip that his tone could be gentler might improve people’s experience. That was right before we left Brisbane to Cairns (where the next car we’d booked was unexpectedly upgraded to a chartreuse muscle car, perfect for navigating jungles and mountains near beaches), but that comes later in the story.

*

The sturdy wood door of the mission home—headquarters—opened, but no one stood behind it. To the right, a cute lady with a silver bob haircut and twinkling eyes appeared, wearing a nametag that said “Sister McSwain” and holding a video camera. My mom turned her head to the left where a radiant face framed with dark blonde hair appeared—Sister Snow, Malissa, the littlest of her children, from whom she’d been an ocean away for about a year and a half.

“Mom!” Malissa said, in a tone that said happiness and relief and something so sweet there were tears. Mom didn’t say anything, she just cried and took Malissa in. Malissa beamed with her eyes closed, holding Mom tight, leaking tears down her cheek.

It’s quite a sight, the reunion of an empty nest’s guardian and the last and littlest bird to leave it. I didn’t see Mom’s face for awhile, but I’m sure it mirrored Malissa’s. They have a similar beauty—people commented on it all through Australia, how they resembled each other—and similar spirits, sweet and caring.

I wasn’t sure I should have come, thought maybe this was supposed to be just a trip for the two of them, but Malissa sweetly beamed and hugged me too, and later in the car she turned back from the passenger seat to take my hand and say, “I’m glad you’re here.” She always gets whatever she wants,” I’ve said many times, in reference to getting to serve in Australia for example, “but she’s so sweet no one can resent her for it.”

*

Despite an inevitably busy schedule, President and Sister McSwain nonetheless took the time to welcome us to their home, talk to us about Malissa and her good work and influence, and give us tips on enjoying our trip. The welcome occurred largely in their living room—a sunken room with a vaulted ceiling that had clean grey couches and a hearth with a beautiful picture over it—Carl Bloch’s famous painting called “The Rich Young Ruler.”

The truly conservative--and liberal--candidate.

In it, the Savior calls the attention of a clearly

affluent young man towards a few obviously poor and suffering people nearby him. It represents a story in Luke 18 that addresses the heart of Christianity—letting go of whatever it is you want most for yourself so that you can be the greatest blessing possible for your fellow men. President McSwain explained they also use it to tell their missionaries—who often come from wealthier backgrounds—that the Savior wants them to look to the poor as their equals and to love them duly as such.

President McSwain had made his money in the gas and oil industry, which he’d worked in over in Roosevelt—eastern Utah. He was probably well off himself, like most mission presidents—to drop all business affairs for three years to simply serve, one has to be well-situated. It illustrates Jacob 2:18-19 for me, how if we find the kingdom of Christ, thereafter if we seek for riches, it will be with the intent to do good. It’s neat to me that he was an example of what he was trying to get his missionaries to be.

Sister McSwain might have impressed me even more. She was sweet, energetic, and caring—things that are tremendous when you actually encounter them, although as a description they might not mean much, since those words are too often and irresponsibly used. The way she took my hand and looked at me seemed to recognize my worth and affirm it. It mattered to me. She didn’t know me at all, besides as Sister Snow’s older brother, but she cared. I think she would have whoever I was. When she learned about our tangled flight plans, she offered to have someone bring Malissa’s luggage to the airport to meet us, so she could take a simple travel bag for the next three weeks. It was an unexpected offer to sacrifice on our behalf in a very helpful way. More movingly, it was a sweet, energetic, and caring gesture.

*

After dropping off our stuff at our lodgings, Mom, Liss and I went off in search of dinner. Google Maps told us some cheap Indian food was .3 miles from our place, so we decided to walk.

It was winter dow nundah, what with the season of the southern hemisphere being opposite ours in the north, so though it was only 5 or 6, it was already totally dark. The Big Dipper, North Star, and Little Dipper were all gone as well—or rather, they shone somewhere directly up from below us, on the other side of earth (although it was day there, so northerners wouldn’t have seen them shining). As a coastal city, though, Brisbane’s climate was moderate though, so walking was nice—especially when we caught a whiff of Indian food on the breeze. We joked about following our noses instead of the Google Maps directions to find it, which suddenly struck me as an actually brilliant idea,

"If in doubt, Meriadoc..." 

 but Mom implied she actually didn’t think so.

Malissa laughed at the delicacy of Mom’s insinuation and the differences between Mom and I, then Mom and I laughed too. Turned out we probably wouldn’t have found the food but I still would’ve liked to try. The food itself was delicious and the menu was excellent, with the chef straight up dissing dishes he didn’t like. Gotta love personality. (Sorry I don’t remember his disses, just that he was anti-sugar.)

Waddling homeward after stuffing ourselves with chicken tikka masala, we detoured to pick up some groceries for breakfast. I asked the cashier how his day was going, and he said it was great until just now when he’d had to call a guy out for shoplifting. Just then, Mom asked me if I had put everything on the scanner and in context it seemed like a gentle hint to cough up whatever I was hiding. I suddenly panicked and worried I actually did have something hidden, and the cashier—a chill guy of about twenty—bobbed his head to one side then the other, seeming to scan my pockets and hands. My hands came out empty and we all laughed and shook our heads.

“’Bye!” we told him.

“Cheers,” he said.

DOW' NUNDAH! -- June 12, 2017 – In Memoriam

I say, “June 12, 2017 – In Memoriam,” although technically I have no memory of that day. 

Technically, I never lived it. 

At 11 PM or so, Pacific Time, on June 11, Qantas Flight 15 left LA. Before it was 12 AM—June 12—we had reached another time zone west, and thus gone back an hour. This process repeated for several hours through the night, while I was out on Sominex—Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO!—until we crossed the international date line, and it became June 13, 2017. June 12^th had simply vanished. Or rather, it had never even appeared. No sight of it at all, besides the way the clock approached 11:34 PM or so before a new time zone switched it to 10:34 PM.

Samoa wasn't where we went to.

So I guess I don’t remember you, June 12, 2017, but I remember that you might have been. For me, you were worse than forgotten—you were never known—but what you might have been. That will always be with me.

Maybe I’ll have to learn of you from other people’s blogs and such.

(Don’t start reading them though now, people reading this. I’m sure it’s way overrated.)

DOW' NUNDAH! – June 11, 2017 – Sominex and the Spirit of Australia

I meant to write all about my trip to Australia in this segment of my blog, my journey along with me mum to go pick up my youngest sibling, Malissa, from her 18-month LDS mission to Brisbane, but it turns out I’ll have to interrupt that tale right off the bat with a commercial break.

SOMINEX! Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO! (Catchy ditty.) 

Can you honestly tell me Sominex isn't making millions off this pic?

The stuff is magical! I slept for 8.5 hours on the plane thanks to those pills—and they’re not even habit forming!

But let me rewind a little.

Waiting in the LA airport for the flight that would take us down under (hereafter, dow’ nundah), I gushed to my mom about some magical blue gel pills Uncle Johnny had once given me before my study abroad to Jerusalem. Miraculously, they helped me sleep all the way across the Atlantic, allowing me to completely skip over the hours of waiting in cramped airline confines and to simply wake up relatively refreshed (but for some jet lag) as our plane was about to land in Austria (en route to Jeru). It was like in Jack and the Beanstalk, how he gets some wonderful, magical beans from a mysterious source but once he’s used them, they’re gone—he can never get them back again. 

This is a much cooler picture of gel capsules than I could find by googling "Jack and the Beanstalk."

I didn’t know how to get my pills again because Uncle Johnny had given them to me in an unlabeled bottle. I raised an eyebrow at the bottle but he insisted (like the vender of the beans) that they were magic, so I went for it, and it turned out that they were.

I guarded them jealously for years, hoarding them (he’d given me about 10) for a long flight now and then, alas, now they were gone. If only I could get them again. Mom sympathized, but what could she do? I continued rambling about their wondrous power, until after an hour or so Mom’s phone rang.

It was Uncle Johnny.

“Sominex,” he said, “Diphanol hydroxine.” (Actually, I can’t remember the generic name, so I just scrambled some sciency syllables together to sound convincing.) Within moments I found some at a kiosk in the LA airport—hallelujah!—and within hours I was zonked out on a plane.

Now I am left wondering about the magic of Sominex, but perhaps even more so about the magic of timeliness. I’m not sure what it was that prompted Uncle Johnny to call, but he did—right then, right as we were in need (or rather in genuine want, as my rambling showed). He doesn’t call that often either. He lives rather far away in rural Nevada, when he’s in the country.

Nevada's desert may be deserted by most, but never by Uncle Johnny.

Maybe he only comes or calls when he is called—when he senses his relatives are taking initiative to some far-off place or other. Maybe initiative has some sort of gravitational pull. Whatever the case, he’s 2 for 2 in my book. So here’s to you, Uncle Johnny, and here’s to Sominex!

(Sadly, no time today for anything except that word from our sponsors.)

(Please give me money, Sominex.)

*

This just in from Sominex: “No money for your commercial. Sorry.
PS – Please don't sing that ditty around our product."

Guess I’ll finish my post.

*

Mom and I actually might’ve saved even more money by booking with the ultimate discount airlines—Tigerair and Jetstar in the Australian neck of the world—but to avoid stressful distractions on such a meaningful trip for Malissa, we decided to go with Qantas Airlines—in Dad’s words, “The Delta Airlines of Australia,” in other words, a main player. Then the travel agency (Travel By Design) got us the same tickets for $950, so we had the best of both worlds—quality and savings.

Good thing we did, too, since once we flew on Delta from SLC to LA, we discovered we couldn’t check in to our Qantas flight. We eventually found a Qantas desk and a helpful Hispanic lady named Brenda. As we talked, she asked, “Do you have your electronic VISAs?” I always thought of VISA as a credit card, but VISA also refers to permission from a country to enter their country—an unfortunate coincidence, I think. But anyway, Mom and I looked at each other:

“Uh, no. We don’t have our VISAs. We sort of forgot those.”

Brenda exhaled slowly.

“So, you’re fortunate you booked with us, because at Qantas, we have access to a system that lets us get you VISAs right now, which is what I’m doing—but most airlines don’t have that. The other day, a lady came in without a VISA and couldn’t get one before her flight, so she missed it and had to buy another one. A VISA for Australia usually costs $50 but I can get you each one for free.”

In other words, “You were idiots, but I’m taking care of everything."

We exhaled in relief. Maybe too much, so Brenda began going on, trying to make sure we learned our lesson without having suffered any consequences.

Go on, Brenda. We're listening.

I can’t really remember what she said, because it didn’t really seem to matter—I’d just gotten off the hook without any consequences—but I do remember her sort of straining to say things as politely as she could despite how dumb people who needed them explained must be. “So, you can’t get into a foreign country without a VISA”—things like that.

And we knew all that, now that we thought of VISAs, but somehow amid our school years and planning the trip and finding cheap flights, somehow we’d both clean spaced getting VISA’s—it might’ve had something to do with being American too, how most countries are happy to trust and welcome you anyway, bless them.

At any rate, thanks to Qantas’s system and Brenda, we got our VISAs to Australia, and soon got on our way.

Qantas’s slogan is the Spirit of Australia, by the way, and if that’s the spirit of Australia, letting absent-minded but well-meaning people in, then it’s the place for me.

I smiled, and zonked out on Sominex.

DOW’ NUNDAH! - Introduction

                               “Dow’ Nundah!” 

-- Introduction -- 

I Come from the Land Dow’ Nundah!

Like most Americans, journeying to Australia— “Down Under”—has always sounded adventurous to me. Like most, I never thought I’d go. Unlike most, I had a sister, Malissa Snow[BaDS1] , who volunteered to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified for 18-months of her life.

"Sistah" - Darth Vader, Return of the Jedi

She didn’t know when she volunteered to go that she would be assigned to Australia, but she was thrilled when she got that assignment. LDS missionaries can be called anywhere, and that was exactly where she wanted to go—there or New Zealand, anyways, that neck of the woods. She is the youngest of five, naturally sweet and content to live her life without getting much attention. Part of that may be because her older siblings, of whom I am the eldest, have quirky personalities that occasionally call for any attention at hand. Whether she gracefully adapted to this or came gracefully prepared for it, I don’t know; I do know it’s easy to be happy for her. Thus, I laughed at loud with my own happiness at her                                                                                          reaction, which was as follows.

What I remember best is sitting on the couch watching a movie as a family, maybe fifteen minutes after she’d opened her mission call and assignment. She was sitting on the couch to the side of mine. As I watched, I suddenly heard a high-pitched sound to my left. It startled me, sounding a bit like a kettle boiling. I turned to see the sound was from Malissa. There was the faintest trace of sheepishness in her face when we turned to see “What was that?” but that was overshadowed—or overlit—by her radiant delight. “I’m going to Australia!” she explained. She was the kettle that had boiled over with happiness—unwatched, since that’s the way kettles boil best.

Like a pot, this isn't boiling because someone is looking at it.

 It was an emblematic moment of her, since, like I say, she’s never asked for too much attention. She’s rarely been watched as much as she ought to have been—maybe that connects to all the joy that is bubbling up within her

*

A year into her mission, she had learned to love serving—learned to lose her life a little more and to begin living the life of Christ—and Mom was planning a trip to visit her. Mom was excited to go meet the people that mattered so much to Malissa, and to explore Australia a bit to boot, so she’d set aside some funds for the two of them to travel together after Malissa’s mission ended. She had to fly from our home in Utah to Brisbane, then up to Cairns (an area Malissa was in and was loving—right by the Great Barrier Reef), then over to New Zealand before returning home. “If it’s not too expensive, could we go to Hobbiton too while we’re down here?” Malissa had asked Mom. The flight total for Mom was going to be about $1750. I heard that and was certain we could do better, so, that Saturday I spent 4-5 hours scouring every option online, and ended up finding all the flights she needed for around $1300. (4-5 hours to save 400 is about $100 an hour savings—per person. Not bad.) The main breakthrough, in case you’re interested in flying on the cheap, was realizing that flying one way from LA to Brisbane to Cairns to Auckland to LA was actually more expensive than flying round trip every time—as in, round trip from LA to Brisbane on both ends of the trip, from Brisbane to Cairns and back first, then Brisbane to Auckland and back last, then, as I mentioned, the flight back from Brisbane to LA.

Anyway, then we called a travel agency who had special discounts available and they said they could get the same tickets for $950. NINE FIFTY. 

"Fiftay! If it wus whon!" - someone in Braveheart that I couldn't find a pic of online

Suddenly I realized, freshman adjunct instructor that I am, even I might buy a ticket at that price.

So I did. (Sadly, the rest of our family couldn’t come due to various responsibilities. Malissa graciously allowed me to join in though.)

This next section of my blog (which has basically been brought out of retirement from several years ago), is dedicated to the meaningful moments of that trip. Early on in Brisbane we passed a freeway sign for a place called “Nundah,” which sounded like the second half of “Down Under” pronounced with an Aussie’s accent, and thus I introduce the title of these tales of travel:

“Dow’ Nundah!”

Oh, and I almost forgot. Just in case you haven’t ever caught a glimpse of Australia and thus don’t know how cool it promises to be, I recommend watching this video, which was officially designated by the Australian government to represent their most chill and friendly nation:

(Alternatively, you might watch Finding Nemo or The Man from Snowy River – both great flicks, just not as culturally representative as the aforementioned music video.)

Cheers for tuning in, chums,

Bentley

PS - Just got back from the trip, actually, which went from June 11, 2017 - July 6, 2017 (two July 6's, actually--stay tuned for more). Amid my other writing projects--most notably the trucking memoir, 6 Fingers Left to Lose--I'll be uploading my stories retroactively as I write things up from journal entries. I hope to get this done quickly before memories fade too much.

“A Brilliant Music Stilled” (In Memory of Brian Doyle)

“…And please give Teacher the grace to be alert to the real questions being asked here, which are usually silent and in the eyes...”

                                                                        —Brian Doyle, “Room Eight”

One month ago, Brian Doyle, whom I consider the greatest personal essayist ever, living or dead, ceased to be among the living. I preached his stuff to friends, told them that he had the unique gift of not only changing you with his writing, but often doing so within a single page or so. How many writers were both that striking and succinct? Few but the greatest personal essayist ever, living or dead. I was thinking of essays like “How We Wrestle Is Who We Are,” “Leap,” “Pea by Pea,” and “Original Skin” as I preached the wisdom of reading his stuff, though I also believed the slightly longer ones (in the whopping 2-3 page range) are equally worthwhile, stories like “Joyas Voladores” and “Rec League.” Not all of those essays were created equal, but all in at least one moment struck me in a way that made the day I read it a day worth having lived.

One time, as a creative writing MFA student at BYU, I got the chance to introduce Brian at the school’s English Reading Series, and I took the opportunity to preach to people there too. Generally, authors were introduced with a list of accolades, but as I thought of Brian’s work I felt like the implications of accolades fell far short of his real value. Accolades weren’t why I planned to give him my full attention. The spirit I felt in his stuff was, the life. So I wanted to give the audience that, the real reason I thought they ought to listen to him. Despite believing this was the best way to actually introduce him, I still might not have had the guts to do it though—after all, I’d never heard of simply skipping the accolades in an author’s introduction—but as I reflected on the idea, I remembered a tip he’d given writers: “Follow the energy.” I didn’t think he’d mind me taking his words seriously. I explained some of that to the audience as I introduced Brian, setting them up for a sample of what they had coming:

“Great writing is an arrow,” I quoted Brian, “shot into the hearts of others.” And then I riffed, following the energy.

“Brian’s metaphor makes writing sound dangerous, even fatal,” I said, “which I like, because there are parts of me I want to die—a whole version of me in fact. His phrase gives me hope that the right story could kill my inner demons and make me a new man.” I claimed then and claim still that Doyle has a bevy of such arrows in his quiver, and that thus we ought to listen to him, because one of those stories might be that arrow with our name on it, might be the thing that hits us dead on and kills off our darkness for good.

In other words, I agreed with another of Brian’s great lines: “If we told the right story, we could change the world.”

Because I was already introducing him for the English Reading Series, I was also given the chance to drive Brian from Provo to Salt Lake City where he’d do another reading. That might sound a bit like the school pulled a Tom Sawyer on a gullible grad student, convincing me I was lucky to handle the logistics of their Reading Series (“Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” asks Tom), and maybe sometimes schools do that, but in my case I was more than lucky. This was the greatest essayist ever, living or dead, and I had an hour alone with him for a handful of dollars in gas.

I picked him up at his hotel in Provo and we went north to SLC, talking more about life than writing. I was happy we did that at the time, but I feel especially glad we did now. It was right, considering we were on “the brief sunlit road between great dark wildernesses,” that we talk about what mattered most. Brian didn’t just write words. He offered companionship to others on the road.

I saw Brian for the last time in 2015 in Flagstaff, AZ. He was keynote speaking at NonfictioNOW, a writing conference, which was taking place in one wing of a fancy hotel. A long corridor served as the heart of the conference, pulsing with people. Booths advertising books and MFA programs lined it on one side, backlit by tall pleasant windows, while doors to capacious conference rooms stood on the other. Brian wasn’t always around, but when he popped in, he’d trigger mild heart attacks, cause people to clot around him listening to whatever he was saying, even answers he gave to other people’s questions. I was always part of the clot. Despite feeling like a fan boy, I wasn’t willing to miss out on what Brian might say. I suspect others felt the same.

As people fighting to pass by compressed the circle around him more tightly, at one point, he glanced up and noticed me. We hadn’t talked in five years.

“Bentley! It’s great to see you here! Do you wanna catch up in a bit?”

“Definitely!” I responded, obviously.

A little while later, he told the people around him “I need to talk to Bentley for a minute” (as if anyone had a clue who I was), nodded kindly to me and gestured towards a conference room. A conference organizer approached him with some keynote speaker stuff on our way to go talk. I didn’t hear what he said, but apparently he took a rain check. Soon, I found myself alone with him in a conference room meant for 300. We might has well have been in that car headed to Salt Lake when we began to talk.

In the conference room of NonfictioNOW’s hotel, Brian asked me about life and I expressed some angst typical of MFA grads—“I don’t really know what I’m doing. I thought about going on for a PhD, or maybe teaching high school. (Frankly, I wish I could go back to my MFA and keep whitewashing fences.)”

My typical answers had a twist though, although it didn’t come out in my words—I didn’t know how to put it into them. It wasn’t just a crossroads that concerned me. It was a deeper struggle which had left me revolving head over heels in the several years since I’d graduated. I didn’t know how to explain it, and certainly knew that even if he wanted to, he didn’t have time for it, so I simply tried to ask about its application—where I might ought to go with my life to enjoy what really mattered. He gave me some predictably Romantic answers—principled, “follow the energy” type stuff, “consequences be hanged.”

For me, such Romantic answers were predictable, since I know Brian and am something of a Romantic myself—at least in how I think. I think I was on my way to living like a real one too, back when I met Brian in grad school. I had lost my way though, and lost it badly, and I still can’t explain how on the page any better than I could tell Brian in person.

The terrible irony of it all was that as Brian gave me his lofty, moving thoughts they led me to despair. This was the right path, I believed, but I didn’t know where I was. It was like having someone hand you a map to heaven when you can’t see where you are on it. I wasn’t even sure if where I was was on the map. It wasn’t that I doubted the destination was breathtaking. So as he continued giving me Romantic advice for the journey, I brokenly concluded that not even he knew how to find me. Not even he, an unusual soul who’d specifically sought me out, could help. There was nothing left to do but stop troubling him, to let him go back to whoever was waiting in the hall, to hear him out while I hid my misery at his words, which, though they were very wise, all told me, “I don’t actually get you.” In “Joyas Voladores,” Brian himself once said, “We are utterly open with no one in the end”—essentially, we eventually wind up alone. As he talked, I felt alone already.

Unexpectedly, Brian stopped talking. He looked at me.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

I pursed my lips, unsure of what to say: “Yes, but you tried hard, and it didn’t work, and you’ve got to go anyway, so why try”; “Yes, but really I don’t know if anyone can help me, so really, don’t worry about it”; “Yes, but I can’t even tell you where I am—I don’t know”?

He leaned forward intently. His whole aspect, so prone to being merry, was now serious and responsive. His eyebrows furrowed, his blue eyes focused through the small lenses of his glasses. His skin like leather that had just begun to show age, his dark hair (plus some gray) more desiccated and subdued than it used to be.

“Tell me. What’s wrong?”

I didn’t know what to say. I really didn’t know what was wrong, although he was right—something was. I tried to explain though and he listened and gave me some advice that amounted to just figure things out for yourself. Don’t take anyone else’s word for it. Find out the truth for yourself.

What lingers with me though was that moment, right after Brian leaned in, when he chose to listen, to pry into the silence. That choice felt substantial to me—literally, like, it was substance, it had a shape: an orb that stirred somewhere between or throughout him and me. I’m still chewing on it, on that raw recognition, that genuine acknowledgement. That moment hits me in the heart as I think about it. And so I think about it, and maybe I bleed as I do. Maybe the wound is fatal, the way to find who I want to be. Maybe Brian knew the answer after all. It had something to do with his priorities, how when everyone wanted to listen to him, he said, “Nah. I want to listen to this kid.”

A few days after Brian’s passing, I went to the Provo Temple, a holy place to Mormons. With some trees giving shade, I sat in the grass to read. I had planned to resume my reading of Anna Karenina, but felt a sort of nudge to read Leaping, by Brian Doyle. I’d brought that book of his along just because.

I’d read it once before, but had picked it up a few weeks before to reread it—my favorite of his books—but I’d only read the intro so far, so when I picked it up, I found my bookmark was at the book’s first essay, “Room Eight.”

The story relates various experiences Brian had while teaching Catholic Sunday School to fourteen seven-year-olds. He ditches the textbook, makes the class Q&A, and tries to be real with the kids. At one point, he shares a pretty amusing prayer that shows what I mean by “real”:

“Dear God, please help us not be mudheads for at least ten minutes, and please let Teacher remember that he said he would give us a five-minute break in the playground, and please let us not shout and interrupt and belch loudly so as to make the whole table dissolve into fits of giggles, and please give Teacher the grace to be alert to the real questions being asked here, which are usually silent and in the eyes...”

And suddenly I was tearing up without understanding exactly why. I was remembering that chat with Brian at NonfictioNOW and realizing, I think, that he had had other such chats with people, people like these seven-year-olds (who might actually be older than me by now), that he had long known that people ask the most important questions without words, and that answering those questions matters. I was realizing all the more that Brian really believed this, that this was really who Brian was, and I was glad to have known him and sad he was gone. He always told writers that the key to great writing was listening, and I think that he spoke from experience. His writing hits me in the heart anyway, exactly like his listening. (Maybe somehow, mystically, they are the same thing.)

            So now I’m going to turn this into a final introduction for Brian, and tell you all, whoever you are, that if you’d like to be hit in the heart with an arrow (who doesn’t?), or at least if there are parts of yourself you wish would die—or a whole version of you even—well, then I know of some writing that’s dangerous, some stories that might even be fatal. There are a bevy of them quivered in the works of Brian Doyle. I recommend you read them. I recommend you listen. They are shot by one who listened first then carefully took aim, so there’s a sporting chance that they’ll hit you right where you live. They might just take your life. They might give you something better.

            They have changed my world.

            Please welcome, and give your full attention, to Brian Doyle…

(Here are some links to some of my favorite stories he wrote:)

“Leap” – about 9/11 – http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/questions/leap.html

“Joyas Voladores” – about hearts and hummingbirds – https://theamericanscholar.org/joyas-volardores/

“How We Wrestle Is Who We Are” – https://orionmagazine.org/article/how-we-wrestle-is-who-we-are/

Leap: Revelations and Epiphanies, as I wrote, is my favorite book of his, followed by The Wet Engine: Exploring The Mad Wild Miracle of the Human Heart

https://www.gofundme.com/doylefamilyfund

TRIPTYCH

“Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.”

—Isaiah 6.3

Kadosh

I traced the ancient fingerprints in the slickness of the massive stones.  Here a man had borne longing.  Here a son had borne the same.  Here a son’s son also.  I bowed my head against the stones, adding a miniscule amount of yearning’s tangible trace to the stones long slick with prayer.  There was something poignant about praying into a wall, about acting on hope while facing futility, especially considering that this was where a peculiar people had literally done so for almost two thousands of years—it was here that they had come to pulse prayers through their fingertips, and here to store their wails and why within the stone; and here that they had told a history of exile in the silent glaze of once rough lime, the color of old Torah scrolls; it was here to this very spot that they had come, because there was no closer place to holy nor a closer thing than holiness to Home.  Ache entered through my fingers.  I wished that I could wholly grasp that slickness, but I knew I couldn’t, so with fingertips and forehead, I pressed into the Western Wall again. 

*          *          *

The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, is the closest thing to where the Temple was, which is why nothing is more holy, more kadosh, to the Jews who worship there.  That house of the Most High stood until 70 CE, when Rome realized the Jews would never accept their rule, especially not here in their homeland and absolutely not here near their temple, which charged them with a crackling zeal, a zeal which lashed in blinding arcs from revolt to revolt against Rome.  One of these revolts finally provoked Rome to storm the Holy City with so many legionnaires that though they could be defied and were they could not be deterred and weren’t.  The Jewish resistance was decimated and the Temple demolished and the first of half a hundred generations sent off to their wanderings, which began in Yavneh, a place, as Rome would learn, still too close to Jerusalem and its humming wreck of sacred stones.  After the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, which ended in 135 CE, Rome had learned, and so the Jews were scattered, not merely from Jerusalem but from Israel altogether.  Scattered, the last of Israel’s tribes.  For the next two millennia the people of Judah were persecuted for coming to places they weren’t welcome, which they could not help but do because they were not welcome anywhere.

Until Spain: there they found a refuge and perhaps, they thought, a home, until Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  That year the climate of the court changed too, such that after centuries of safety, the Jews found themselves adrift again, and aimless—there were no other harbors in existence.  Our professor of Judaism in the Jerusalem Center tried to convey the effect of the expulsion from Spain: “It is considered one of the three great calamities of our people,” he said—the second, actually.  The first was the destruction of the Temple.  The Shoah was the third.

*          *          *

            After I had prayed, I crossed the broad clearing before the Wall and joined some friends.  A somber haze hung in the evening air: I recognized it from a week ago: I’d woke up to the oriental, exotic Call to Prayer, ventured groggily onto a balcony, and seen the Holy City, all dust-blown and amber and shrouded with sunrise.  O for more sober stirring amber.  My friends had been writing prayers to put between the seams of the Wall and asked if I had written mine already.  My prayer—no, I hadn’t written it.  I wasn’t sure what it was.  I had to figure out what it meant to write it too.  When they asked me about it I remembered hearing, as a kid, of a place where people scrolled up their holiest hopes and placed them in a wall, though I’d had no idea why they would put them there, which is probably why it stuck with me.  Having felt the Wall though, I felt I knew something of why.
            I looked up, prompted by an elbow in my side, to see my friend looking pointedly towards an austere looking man.  Apparently he was policing the promenade, which overlooked the clearing before the Wall, to ensure no one violated the Sabbath, by writing, say, which was a form of work.  I looked around at the sky, which was still that stirring amber.  True, a maze of beige buildings hid the sun in the west, but that didn’t mean that it had set.  A different Jewish man apparently shared my opinion—he was writing nearby—so once the stern man passed I also wrote my prayer.
            Returning to the Wall was more difficult, now that the sun had almost set, which is when Shabbat begins.  A throng was slowly forming in the clearing.  As I worked my way east, I was temporarily stunned by a passerby’s cylindrical hat, which was as broad as his shoulders, upright, and spooled with something like fur.  His forelocks dangled like coiling springs beside his ears: Haredi—ultra-orthodox—the most inflexibly obedient of the Jews.  Everyone at the Wall covered their heads out of respect, but most Jews, as well as visitors like my friends and I, wore the much less conspicuous kipas—small, circular caps.  Perhaps the man wanted to do more than the minimum for God.
            By the time I got to the Wall, black-robed figures had formed dozens of lines before it, each five or six deep.  I only wanted to place my tiny, crinkled prayer in the Wall, so I quickly slipped between two lines to do so, then stopped, abruptly, stunned: the Wall was full.  I looked up and down a four-foot vertical seam, hoping for the space to wedge a single, sacred spitwad.  Not a prayer.  I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed the paper prayers earlier, while I had read in Braille of all those times the words had failed.  They were everywhere, tats of white and pink and yellow pleas compressed as much as possible.  I walked twenty feet in both directions, weaving in and out of worshippers—some muttering scripture in haunting, Hebraic tones—ran my eyes along the only horizontal crease in reach.  Prayers burst the entire way like popcorn, littering the ground like the floor of an emptied theater.  No space, no hope.
            The Wall had stirred me like an ocean floor; as sediment swirled, I glimpsed beneath.  I had tried to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, spent some ink and space for her sake, but a deeper void or prayer had poured out through my pen.  I wrote what I wanted more than anything on that paper, and now my hopes felt threatened by the way the Wall was full.  I read through my prayer, needing to sacrifice everything that I possibly could.  Then I tore it down to the two words that I couldn’t: “Reach me.”

C. S. Lewis once said that God, who dwells outside of time, answers every prayer as if it were the only one in existence.  He is like an author who can stop writing, to consider a prayer and a pray-er for an eternity, before answering the moment He is asked.  I wonder about those other prayers, those other words they hold: like the sands of the sea or clouds of desert stars, they are not known nor numbered, nor could they be by me.  I wonder at the One who reads them all, who is therefore worth worshipping, as the Mezuzah says, with all thy heart and soul and might—which explains why frizzy-bearded elders bob so oddly before the Wall, whipping from their knees, to their waist, to their neck, then head, towards what they hold most holy.  They repeat and repeat and repeat it, with heart and soul and might, with all, because that is how you love the one whose name is Endless; the One whose love was like that first—that’s why he is to whom you pray, even if his inbox looks full.

*          *          *

Jerusalem was ruled by Rome until the 7^th century CE, when Islam swept west from Arabia across northern Africa.  Muslims venerate Jerusalem as the place where Abraham offered Ishmael, his oldest son, and where Muhammad ascended to the Seven Heavens, spoke to God, and returned with instructions for the faithful.  The Dome of the Rock now enshrines the stone where his feet left the earth.  The Jews believe that same stone to be where the heart of their temple, the Holy of Holies, had stood.  Some Christians believe Abraham offered Isaac in the same spot.  The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that this place is holy.

And alas for the fertility of holy ground, for mingled seeds of strife and sacredness: how can it be that here of all places such conflicts have come to fruition?  The crusaders took Jerusalem around 1100 CE, then mercilessly slaughtered the Holy City’s civilians, even the Arabs who were Christian.  For some reason they spared the Dome of the Rock, topping its great, golden semi-sphere with a cross rather than eradicating it, two hundred years before Muslim forces would return to reclaim Jerusalem.  Suleiyman the Magnificent, builder of the mighty crenellations and walls and gates about Jerusalem, also allowed free worship, such that one might find a mosque and cathedral and synagogue all on the same street.   Eight centuries of Muslim rule ended with World War I, when the Ottoman Empire, which had coerced the Palestinians to fight for them, fell beside Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Britain took Palestine, the Holy Land, from the Ottomans, and governed it as a protectorate.  So the unfortunate Palestinians lost a war that wasn’t theirs, and thus lost a land that was.

Not long after all civilized peoples had been staggered into silence, as the world learned of the Shoah, Britain pulled out of Palestine to let the Jews who had taken refuge there fight with the Palestinians for their homeland.  Yes, “their” homeland.  Both sides fought for their homeland, both watered holy ground with blood, but only the Jews won.

*          *          *

In a crack within a seam, I wedged my prayer, then sidled through the crowd back toward my friends.  Things were beginning to feel chaotic.  Groups of black-clad worshippers clumped around rabbis who read from Torah scrolls while a variety of hymns from different groups collided in the air, mixed further with loud calls in Hebrew between friends and even the mirthful shouts of dancers.  Everyone seemed to be saying “Shabbat Shalom!”  “Peace upon the Sabbath,” literally, and “Welcome,” commonly.  Several times it was meant for me: I heard it first from a guy that I’d bumped into, who said it merrily while he waved away my apology; second, from a man with a long, grey beard and kindly crinkles near his eyes—I’d stepped aside to let him and his grandson (I’m guessing) go by.  The four- or five-year-old surveyed the atmosphere around him with brown, orblike eyes, tentatively clapping his free hand to the one his grandfather held in imitation of the crowd, now enjoying an energetic tune.  And I received a few “Shabbat Shaloms” after I tried greeting people in Hebrew too, which often uncorked too much for me to handle.  “No! I don’t speak Hebrew,” I’d have to laugh as I explained myself, “I’m just visiting,” which, I noted, never changed the tone of welcome.  One of my friends must have looked particularly Jewish.  Once, after greeting an old man, the man deeply said, “Welcome home.”  

Eventually, I ended up in one of the circles of dancing Jews.  It was a lot like playing ring-around-the-rosies in elementary school, except here we played in Hebrew.  Also, some people had assault rifles.  The military guys unnerved me a little, until one guy, who didn’t have green fatigues and black boots and a rifle on his back, was so friendly and enthusiastic as he encouraged me to join, that I did.  I noticed my friend Dan Jones jumping around, arm in arm with them already and hollering his best imitation of Hebrew—which was passable, or at least inaudible—to tunes he didn’t know, and remembered, “I know some Hebrew too...”  

Besides the assault rifle issue, I had been worried about respecting this place.  We were probably fifty feet away from the Wailing Wall now—I could still see people illuminated in yellow cones of light, bobbing with their hearts and minds and strengths.  Clearly, this clearing was for worship, though what that meant was not so clear.  I thought I could understand all these groups, to some degree.  I had sought salvation in obedience with exactness, in the letter of the law; and I had failed and felt forlorn; then I had tried forgetting the law, the impossible burden, and just do the feeble good that I could manage.  Lately I had immersed myself in scripture, hoping its spirit would change me.  I wasn’t sure what really worked though—though how I looked and labored, heavy laden—so I wasn’t sure what to do with conflicts between modes of worship.  It was then, while I stood wondering whether dancing were appropriate, that the grandfather and grandson, clapping, had stepped by.  After greeting me, the elder looked to the circle of bounding and laughing Jews, who were about my age.  I watched him carefully.  Light buoyed within his eyes.  That was good enough for me.

And I am grateful that it was, because I can still remember one of the tunes, I hear it as I write this, a year and a half later; I can still remember circulating arm-in-arm, laughing and singing and dancing to the point of exhaustion, shouting as we’d suddenly reverse our direction, or strike up a new tune.  I remember the clap on my back as I was brought into the circle—a holy clap, to me—and wondering if my idea of worship was not a bit too somber.  I remember many things, but mostly, the face of a boy.

I saw him before the bobbing began in earnest, or the grandfather passed with his grandson, or the dancing swept me up.  I had just stepped back from the Wall with ache still in me from my fingertips.  I wondered at the slickness. How long they had hoped for Home?  How much hope was there for it?  Can we hope without hope? I was so absorbed that for a while I couldn’t even see the Wall, or the crowd, which milled and murmured about me, as it was beginning to be.  Then I returned to my sight, and part of the blur before my eyes became a boy.  About sixteen and just barely unhandsome—his nose just too upturned, his cheeks just over-round.  I’m not sure that he saw the crowd, nor do I think that they saw him.  They bustled and surged—rushing off to hear their rabbi, or write their prayers, or sing their scriptures, or bob before the Wall, worship in whatever way that they thought best—but he just stood and faced the stones.  He looked so unremarkable that at first I looked right past him.  Then something tugged my gaze back to his face, where I found the whole history of his people and a feeling beyond words.  He was crying.

Holy

Quds