You Can't Go Home Again

“Something has spoken to me in the night...and told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: "Death  is to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

Two things happened.

One was that my stepson, Sasha, went back home to America to live with his father. I say home because Sasha has never thought of it as other than home, despite having left when he was ten and spent five years in Bali. Three-quarters Indonesian, Sasha was born in America, spent his formative years in America and is, quite simply, an American. Indonesia, the birthplace of his father and mother, was always a foreign land to him. The most that can be said is that he got used to it, more or less.

The first picture I saw on Facebook was of Sasha enjoying fiberoptic cable internet. The second was of Sasha holding an automatic rifle, surrounded by fully stocked gun racks. Both made me feel uneasy.

Arizona is where he lives now. The State of Hate, his father calls it. I wouldn’t know. I was there when I was five and all I remember is buying a little papoose doll from an old Indian woman. That was on the Navaho reservation. It must be different now. It could not have stayed the same these fifty-five years.

The second thing that happened is that I called my old home in Oregon this morning and talked to my son, Holden. I say “home”, but I suppose that by home I mean him, or just the fact of his presence where home used to be. There is no house anymore, no property, no parents and no relatives. And yet, when he describes what he has been doing, where he has been, I can picture the places more clearly than those beyond my own front door.

I’m looking at the present through eyes of the past and I’m not sure which place is the more real between the two. I’m listening to the familiar voice of my son on the phone as we speak of things that always were, always have been, always will be; and now, as I write this, I understand only myself, the words inside my head, whilst without, as dim as the darkness that has fallen, is the exclusive fluency of a chatter shared only by others. This is what we may call loneliness, in the purest sense. It is not intentional, it is not premeditated, it is not mitigable. It merely is. I must try very had to understand what should otherwise be easy. And, curiously, it occurs to me that when you can understand, it doesn’t matter, but when you can’t, it does.

Home. It has not been five years, but five hundred – a multitude of removals, surcease and separation, beginning, ending, thriving and dying. Time, like an atonal music, is a virtuoso of disarray which fervently awaits the comfort of silence.

Wolfe said it best, and in only five words. You can’t go home again.

Until you do.

The Difference

There is, to my mind, a critical difference between the classic conspiracy theory and the common activities of espionage agencies. The machinations of such agencies are not conspiracies but ‘spy games’, carried out under the direction of a country’s leadership to secure and protect that country’s interests. The conspiracy theory, as it stands apart now from the typical espionage or political coverup scenario, is a creature of fantastic and inexplicable nature, a counterintuitive set of self contradicting elements that becomes so entangled in its own complications that it becomes, ultimately, merely humorous. It thrives on disinformation and a growing corporate paranoia in society. It is stubbornly resistant to facts, because all facts must surely emanate from the conspirators. It is immune to the basic principles of logic, and when shown to be false, either stubbornly adheres to the falsehood, in the hopes that truth will simply go away, or morphs to an alternate scenario wherein it may, for a limited time, persist again.

The Checkered Pants

When I was young, I used to enjoy reading the tales of Paul Bunyan, the giant logger who tamed the American wilderness along with Babe the Blue Ox and Paul's colorful crew of lumberjacks. I guess they'd be sort of anti-heroes now, since chopping down trees is not cool, just in the way that Pecos Bill, Daniel Boone and bear killing Davy Crockett would be anti-heroes, though of course the latter two were actual personages.

I was just remembering the story of Sandy McNabb and his checkered pants. One of Paul's crew members, Sandy regularly wore a pair of checkered pants and was perfectly happy with these until one day when another crew member asked him whether those pants were black with white checks or white with black checks.

Well, this question got right into Sandy's head and stuck fast there. He began to ponder the thing day and night, such that it tormented him unceasingly. Indeed, were the pants black with white checks or white with black checks? How could one possibly know? How could one ever find out? One simply could not. These pants, once so natural seeming and cozy, had become an unbearable enigma, a curse, a plague, and he must walk about day by day in this indeterminate, insoluble world of doubt, with no escape from the eternal question of those pants.

Well, rather than just change the pants or buy a new pair, poor Sandy went mad, and was no more use to Paul or himself or the world. So things go in tall tales.

And sometimes in life, too. There are some questions that are just plain questions, and are happy that way. They don't come with answers. As questions, they are true enough to themselves, as clear as black and white.

The News?

This morning’s reading of the world according to Facebook led me through an unusual set of absurdities, rather different and yet rather the same as the familiar and ever morphing secular conspiracy theories one is likely to encounter, along with the bonehead comments on serious, real world events. Instead, my eye caught one article regarding the identity of the anti-Christ in an ancient dead sea scroll. Very strange, since the Christ himself had not yet come at that time..  In fact, the word ‘antiChrist’ appears only in the gospel of John and refers only to those who deny Christ, not to some particular individual who is to arise in the future. One article led to another, as these things go, each more absurd and misguided than the former. He is the Pope, he is a Muslim, he is a a Jew, a figure of magical powers and powerful illusion. He is even President Obama (but don’t fret, Barack, he was Bush before you). Essentially, these theories are designed to set various groups of people against one another. They propose a worldly farce in the place of spirituality, a kingdom of confusion in the place of the kingdom of God, fantasies more appropriate to the Hollywood movie than the true depth of truth and wisdom in scripture. In short, he is us. Prophesies themselves are not made to be unravelled and revealed beforetime, but to glorify the omniscience and foreknowledge of God after the fact, not for the pulpit of ignorant men and their naïve, gullible followers. “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” Such was told Timothy by Paul. The conspiracy theory, though it is a shame to admit, is originally a religious phenomenon, and, by that measure, secular conspiracy theories are essentially religious in character, in the worst possible sense. They are manifestations of ignorance, of paranoia, of superstition, grappling with the world through the obverse end of a telescope. It is so very much easier to entangle oneself in the adventure of worldly rumors than to take up your rough wooden cross and travel the uncompromising, unchanging road of truth, pure and simple.

Not long ago, my son from my second marriage contacted me via FB Messenger. Seeming rather concerned, he asked my opinion regarding whether the world was set to end at any moment – a conviction that had been conveyed by his mother. Nothing matters. His studies, his career, his love life. One must simply look to the heavens in anticipation.

Indeed, one must. Why wouldn’t he?  From whence do love, joy, hope, promise, justice emanate in the first place? But I’ll tell you this, I said. Your mother has been saying this for as long as I’ve known her, because this, to her, is hope; and is far easier than growing, than changing, than pursuing the hard and the painful work of becoming more like Him.  No, the  world is not about to end. For you it is just beginning. For when they say it is ending, you know most certainly that it is not.

Walking

It seems that I am becoming what I swore never to become - a walking enthusiast! What's wrong with me? I can't stand people who walk, yet here I am walking - walking to the coffee shop, walking to the store, walking on the beach, walking for no particular reason, when I have a perfectly good, in fact a perfectly new scooter in the driveway. Before you know it, I will be wanting special walking shoes, spandex shorts, a headband (never mind that I have no hair), kneepads, an elastic strap for my glasses and, of course, a pedometer.

Just My Opinion

Surprised to find Limamike's open on Galungan. Often enough, one finds them closed even on a normal day, and here they are open on a major holiday. Indeed, many other places are closed. In fact, most other places are, in Renon, anyway. This has made the streets very pleasant for traveling about.

The big news today is all about the Iran nuclear deal. Obama says that the world is now a safer place, while Netanyahu says it's a much more dangerous place. What is clear, if anything is clear, is that one or the other must eventually be shown to have been wrong.

Well, I suppose even that is not true, really. Politicians are never wrong. They are merely misunderstood.

In any case, I find myself most inclined to agree with Obama on this, though there is an element of reluctance in doing so. I have to admire, once again, the man's dogged determination in pursuing the goals he believes in, even in the face of continued antagonistic rhetoric from the leaders in Iran. Death to America, death to Israel, and such-like. These statements are clearly unacceptable, as Obama himself acknowledges; but the point is not whether Iran likes us, but what the best way is to avoid a nuclear Iran or a rush to war. The natural response at the sight of flag burning and hate-speech is to be offended and to reply in kind.

This is where Obama's amazing patience and self confidence come into play. It is, to me, stunningly unusual in a human being.

Budi

I was going to write something depressing, but I'll write this instead.

I was just thinking, as I walked over to Limamike's Coffee, about how very unkind people can be, when I was stopped midway on the walk by a Balinese man standing in front of his house. He introduced himself as Budi and, of course, wanted to know all about me - where I'm from, how long have I been here, where am I going, how many children do I have, and so on. All pretty routine, for Bali, to that point.

And then he asked if I'd like to come to his house and sit with him.

Excuse me?

You see folks, this just doesn't happen in America. Someone may ask you to get off his property, but not to come onto it. In fact, if you are just passing by a person, the greatest extent of conversation you might expect is a sort of begrudging grunt of acknowledgement. They're certainly not going to ask you to come up on the porch and sit awhile. Not in this century, anyway.

And so he introduced me to his youngest child, and to his wife and invited me to sit with him and visit on the porch.

We talked about my family and his family, his original home in Lovina, a relative who lives in America and hasn't been back for five years; about the Balinese people and the Hindu people and the Indonesians and Muslims, and about his job as a taxi driver and how he drives to Kuta every day because that's where the fares are. Just small talk, but intensely friendly small talk of the type we no longer know or engage in back home, unless maybe you're traveling in the deep, deep South.

And so I am encouraged anew, and renewed at heart. People are not so bad after all.