Perspective on Dreams

Dreams are simply our own thoughts while asleep, our souls going about their business of assimilating our experiences in this world. While we are each both spirit and soul, our thoughts are predominantly about who we are as individuals, our personal experiences, and our hopes and fears; this is, after all, why we are here. Thus, unless one is a saint or prophet, his dreams represent the temporal thoughts of his soul much more than the universals of his spirit. The truth of a dream is the truth of what we believe and feel. As when awake, we have only an approximate understanding of our circumstances, and our feelings about them may be appropriate or not. But dreams offer a unique perspective on what those feelings are, and can be powerful tools in self knowledge.

Most of us require a couple of decades to mature enough to live more or less independently of our parents. During the formative time we develop our fundamental concepts of what the world is and who we are within it, both as individuals and as social creatures. Experience channels these concepts, and more often than not it’s through uncomfortable experience than they are modified. But we have psychic censors built into us; when something presents a challenge to our self- or world- views, our minds naturally resist so that we can absorb the information more slowly and have a better chance of fitting it in with whatever we had believed before.

Dreams censor by hiding whatever we are really thinking about behind a symbol. During the dream we sense all the emotions associated with whatever the actual matter is, but in a relatively safe way because we’re confronted with a substitute, not the actual circumstances that motivate those feelings. This is the same process by which we can be entertained by loathsome things in stories; as an audience to a movie or to a dream we can comfortably project ourselves into such circumstances because at some level we know it’s not real, that soon enough we will leave the theater, or awaken, having imagined what we would do and feel in a dreadful experience.

Dreams routinely censor, whether or not we really need to avoid facing whatever actually motivates our thoughts, and even when the true subject is comfortable and pleasant. But normally only the basic subject is disguised, and in developing its symbol a dream will ignore other internal censors. One needs to know this, because he will often witness or participate in taboo activities in dreams, and may wake wondering if something within him is profoundly corrupt. The most common example is awakening from some really nasty bathroom scene; this doesn’t mean that one is a pervert, but simply that the bladder is signaling that after a long night it needs to be emptied. This is an ‘external’ stimulus intruding on our thoughts, but no censorship restrains how we exaggerate its urgency. One has only to consider how often Native American myths of the coyote end with urinary excesses to recognize how common the image is. (It’s noteworthy that so many myths have the quality of dreams.)

I learned of a common example through a blog; a woman wrote that during her first pregnancy she often awoke with a guilty glow beside her husband, having dreamt of sexual encounters with former flames. A surprising number of women commented that they had done the same, involving old boyfriends, celebrities, or fictitious men – and generally the dreams were quite satisfying, sometimes ignoring glaring shortcomings of a partner with whom they were painfully familiar. This is evidently quite common with first pregnancies, but the theme subsides with subsequent babies.

Dreams routinely present their true subject symbolically. Thus, while sex occupies its share of our thought, when a dream features sex the subject is most likely something else. Sex dreams during a first pregnancy almost certainly reveal that a woman is realizing the commitment demanded by her upcoming role as a mother; the different partners she takes in her dreams are simply her speculating about the pleasures of other experiences she might have explored, but feels she has ruled out by becoming pregnant. (It’s not meant to imply that once one becomes a mother she can pursue no other role in this world, but it is hard to imagine anything more life-altering.) When such dreams don’t occur during later pregnancies, some of these women worry whether their libido is diminishing; but, already being mothers, there’s no longer the same need for the profound self-questioning. Anyway, dreaming of multiple partners says nothing about whether a woman is promiscuous in her soul – her mind is simply using the men as symbols of different experiences she feels have become denied to her. These dreams say nothing about her libido; there’s no cause for guilt – even if she dreams of enjoying activities she would never consider in real life, this is simply her mind twisting a symbol to fit its real meaning.

An interesting sidebar is that several of these women also dreamt of getting their teeth knocked out, or losing them in some other way. This could mean that a woman feels completely unprepared for motherhood, or that pregnancy and motherhood threaten a severe blow to other aspirations she has, or (if her appearance is emphasized) to who she believes she is. Dreams featuring eating often refer to our ability to absorb knowledge; thus the expression, “Let me chew this over,” means “Let me think about this.” Spitting out or choking on something suggests knowledge we are rejecting; in like manner, losing teeth suggests feeling unable to “bite into” an idea – the wordplay in dreams is often just this droll. But there’s another possibility – this may be the dream equivalent to a pregnant woman’s food cravings; as her subconscious recognizes that she needs certain nutrients by stirring lust for foods which contain them, the same stimulus may affect her dreams, telling her that her body is sacrificing tooth and bone for the baby because she’s not taking in enough calcium.

Another overtly sexual dream is to envision oneself indulging some favorite fantasy in which everything is perfect, except that during the dream he feels disappointment or shame for taking this particular partner. This represents nearing the attainment of some cherished goal – a job or promotion, perhaps – but the feeling is growing that it’s not going to be what or how he imagined it after all. He may not yet consciously recognize or may be resisting these feelings, but the dream reveals that he is at least subliminally questioning. Symbolizing the feeling as sex shows how deeply one has invested himself in the goal. Understanding the feeling that the dream portrays can help one get perspective – in some cases the dream is simply mental adjustment of one’s concept from the ideal to the actual, and in others it may be the dawning realization that he’s been pursuing the wrong thing all along.

Some dreams, like some of our waking thoughts, are quite pleasant. But we tend to think about things which challenge us, and sometimes things trouble us deeply. While in my early twenties I experienced a summer of nightmares – the standard type in which one awakes trying to scream but can’t find the air to do so. It became so regular that I dreaded going to sleep. At the end of that summer, while desperately waking to escape the terror again, at another level I also voiced, “I’m not ready to know this yet.” Afterwards there was not another nightmare. I don’t recall any of those dreams, nor do I know whether I’m now ready or have learned whatever threatened me so when I was young.

The rescuing message of this voice revealed that the demon disturbing my sleep was simply knowledge – some thought or realization was growing and threatening to reach the conscious level. Usually when dreams actually present monsters doing harm to us, these are just unpleasant; however, in the extreme case of nightmares we sense the approach of a monstrous thought but escape to wakefulness before ever actually seeing it. The terror of these thoughts is not necessarily that something threatens real harm to us, but rather that it poses a profound challenge to our self- or world- concepts, or our hopes – something our minds are designed to resist. We don’t see the monster because we are refusing the thought.

As an example of why a thought may be repressed, a man dreamt that his mate had stolen something, and that she had arranged things so that if the theft were discovered he would look guilty rather than she. Infidelity is often represented by a theft ( it’s worthwhile to reflect on why.) The dream shows that he’s becoming suspicious of her, though this may not have yet reached the conscious level. That she had made him look guilty shows he feels that her (suspected) indiscretion is somehow his fault. The dream doesn’t reveal whether his suspicion is justified – only that it exists, along with the sense that she’s causing him to doubt or judge himself. These are thoughts he is naturally inclined to resist, but will affect his relationship even if suppressed.

The interpretation of dreams is a literary skill. Dreams are especially prone to wordplay, and one has only to research poetic devices to appreciate how varied this can be. The artistic devices of our sleeping thought are sometimes brilliant and sometimes waggish. Some dream symbols are universal, but many depend on the dreamer’s personal understanding of his own language. And it’s certainly useful to know a bit about someone to understand his dreams – his age, gender, and so own. As an artistic skill, interpretation is obviously subjective. The interpretations of the dreams mentioned in this post are generic, and could be very different for any particular person.

But one must approach the matter reverently when interpreting someone else’s dreams – his dreams are the concerns of his soul, and it’s often the case that what seems mundane to one is a profound matter to someone else. If you should happen to get it right, and the subject is something troubling to the dreamer, it’s a natural response for him to identify you with the threat and reject you with the same energy with which he is resisting the thought. And the dreams of someone who is not generally well in mind or soul are matters for a trained counselor.

That being said, often enough the key to a dream’s symbols lies innocuously in the background. In the dream described in my post, The Sinkhole, the real concern was exposed by there being a nude dance club housed in a ‘strip mall’ at the periphery of the sinkhole on which the dream focused. The image expressed my concern about media encouraging licentiousness, but during the dream what was near the sinkhole seemed only incidental.

That dream illustrates the perspective one should take in interpreting. The dream is not a revelation of any absolute truth about what behavior standards should be, but rather the truth of my beliefs and feelings on the matter – how I feel my culture corrupts the realization of my ideal in the pretty gender. Understanding that, it’s up to me to determine whether my quaint romanticism is something I should surrender or support – admitting that there’s also a rascal within me who appreciates a naughty girl.

Not all dreams are important – no more than are all our waking thoughts. Those which ramble on and on are just our minds wandering. However, those which are short or vivid, and especially those which continue to nag our thoughts after waking, are worth interpreting – these expose beliefs and feelings about matters which are important to us, and recognizing them is a significant part of thinking through past or anticipated experience.

Dream Interpretation

The primary assignment in a dream interpretation course which I attended many years ago was to write down every dream as soon as waking each day. This was a good exercise – it’s surprising how recording one scene can stir the memory of so many more which had preceded. Plus, although generally dreams should be interpreted the same way one interprets literature, they are especially inclined to present a literal picture of a figure of speech, and so verbalizing what one sees can often expose the thought that the image actually represents.

I awoke chuckling one morning during that course. The dream had been a cartoon: Mickey Mouse was chasing Pluto and poking him in the butt with an umbrella, saying, “Take that, Pluto,” over and over. Hmm. Well, I dutifully wrote it in my journal, anticipating standing to share it with the class later – after all, it was my dream, and I have more than a comfortable estimate of the worth of my thoughts.

Until.. still thinking about it while driving to work I suddenly realized that I had had a Mickey Mouse dream, which (to an American of my generation) means fluff – entertainment without any substance. If imagining my mind as a fire station (where I worked), one firefighter (the story-teller) had played a joke on another in my company (my ego), waiting for me to record it ever so seriously, only to ‘get it’ later. Okay – I’ve been properly prodded. But if Pluto is not the most noble representation of my self-image, he is a well-meaning dog.

Morality vs Legality

President Obama believes that ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (EIT) are immoral, and that they are and have been illegal. Thus, in his view, someone within the previous administration is criminally liable. Morality and legality are distinct issues, which the president’s current approach doesn’t adequately separate. In particular, morality has the quality of the ideal, while legality has that of the practical. Morality is absolute, while legality is the result of the compromises of differing opinions which our founding fathers knew occur among men of good conscience.

Evidently by coincidence, President Obama and former Vice President Cheney recently gave back-to-back speeches on the subject of EIT’s. Cheney argued that the CIA was authorized to use these methods to gather information in a timely manner when a particular prisoner likely had information that, if extracted, could be used to prevent harm to American citizens. He argued further that Obama would set a dangerous precedent by criminalizing practices authorized by a previous administration.

Cheney’s last point is strong. Assuming that Obama is a man of unquestionable moral fiber, this is the exception among politicians. After all, the democratic necessity of willingness to compromise one’s position is at best amoral. But there is an accelerating trend among politicians to exploit law as a political weapon – if it’s doubtful whether one can defeat an opponent’s platform, then impeach the man himself. However sincere his motives, for the president to himself aggressively pursue such matters is to invite purges based on partisan politics into our future. The separation of powers was made integral to our constitution to avoid just this sort of thing.

Whether or not the prior use of EIT’s was marginally legal, because Obama believes they should not have been, his focus should be to work as hard as his conviction is strong to change the law.

The question he faces is “Who’s law – U.S. or international?” International law is a matter of treaty, mostly among Western governments, but the United States Congress has not ratified these treaties. The arguments against doing so are that our own judicial system is competent to investigate and try cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that it would violate our constitution to allow a foreign party to conduct police activities on American soil, even if the agency is an international group with whom we’ve established treaties. Ireland faced a similar problem, and amended their constitution in order to participate in the international court at The Hague.

At present we do not submit to international law. We assert ourselves as a nation governed by law, but only by our own law. Right is what we say it is. But this is simply asserting that we are powerful enough to defy any challenge to our behavior – and we are the most powerful nation in history. Power, however, is a practical matter, while morality is ideal – what’s right is right absolutely, even for those who are completely unable to defend themselves.

And right is not one thing within our borders and another beyond our shores. Not moral right, but because of our position this is the case with legal right. The CIA expresses an intuition of the questionability of certain methods by naming them ‘enhanced techniques,’ combining the positive-sounding word ‘enhanced’ with the sophisticated word, ‘techniques’ (the implication that a science is used depersonalizes the practice.) These same EIT’s are what other nations call torture – and if we agreed with that label we’d almost certainly also agree that EIT’s are immoral.

But the CIA is concerned with expediency, and it’s hardly controversial that this agency has no concept of morality. The CIA is a police agency. Police bureaus operate on the basis of power, and this power is normally restrained by competing local, state, and federal agencies. That’s why at the federal level we have separate agencies such the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, The Drug Enforcement Agency, Customs and Immigration, and even the Secret Service (with their responsibility to the Treasury Dept) when their investigations surely overlap and could all be combined more efficiently within the FBI. The CIA is unique in that it operates beyond our borders and so is profoundly less subject to such restraint. The agency is subject to United States and not international law, yet its sphere of activity is outside the U.S. and not among the citizens on whose behalf it acts.

As an aside, this points to the danger of having a unified Department of Homeland Security. Police authorities must be indulged a certain level of secrecy in order to conduct investigations. This privilege can be abused, but it is also a restraint when one agency has authority to investigate another. Giving a single agency authority over all others certainly has the advantage of sharing information about enemies of our country, but it also carries the inherent danger of centralizing police authority. Repeating, police activity is implicitly power oriented – expediency is their nature, not morality. And the more urban experience an officer has, the more character it requires to avoid regarding all citizens as suspects, more to be defended against than defended.

The previous administration proclaimed 9/11 as an act of war, and as a practical matter civil liberties are compromised in times of war – civil liberties within our own nation as well as in our actions abroad. But terrorist groups are an unusual enemy in that they do not represent a country but rather an ideology. Because of this, it was recognized at the outset that this ‘war’ would last decades. Decades – time enough for an entire generation to grow to adulthood in the atmosphere of compromised liberties, and acceptance of the wartime expediency of a Department of Homeland Security, whose umbrella includes even FEMA (thus, by association, civilian FEMA agents acquire more police authority.)

The previous administration did also acknowledge that the citizens of a free nation are more at risk than those of a totalitarian regime. If recognizing that EIT’s are immoral, the price of making their use illegal is to leave us more at risk. We must face the question of whether security is worth compromising our values. And our liberties.

Cheney contends that the ends justify the means – that’s implicit in his argument that the use of EIT’s did provide information that prevented planned attacks, and that there was no further loss of life within the United States. He cites the climate which existed after 9/11 as part of his justification. The question, however, is not whether EIT’s were effective, but whether they were legal and moral. His first argument asserts that they were right because they worked, and his second is the far more dangerous position that fear and outrage justifies extreme behavior.

Despite their declaration that 9/11 was an act of war, the previous administration classified captured terrorists as ‘enemy combatants,’ as though this label distinguished them from persons entitled to the protections afforded prisoners of war. Thus, EIT’s were legal. The label seems reasonable, since the prisoners were acting on political rather than criminal motives, but were agents of an ideology and not a country – thus, not exactly criminal or soldier. By the same reasoning, water-boarding could have been used in interrogating Terry Nichols to identify and track down Timothy McVeigh, as theirs was surely an act of political terrorism. And eager investigators may have used the same methods on Richard Jewell when he was the primary suspect in the Olympic Park bombing actually perpetrated by Eric Rudolph.

Unless domestic terrorism is not an act of war if conducted by American citizens. No doubt many individuals extend the belief that America should not be subject to international law to the position that our citizens have moral primacy over all others. Or that we are justified in using EIT’s with those who have used the same or worse methods on our soldiers and citizens. While it would be hoped that none of our political representatives make the same sort of claim publicly, there’s an uneasy sense that the previous administration incorporated such attitudes in their policies.

Significantly different world-views exist between the traditionally Christian West, the largely Moslem Mideast, and Asia, and include different measures of the worth of an individual versus social or national interests.  While most people sense  intuitively that moral right is absolute, in practice we differ on what these absolutes are – even when we interpret the teachings of the founders of our various religions. No one is justified in claiming his concept of moral right is supreme. But we can agree to minimum standards of what is unacceptable behavior in any circumstance in war (war crimes) and within nations (crimes against humanity.) This is the reason for international treaty – not to declare what is moral, but to establish what is legal.

Our present position leaves us with no moral authority, especially if we distinguish domestic from international terrorists – we are asserting that American citizens are of greater moral worth than everyone else. And there is no international law if it does not exist within the borders of the leader of the free world. Even should it happen that our own parallels international law in every way, we have no right to appear at any international court except perhaps as a defendant. Our presence at the Nuremberg trials is exposed to the argument – which some Nazi’s voiced – that our judgements were not justice, but only the revenge of the victors.

The declaration that we are a nation of laws, and that our courts are just and competent will be seen as self-righteousness by others. Any nation can make the same claim – not only vast and ancient China, but also those rogue nations which recent presidents have referred to as the ‘axis of evil.’ These nations – and the terrorist groups with political agendas – who know they lack the military capability of resisting us can also use Cheney’s argument that fear of a dangerous enemy justifies extreme behavior.

Iran can, for example, accuse American citizens within its borders of spying, arrest them, and submit them to the same techniques we use – or any other interrogation method they choose. And claim the same justifications as does Cheney – that these prisoners pose a great danger to the way of life of Iranian citizens, and that EIT’s are the most expedient way to prevent further harm to its people by the United States.

We cannot impose any international standard of behavior which we do not submit to ourselves and claim right. We can claim the power to do so, but not the right.  If the legality of EIT’s is based on morality, then the law has to be international. Thus, Obama and former presidents are correct in wanting to be signatory to an international court. But Cheney is right in protesting against a sitting president wanting to criminalize the former administration.

Legend of Tallulah Gorge

Dusk was building his house in what seemed a fair land, full of promise both for planting and for hunting in their seasons, when a rumbling beneath his feet set his knees to tremble and caused him to sit lest he fall headlong to the ground.

Before him the earth opened; the bedrock split, and opened into a great granite-walled gorge. The depth thereof dizzied him, and though Dusk pushed legs madly against the void, the yawning chasm drew him toward the precipice, as if the Earth Mother herself drew him in with her breath.

A river carved out the bottom of the gorge with high falls and narrow rapids. Many names could be given it: Alleyah, which announces a ‘guide of others,’ Galilahi, which is the word for ‘attractive’ to one people, or its like, Galilah, which to another nation means ‘God shall redeem.’ But its true name is Tallulah, which dissolves all in its meaning, ‘running water.’

Tallulah River has always been, though before it had run deep underground. And its currents have always swirled around the legs of maidens busy at their bath, their toes grasping granite pebbles in its bed.

There among them was Dawn. And as soon as Dusk saw her all her companions faded into the shadows, lingering only as the song of water splashing against stone and rising in a mist of chatter and laughter. The aroma of Dawn caught Dusk as a scent he had been born remembering; it entered his nostrils as a freshness, a perennial newness which intoxicated him before ever he tasted her lips.

All which Dusk had built, all which he had planned now seemed as naught – mere distractions which had occupied him until this moment of beholding her. He did not know her name, but if compelled he might have falteringly spoken the epithet, Hope.

And hope she flashed when she cast her eyes up, piercing questions into the heavens. Her glances had not yet discovered Dusk atop the granite cliff. After each blink Dawn quickly lowered her face to her bathing, demurely avoiding again voicing her prayer that this be the day she’d always felt approaching.

He no longer resisted the precipice, and slid, falling, floating over the edge. Dawn turned her face to the sky again, and beheld Dusk as a cloud settling into the gorge. But rather than blocking the sun which she had so recently discovered, it set a glow in her face, a blush in skin which before had been hidden from warmth, and pale. Indeed, the sun drew a silver edge to the cloud, presenting a shape for Dusk to Dawn.

Dawn crawled upon a stone to see what this cloud might be. Though the sun seemed so tiny and far away, it had already warmed her bed; its light burst into colors sparkling in the mist, and seemed to be not behind but within the cloud, and swelled as it descended to her.

Dusk touched her, gently at first, and as his cloud settled upon her and his mass grew the moisture alternately warmed and opened her skin, and cooled and quickened her. In pulses Dusk pressed her deep into the boulder, then raised her up within the walls. Dawn floated, she was crushed, and the waves were within her as well as without. He sustained his rhythm and she withdrew into the swirling rapids within her, and he changed his rhythm and she opened her eyes to Dusk as a living presence come, having chosen her, and frightening - no,  thrilling her.

In this way Dusk lifted her ever higher. And as he did, the sparkling granite walls opened around them as a night sky bristling with stars. There is only this short hour in which Dusk and Dawn come together; they are unlike and do not know the same world, for Dusk has walked the surface of our Earth Mother, and Dawn is a seed newly emerging from her womb. Yet there is this moment every morning and every evening when they are one and the same.

Every day our wives go about their tasks in the village, and our husbands leave for field and forest, but, like Dawn and Dusk, we begin and end each day with a kiss. Thus do our families and our village grow and prosper.

The Howling

In the early morning of 6/13/08, my movie was interrupted with the unavoidable commercials. Not for beer, or cars – though it sounds like a joke told by a fifteen-year-old, my tv was offering ‘his & hers’ dildos, and personal finger massagers for women (no possibility of misunderstanding their intended use when the manufacturer is Trojan.) Competing companies offered their pills for erectile dysfunction, and another offered its capsule to enlarge the male organ. All this in one block of commercials, and the same group was repeated every ten minutes. This wasn’t the Comedy Channel (Commode TV), or Spike, where one should expect potty humor – this was AMC (American Movie Classics.)

Echoing my email inbox, my tv is very concerned about my privates. A disgruntled ex-girlfriend must be complaining – she’s probably an ex precisely because she’s so verbose about whether she’s being properly gruntled.

Appropriately, the movie being shown was The Howling, in which people who’ve been infected by werewolves become man-eating beasts themselves. In the end, even the dainty blonde anchor-woman succumbed, turning into a pretty little monster while being broadcast on live tv.

Can this be stopped? Not easily. My governor has written that the feds have complete control over the airways, and local standards are irrelevant. My congressmen have also responded, implying that they have no power over the FCC. One wonders if they will realize their potency when they discover a Trojan massager hidden in their daughter’s music box. And of course AMC is a cable/satellite channel, not broadcast over public airways, and so it’s implicit that the viewer is requesting what he gets. But suppose Charlie Wilson wasn’t a womanizer – instead of finding secret means to fight communism, might he have discovered a way to clean-up our media? Or is the FCC a front for Las Vegas mafia?

Yes, it was after-hours. But who if not teens will be the majority audience at 2 AM on a June night? It doesn’t make any difference to them whether it’s broadcast or satellite – appearance on tv gives an aura of legitimacy, normalcy to the products being pushed and the lifestyle they imply. And the advertisers are experts obligated to persuade a mainstream audience. Son, don’t let the commercials misguide you; the advertisers aren’t playing pocket-pool with you to help you with the girls – they are reaching for your wallet, and any girl you get with their pills, lotions, and appliances has an emptiness that no amount of Extenze can fill.

I would defend an adult’s right to purchase and use these products. I support the right for people to operate strip clubs, and even think it misguided that prostitution is illegal. These things are corrupt, but it’s not appropriate for one fellow to legislate another’s morality. Legalize, just don’t legitimize them, and regulate them with zoning laws. Can we not have zoning laws for tv, such that not only programming, but also advertisement is restricted to the audience with a taste for the vulgar?

One shouldn’t expect a channel offering ‘classic American movies’ to actually be a sex shop. But these commercials are pervasive. Not even the news channels will let twenty minutes go by without pushing a male potency pill. We have a choice whether to watch or not, but the choice is not whether to block a particular channel, but rather whether to watch tv at all. When AMC as a window into traditional Americana shows a couple in bed beckoning with their dildos, it’s only frustrating that the nude scenes are edited out of the movie.

Howling # 2 – a related subject

Drug companies are not our friends. They are large businesses obligated to make money for their share holders. They are not immoral, but they are driven by the profit motive, and profit is an amoral drive. It is to their advantage to promote products which treat disease, not those that cure; they advertise products which a person must take for the rest of their lives.

We have conflicting beliefs: everyone is entitled to the best possible medical care, and medical care is free enterprise. The drug companies exploit this, as they are obligated to their shareholders to do. The result is a mix of socialist and capitalist medicine – the pharmaceuticals offer their products for the greatest profit they can, and their price is obscured by government subsidy and insurance. There’s no outcry because the consumer is at best marginally aware of the full price he’s paying in taxes and insurance premiums. This is capitalist because the manufacturers set their prices as they think the market will tolerate and have patent protections, and it is socialist because we are all paying indirectly for each others’ medicines. Do you not groan on April 15 when a commercial begins, “Attention Medicare Beneficiaries”?

The drug companies try to convince us that they are our friends with the frequent promotions for their Partnership For Prescription Assistance. If that big orange bus actually exists, what real purpose might it serve outside of natural disasters? It isn’t rolling into rural America as the ally of the working man – this is pure propaganda designed to maintain the status quo of social capitalism. There’s a red star somewhere on that bus. And we are paying for its diesel fuel.

Why do drug companies advertise prescription medicine on tv if not to encourage us to put mass pressure on our doctors to give us access to their pills? “Doctor may I have some please?”

The cumulative effect of constant bombardment with drug advertisement is itself harmful to us, in more ways that I will mention. We are subject to the continuous message that the first solution to all life’s problems is a pill. Can’t sleep, can’t really awaken, memory problems, your food gives you heartburn, too little or low-quality sex – all these things can be corrected by a pill, so if life is painful or just boring it’s a small step to recreational drugs for perking things up. CNN, Fox – you’ve become drug-peddlers. Or does meteorology school actually teach forecasters to prepare the allergy reports brought to us by Allerest & Benadryl?

And of course there’s the raging competition between three or four pills for erectile dysfunction on every channel every hour of the day. Millions of men take them? Ask my doctor if I’m healthy enough for sexual activity? If I’m asking permission from my doctor, then I’m clearly not the cock of the block. I don’t know how much tax money has funded studies of how often men think about women during the day, but now my tv wants me to ponder my own genitals every ten minutes that I watch. Maybe the Immodium ads aren’t so bad.

Dear tv, it’s simple; if a product is something that can’t be discussed in the workplace without a supervisor being in jeopardy of harassment charges, then its advertisement should be blocked by the V-chip. Dear AMC – can you pretend to any sophistication in your programming when it’s only filler between sex-shop ads? Do you really want it to be mainstream for men to be womanizers and women to be voracious tramps.

So many pretty blond anchor-women. But I doubt that any of you watch your own programming because the proliferation of captions, tickers, and promos on the screen obscures your videos of airplanes coming in for belly-landings to just the tree-line on the horizon. Smoke is exciting, but one does wonder what is burning. Never were so many in such dire need of a silver bullet.

Words and Music

After retiring from a long career as a paramedic, I lived in the old German city of Nürnberg. Most of the town was destroyed in a fire storm during World War II, and when Nürnberg was subsequently rebuilt, Katharinenkirche was maintained as a burnt-out shell. Rather than a neglected war memorial, however, the townspeople still to this day use this Church of St. Catherine as an open-air theater for concerts of all musical genres.

The walls of Katherinenkirche still stand, though bare. When fire burnt away its roof and hollowed it out, the church’s sanctity was released to the heavens. Its remaining skeleton evokes a memory from the opposite end of my career, an hour in which, as part of my training to become a paramedic, I was called to witness the autopsy of a woman in her late twenties. Although she’d died of a cancerous liver, her body showed no external signs; her face was lovely and her figure the ideal of a woman. I think of her now as Catherine, in recognizing her likeness to the ruins of the medieval church.

St. Catherine of Alexandria, ‘the pure one,’ is the patron saint of scholars, philosophers, and apologists. St. Catherine was a beautiful, privileged and well-educated woman who tried to convince the Roman Emperor Maxentius to end persecution of Christians. Maxentius called pagan philosophers to debate her, but she converted them all. For that, and surely also because she refused the emperor’s seduction, she was martyred.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, St. Catherine was a devout intellect who “declared to her parents that she would only enter into marriage with someone who surpassed her in reputation, wealth, beauty and wisdom.. Her intercession was implored by theologians, apologists, pulpit orators, and philosophers. Before studying, writing, or preaching, they besought her to illumine their minds, guide their pens, and impart eloquence to their words.”

Part of her legend (not embraced by the church) is that, upon her own conversion, Catherine was transported to heaven in a vision and betrothed to Christ by the Virgin Mary. This story comes from a time in which people believed that the body is a burden to the soul, and that truly holy people rejected all worldly things, and especially fleshly love.

Within the medieval walls of Katharinenkirche, where there are no windows to the world but the roof is open to the sky, one can imagine St. Catherine’s male counterpart as Sir Galahad, the purest knight of the Table Round, who pursued the Holy Grail in preference to everything earthly. The day after Sir Galahad was made to accept a kingship, Joseph of Aramathie appeared to him and offered him to drink from the holy cup. When he did, Sir Galahad ascended into Heaven in the company of angels, freed forever from his mortal burden.

Only the shell of Katharinenkirche still remains. And of the woman I know as Catherine, I have only the memory of her autopsy. I felt it a blasphemy to dissect her in the cold basement of the hospital, and yet this was an academic necessity in my acquiring the knowledge with which I could bring healing to my community.

St. Catherine and Sir Galahad left their mortal burdens as virgins; I can’t know whether my Catherine did, but I remember her as a promise unfulfilled. How dearly I would like to have known her as she went about her apartment singing love songs, or joining in with folk tunes on the radio while driving about our city. But the love she might have inspired in me was multiplied in every patient I touched throughout a long career, through the knowledge she imparted to me.

St. Catherine converted the pagan philosophers, not by refusing their arguments, but by engaging with them. She revealed something beyond the laws of logic, of nature, and of moral living – the love of a personal God. Remembering the concerts I heard in Katharinenkirche, it’s fitting that the shell of her church still reverberates with music even when the words of gospel are no longer preached therein; I’m reminded of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher who’s study of mathematics was preliminary to and fulfilled in the Music of the Spheres.

The medieval mind understood Pythagoras’s musica universalis (music of the heavenly bodies) as one of three branches of their concept of musica; the other two are musica humana (music of the human body) and musica instrumentalis (music of instruments and voices.) Hindus (who were aware of Pythagoras) expressed this theme as Shabd (the Word made flesh) – a near identity with divine meaning and sound, tones which can be heard with ‘the inner ear.’ The idea is that of John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Indulge me an exert from my novella, The Beautiful Fountain:

“The universe was approaching clarity – expanding with Aristotle’s vocabulary and contracting with Plato’s nameless Beauty. But, though these two sages were restored by the Orient, Pythagoras was returned in tatters. The monks were extracting the Music of the Spheres and discarding the harmony. Their thesis was a dictionary – a circular argument, words sustained only by each other, and without a theme.”

A friend – my fellow blogger, Moriah Joy – danced around these ideas in speculating what heaven might be like, especially in her intuition that Heaven has much to do with the intellect, as she remembered God’s charges to Adam before the Fall. In the first creation story, God gave man rulership of all the fish, the birds, and the beasts of the earth, and in the second, more detailed creation story God paraded all these creatures before Adam to see what he would name them.

Naming the things of the earth is beginning to take rulership of them. Naming things is forming concepts of them, but rulership is more – it becomes co-creative by organizing them intellectually in a specific way. As there is more than one language, there is more than one way to understand the world. And, for that matter, each speaker within even a common language will have a unique understanding of his own tongue, formed of both natural and accidental associations of terms within his dictionary. The history and legends of St. Catherine are in the public encyclopedia, while Nürnberg’s Katharinenkirche, the autopsy, Sir Galahad, and my association with Pythagorus’s music are additional elements in my personal lexicon of Catherine.

Having names for things gives one the focus, the power to master them intellectually, with something comparable to using variable names in algebraic equations or logical expressions. The word, “dog,” for example, is an abstraction for rather a wide variety of beasts – knowing the features common to dogs gives one knowledge of how to interact with all, but the generic word obscures the unique characteristics of each. We achieve a certain clarity in the use of language, a recognition of the structure of our world, but we want always to remember that our dictionary is an approximation, a thesis comprised partly of what is given to us and partly an extension of our own minds.

But the structure is a skeleton – it lacks something which gives it life. What I wanted during Catherine’s autopsy was her life restored. Her body had fallen out of harmony, and life had left it. It’s necessary to exploit language, to say that what was missing in her flesh was her music, because there is no really suitable English word – and if one were invented it would soon be martyred by academics, if the emperors of the flesh didn’t first turn it to their use.

In communion service we eat bread and drink wine; bread is a universal symbol for knowledge, but, again, there is no satisfying word for what the wine represents. One thinks first of “life,” but this doesn’t capture the immediacy, the human passion that is wanting in the intuition. For this we want music. The bread is broken – separated into parts – and then the wine follows; the words are written, then revealed in music.”Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music” ( Edward Abbey.) Though the words are written first, the music is the alpha and the omega; if one changes the music it expresses a different passion – it’s a different song – but if the words are changed it’s only another stanza.

Much of Richard Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” was set within the city’s Katharinenkirche (before it was burned.) Wagner’s opera is the tale of a naturally gifted musician who struggles against the rigid rules of the music guilds, so that, by winning a competition, he would win the hand of the woman he loves. But the musician, Walther, has a competitor named Beckmesser. Walther has composed a song for the event, and the local master, Hans Sachs, arranges that Beckmesser obtain a copy and believe it to be Sachs’ work. But Sachs anticipates correctly that Beckmesser will utterly fail to understand the spirit of the song, and when Walther follows and sings it in a way to reveal its inner beauty, Walther wins the prize and thus also his paramour.

The words were the same, but where Beckmesser was a master of the craft, Walther bested him by expressing the passion within the words. As one who understood the rules, Beckmesser was an academic, an intellectual musician, while Walther was a poet in love.

Within the text of Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Mallory often mentioned that he was translating the history from the French, but when he spoke of the Holy Grail he almost always retained the French word, Sangreal. Consciously or not, Mallory was communicating the meanings both of san greal (cup of Christ) and also sang real (royal blood.) Sangreal incorporates a mix of ideas (which our unconscious mind tends to do); depending upon the legend, it may be a platter, or the cup which Christ used in the Last Supper, and which Joseph of Aremathie later used to catch Christ’s blood in the tomb. Sangreal captures the sense of the full dinnerware of communion – most importantly, the vessel containing the wine, but also to a lessor extent the tray containing the bread.

When the Sangreal appears, it is carried by a maiden, and in some stories that maiden is thought to be Mary, mother of Jesus. But one may also recall the revived story that Mary Magdalene carried the daughter of Jesus; what is downplayed in The Da Vinci Code is that the legends assert not only Christ’s bloodline through French aristocracy but also through them to Scottish nobles, and so to Uthur Pendragon (King Arthur’s father.) Literalists would not be happy with this connection to the legendary King Arthur. But the power of myth is not in its historical accuracy, rather, in the spiritual intuition that is honed through the retelling from generation to generation, including ours.

The myth expresses the heart’s yearning for the divine feminine (“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” – Genesis 1:27.) Too often, and especially in Arthurian times, the church becomes a political power in the world. What is done in public is masculine – it is the outer world, law, authority. But if the church is the bride of Christ, what it does is private, and intimately personal. The quest for the grail is our unconscious yearning for a personal union with God, unmediated by any clergy. It is our feminine instinct to find and submit to God, to take him into ourselves, to fill our senses with the Spirit as wine heats our blood, to make of our own hearts the cup of Christ.

St. Catherine was prepared for this with a good education and a fine intellect. But, like Pythagoras’s study of mathematics opening him to the music of the spheres, this was only preparatory to betrothal to Christ, to Sir Galahad drinking the wine. This is a metaphor for the union of the masculine and the feminine. We can fill our senses anonymously with the lights dimmed and our eyes closed, but taking the bread before drinking the wine symbolizes our learning the law and then discovering the love; it’s coming to know our partner so that we can kiss with our eyes open and looking into those of our beloved, learning the words before our hearts burst into song.

The Arthurian legends have it that on many occasions the Sangreal was present but could not be seen; nonetheless its presence healed both physical wounds and injuries to the soul (it cured Sir Lancelot of a two-year madness.) Many Arthurian tales depict a lady healing a knight of wounds or poisoning, and nurturing him back to health. The maiden bearing the Sangreal is the ultimate fulfillment of this feminine virtue.

God prepared Adam for rulership of the earth by awakening language within him. After the Fall, Adam was separated from God, and had to learn both natural and God’s laws to survive. Through Adam, mankind becomes masculine, but through Christ the feminine is restored.

Wagner’s Beckmesser is like Maxentius’s pagan philosophers – intellectuals, masters of both natural science and moral law. In communion, we partake not only of the body (the bread, the truth) but also the blood (the wine, the passion) in expressing our union with Christ. Walther is like St. Catherine, having not only an intellectual understanding of God, but also that inarticulable something of a heart in love.

On the opposite side of Nürnberg’s central river from Katharinenkirche stands a world-class music school, where students who are naturally gifted must go through the academics, the autopsies of music before they can become masters of their craft. In like manner, our intellectual grasp of God’s order in this world is a step in preparing us for our place in the divine symphony, our part in the Music of the Spheres. Bread and wine – words and music. Heaven is not plucking a harp somewhere in the clouds, following notes on sheet music, but rather the co-creative expression of our own hearts in love. In this way we are keepers of the garden. This garden.

Perhaps we shouldn’t bemoan the Fall overmuch. Now we are in the academy, mastering language, mastering our world, but seeking the music – the passion, intent, the meaning. The autopsy is a necessary step in learning what the music is about. And in recalling that Walther’s paramour was named Eva, I am reminded that Adam’s wife was not named until they were expelled from the garden. Neither did I have a name for my Catherine until the close of my career. By study, by intellect, we come to more clearly see whom we love. Beauty is, after all, an intellectual perception. Love is our heart’s response to it.

Dreams of Candles & Kittens

The image of your candle flame is burned into my mind. I still see it flickering on your forehead like a third eye looking back at me. Even behind closed lids I see it, feel your gaze.

I should get up soon, go to the sewing kit and stitch my costume for the day. The basket lies open near the bed – some dusty spools are mine, but many more are yours. The ghost of the flame still lingers, fitting the shape of a needle’s eye. I stare through it, knowing it to be a portal through which time will resume as soon as a thread is chosen and is passed through. Just a moment for my pulse to slow to the rhythm of your breath, those deliberate waves that draw me deeper into the blankets.

Cruel, cold floor – the slightest touch of my foot against it would connect me with this house, the entire estate, and some role it demands I play. A map of our villa is in a drawer somewhere in the room – a tailor’s pattern, a blueprint, an unfinished dream. I recall sketching lines on the parchment, but now it seems much of the handwriting is yours. You’ve made everything new, novel, perennially under construction. And yet under the blankets, where you turn to nuzzle your back into me, all seems timeless and familiar. On paper, in sunlight, every line was straight and square, correct. Too correct. Now, under moonlit shadows, the geometry is organic, conforming to each of your curves.

My thoughts have disturbed a ball of yarn in the basket. It tumbles out, and the kitten gives chase. I don’t recall your having a cat, but there she is, the mighty hunter toying with her prey. Her forehead is branded with the candle flame in my mind, like an Egyptian hieroglyph of the All-Seeing Eye. The kitty is even more Eastern than that – Siamese, I should think, judging from the turquoise and emerald of her eyes, matching the satins and sequins that wrap my love.

The fuzzy ball escapes through the balcony door. The cat pursues, after glancing back to confirm my attention hasn’t drifted. But I’m not anxious to fling open the blankets and release nocturnal warmth. I can follow her, anyway, in the theater of my mind.

Pussy is in my studio, where I spent so many years sculpting my hopes of you, my fingers penetrating deep in moist clay, my nostrils filled with the scent of earth. My hands delighted in anticipating your shape. Busts fill the shelves, statues line the walls – the stove eyes still glow atop the oven where I baked my models. Every one came short of you, though, draining of life as it dried. It must be the eyes. I sculpted a hollow in each to catch a shadow – it works, but only if I stand a little distance away. What’s that about cakes – why can’t I hold my love and look at her, too? My ceramic faces look through me to you, and crack, disenchanted now with their artist.

Feline fur whispers through the door. She’s become larger, a lynx. Though she doesn’t turn to demand I follow, it’s no accident that her tail is flipped so high. She’s in the gardens. The estate is studded with them – the baroque, the labyrinth, the orchard – and I’ve strolled through every one, though they seem to shift about and are impossible to embroider on my map. The bouncing ball has disappeared, lost. Or has it multiplied, become the fruit dangling in the branches like your delicious ideas? The lynx poses beneath the trees, waiting for me to choose one and give it a toss. The puzzle is to pick which citrus is yours and which mine, but I know the trick, and sniff for that with the sweetest, juiciest breath.

I’ve won the game but disturbed birds roosting in the trees where the fruit had been – they flutter out in a blaze of Amazon colors, the lynx watching with more than interest. I could swear she said, “Aye, sir, I’ll try you in the labyrinth next,” and she pulls my arm round her shoulder to carry me there.

The flickering wings settle as torches to light lush halls of tall hedges that are decidedly yours. A flame meets my eye wherever I turn, and lures my hand irresistibly to pierce inside. Its soul feels as wet on my skin as it does warm.

The lynx prowls on, but I stop before each corridor to listen. The wind rustles twigs into the clacking of a million little spider legs knitting their webs, and if the way is blocked somewhere around a bend the breeze is trapped, and resonates with whistles and hums of things you shouldn’t have to tell me, that I should just know. I’ve learned to avoid such paths, and choose instead the quiet ways, those you’ve forgotten were open or don’t know so well, even if all these halls are yours. The passages house thieving bunnies which take caution against the lynx, and sometimes darker, grumbling shadows and stains. Well, a few little beasties haunt my own caverns, too, and it’s best not to pester such creatures, to trust another day’s sunlight to burn them away.

So I escape your labyrinth, though leaving groomed green paths for dark jungle seems more going deeper than emerging. The torches spark and disperse as prisms woven into a veil of mist, shimmering in vines that smell of my angel’s hair. Having grown to respect my triumphs in her tests, the cat has matured more potent, a jungle feline, though before I can tell what kind she disappears with two graceful bounds into the bush, a fading shadow daring me to find her. I do still sense her behind the chaos of birdcalls, screaming insects, and alien cries that fill the forest; she’s there as surely as the sun is somewhere beyond the fog.

I choose the one constant – the song of a river threading through mangrove roots. Its chorus gradually increases to a crescendo at the base of a waterfall. A thousand eyes push me up its channeling rocks, the cascade washing my back so clear that my heart is revealed, throbbing like a red sun. Easily I claw to the summit – our balcony overlooking the rainforest – and notice your kitten-paw slippers beside the bed. Somewhere under the mound of blankets is the spring, the source of all that moisture.

The sewing kit still lies open. I squint through the needle’s eye, deciding which uniform, what version of me best says to you, “It is I.” But animal magic begins to reveal the moon whole under the shadow of its crescent, and my lids open full. I find your eye peeking over the pillow, flickering the scantily coded message, “Need you get dressed just yet? The candle is still lit.”

Lost Dove

A dove should be nesting at this late hour, but there she is, flitting about as if crazed by the full moon. Like a moth drawn to a candle, she tries to reach the silvery orb, only to drop exhausted from the sky – the reflection is farther away than it appears. Again and again she falls from light into shadow, till I see her no more.

I’ve lifted my own dove in this very same glow, produced by blue gels over stage lights, when dancing a pas de deux with Lacy, my ballerina of many seasons. But that was in the past – I’m on duty now, in the back parking lot of a church in urban Atlanta.

The police are tidying up their report just a few blocks away. Next of kin known, but disinterested – the little crack-whore is destined for the paupers’ cemetery which runs downhill from the prison, just above the landfill. Her drama will soon be covered over by the light of the moon. I think of it as a hunters’ moon – I avoid claiming that it actually contributes to lunacy with the pragmatic observation that the bad guys can simply see their targets better. It’s just risen above a branch of that oak against the fence, as if the tree were raising a lantern to reveal the world for which I am responsible.

I seek to recover strength behind Israel Baptist Church, sitting in the cruiser assigned to me as EMS lieutenant for the southern half of the county. The child around the corner is dead, beyond recovery. As I approached, the cop had lifted pencil from clipboard just enough to indicate the door to a toolshed – a sure sign that his most pressing concern was to avoid contaminating a crime scene. The moonlight that could penetrate the one greasy window took a moment before revealing a little black girl collapsed over her knees like a Muslim at prayer, her forehead to the concrete. I had no real hope that the dark pool running from beneath her to the floor drain might be oil. Her skin was the temperature of the night, and my fingers discovered only the wound in her neck – the heartbeat had gone out with her blood, it had been a while since her last sigh.

I wanted to do more for her – at least give her the dignity of pulling her pants up from around her knees. But once death is confirmed it is indeed a crime scene. The medical emergency is over – just cancel the ambulance and fire crews who are en route, and disturb nothing for fear of cheating CSI technicians of their booty. I’ve no more duty to her – only to the file cabinet, providing a medical report to supplement the police documentation. The cop knew her name, having picked her up a few times as a child out too late and loitering at the wrong corner.

The church parking lot is empty, save for me. A few hours earlier it had been filled. They call it choir practice, but at an urban gospel church on a Saturday night surely throats were filled with the same passion and joy as will be shared with the congregation in the morning. Worship that waxes and wanes as does the moon – their song will rise again with the sun. It’s a hot night, but the cool blue of the moonlight makes everything in this world gleam as if from a light within, a landscape under a summer snow.

The peace belies the neighborhood. Somewhere in the shadows nearby is the monster who thought her life worth less than the coins she’d asked for her service. I don’t know that devil, though it’s easy to recognize others – I can diagnose a patient’s drug of choice by the personality of the demon who’s taken him over. There’s a corner suckling at liquor, a whole block loiters with marijuana and hashish, but the nearest intersection is the haunt of crack cocaine, her pushers and her whores.

The girl was fourteen. Her skin had become ashen upon releasing her dove, no moisture left in her body to give it a sheen. Her voice is silenced forever, her dove flung into darkness, with only my prayers to lift her to the light. Maybe that’s why I think of Lacy – she was about this age when I first danced with her.

My virginal Lacy – she danced the Snow Pas de Deux clad all in white and glowing in the stage lights. I appeared in white, too, when I danced with her, my partnering an act of worship of Beauty become corporeal. During this dance our legs grew cold from the dry ice machine rolling a heavy fog over the stage – I can imagine how that felt to the snowflake dancers when they finally found order, forming two columns and bowing deep into the mist. Approaching the final crescendo, I carried Lacy overhead in promenade between them, and paused at center stage. I could feel her leg stretch just a bit higher above me in arabesque, even feel her wrists pulse the last waves of music before the curtain. Nothing so lovely could be real, but there she was, living, perched on my hand as if I’d plucked her from the heavens to present her almost within reach of the first row. As the music receded I could hear the audience draw in the vision with their breath.

Movement in the shadows under the tree catches my eye, but it’s only a breeze stirring dead leaves. Where in the debris has that dove fallen? I would brush away the ashes of the world into which this little spirit was born and, like that oak lifting the moon above the shadows, present her to the heavens, asking God to receive back this child. I can’t save them all – I know that. The choir must rest its voice in the stillness before sunrise, but I search for the prayer that could find the lost dove. No words come – what rises from my heart is a vision of Lacy circling cautiously till she takes my hand, and trusts me to lift her into the lights. I have touched Beauty. I am ready for the next call.

Flaming Ice

The cartwright’s wife had no wood left for the fireplace before which her guest could warm his limbs as her dinner had warmed his stomach. Her visitor, a hermit who had settled just beyond the city walls to bring the message of Christ to Nuremberg’s poor, told her to fetch icicles outside from the eaves and cast them into the fire. Obedient to the missionary hermit, she was soon astonished to see her icicles blaze as if oaken tinder.

The hermit, Sebald, who was later recognized as the patron saint of Nuremberg, visited this same family on another occasion, and expressed a taste for fish. Unfortunately, the lord of the city had just passed an edict that no one would be allowed this dish until the castle was first provided. When it was discovered that the cartwright was in violation for the sake of his guest, the lord had his eyes put out. This ruler should perhaps have considered that the breach was for the sake of Sebald – all the town knew of a man who had once heckled the hermit while he preached, knew that Sebald had called the ground to open and swallow him whole. But no such punishment came to the lord, as it was not the gospel in Sebald’s mouth to which he objected, but only the fish in his belly – the hermit simply restored the cartwright’s vision.

                                                     *    *    *                                          

I learned this lore of St. Sebald while living in Nuremberg, where a gothic cathedral fixes him in the city’s memory. His body rests in a silver casket within an iron shrine built by Peter Vischer, east of the altar. Like all such churches in Europe, the exterior of Sebaldskirche (the church of St. Sebald) is darkened by the modern city air. Stone saints imbedded in its walls cast stern eyes on the world’s corruption, and demons trained as gargoyles hold others of their kind at bay. The cathedral doesn’t seem meant to bring a presence into this world, but rather to carve out a protected space inside. Its inner skin does show some stain – the graffiti of privileged families hawking their names, resembling the faded tatoos of once nubile women whose concepts of beauty have been profaned by the world. However, in from the walls, the holiness of the place is palpable.

I felt instinctively that Sebaldskirche is the spiritual heart of the city, even before learning of the patron saint. I was thus excited to notice a placard one day which announced an Angels’ Choir Concert to be held in the early evening. I’d absorbed much of the instrumental music that flows continuously throughout this city, but very little choral work.

And sundown is the perfect time to be in the sanctuary. There are two rows of pink sandstone columns which branch at the top, creating quite the sense of a woodland clearing with its canopy of tree limbs. The sandstone is quarried from Nuremberg’s own bedrock, and catches the sunset from the west window perfectly. With the rosy glow augmented by flickering candlelight, one feels himself to be at a timeless forest campfire – as all these stone cathedrals are cool like the earth beneath the frost line, it’s a welcome, warming impression.

I learned at least one architectural term that evening – it seems that an Angels’ Choir is not a collection of heavenly voices, but rather the balcony high up in the west between the two towers. The music was actually a string quartet, the performers positioned against the railing. The audience, too, was required to ascend the spiraling staircase and take seat in the balcony, which was much deeper than would be imagined.

It was well worth the climb. Before I had only known Sebaldskirche from a perspective on its stone floor. The columns, statuary, alcoves – all enhance the sense of forest clutter, in which the space marked as one’s campsite fades indefinitely into the woods with the bonfire light. But from the balcony high above one sees the perfect order of the architect’s vision of sanctuary. I had not imagined this space held so much light.

I had already realized that it was time for me to move away from this medieval city when I saw another placard at Sebaldskirche. Something about a meditation – the sign’s language was too complex for my skill – but again I anticipated music of a very gentle sort. After all, Pachelbel himself had once been organist in this very church. But I’d forgotten how literal the Germans are – this was indeed to simply be meditation. A score or so drifted into the sanctuary alone or in pairs. The host acknowledged each arrival by striking his hand-held chime, its voice a crisp, wintery tone inviting each to take a seat for silent prayer.

The feeling of Nuremberg leaving my heart became increasingly like a placenta pulling itself away from the womb, cramping in my gut so hard that I moved from my pew to sit on the stone floor, my back against one of the columns. No sunset light, and what candles there were barely lit the space in which I sat, above and around me only darkness.

But the host insisted I move my limbs – we were to take our meditation to different stations throughout the church. Like a stray dog, I followed the line of native citizens up the spiral of the south tower, endlessly, so high that many were winded. The weight of my own legs increased with every step as if affixed to a cable, hauling more and more flagstones up from the floor below. We finally halted on a tower platform, and with the thinness of the air everyone easily recovered the meditative state. All but me, my feet still objecting to stepping away from the town I’d come to know in these past years, to walk into an unknown future.

We were ushered through a door onto a narrow rim around the outside of the tower, high above the old city. Familiar streets, the river, restaurants where I’d met friends so often – I had drifted above them, separated, it seemed, forever, as if I were already in the airliner that would be taking me away. Again we paused to meditate. No words were ever spoken – our guide used his chime to announce the beginning and end of our movements. Nonetheless I felt I had only a migrant’s understanding of the language used in this place.

Evidently our pilgrimage was timed to bring us here on the hour, for the bell in the opposite tower began to dong. So massive a sound, the north tower found a harmonic with which to sway, and in a moment the ledge which suspended our legs so high above the cobblestones began also to weave. It was here I realized that my grief was visible to others in the group, that they were allowing me distance for the wind to clear it away. A human touch might have drained my heart straightaway, but this was not forthcoming.

Not until the tones rippled away were we allowed to leave the ledge and partially descend the tower. I’d left much behind, was lighter because empty. Our host showed the entrance to an attic – I hadn’t known that this space existed between the roof and the sanctuary ceiling, but it was quite large. We found our places along wooden walks for this station. The ceiling below appeared as rows of cement dunes – odd that from heaven’s perspective the holy sanctuary looked to be under primitive burial mounds.

A pilgrimage always ends where it began, the place changed not in what is there but in who we have become. And so we returned to the sanctuary to embed the experience in our souls. My heart felt blank, but light enough to smile with the hope that what I’d given to the air outside the tower hadn’t added to the pollution darkening the walls of Sebaldskirche.

How like a church is the human psyche, separated from heaven and buried in the earth below. And yet within the walls there is a sacred space full of light, the seed of Deity. Little deaths and big, yet always I emerge, empty but restored, ready to go through those doors out into the next world. The meditation was at end, and I grew restless. The past life finally surrendered to winter, its icicles in my heart have flickered into flames – the hermit’s gift warming me in remembering Nuremberg.

The Voyeurs

The two aged scientists were alone in the observatory. It was quite late, although the hour was irrelevant when using the uplink to a telescope suspended in Earth orbit. Perhaps they were too old to change their ways.

“Let’s see – 11:15 PM. What would that be in sidereal time?” Steve asked.

“17.32156 hours, today.” Joyce checked the orientation of the telescope, clicked a bit on her computer, and called out the rotation figures.

Steve fetched champagne glasses from a drawer while they waited for the telescope to execute the command. They turned their attention to the monitor. The planet was so far away that it took almost twenty years for the light reflected from it to reach the lens and be transmitted back to Earth. But their equipment snapped pictures so quickly that they were effectively watching live video of the planet’s past.

“Focus in at that lake in the northeast quadrant,” Joyce instructed. “There…”

Joyce and Steve could see what was obviously a group of living humanoids enjoying what appeared in every respect to be an old fashioned Sunday afternoon picnic.

“Here we are,” said Steve, and popped the cork. “We’ll make history on this day.”

“Teens at a lake shore,” Joyce observed. “Yes, I can hear the news vans filling the parking lot now, come to beg for our footage.”

“What a handsome boy standing there underneath the tree, proving our theory. You bet. MTV will probably pirate this video and make a rock icon of him.”

“They will want to wash him up a bit first. What – is that chocolate smeared all over his face?”

“Give the kid a break, Joyce. He’s wiping it off.”

“Oh, and his species has discovered napkins, too. I had feared for his sleeve.”

“When he’s fixed his eyes on that pixie over by the table? Oh, she is a little darling, isn’t she? Were you ever that skinny?”

Joyce pushed at his chair with her foot, but only caused her own chair to roll away. Steve cautioned her, “Careful, dear – I don’t know how well our insurance covers hip replacement.”

Joyce returned to the monitor. “She is cute. I don’t know, though – is he studying her, or the food set out behind her? Look how he’s wolfing down that cake – I don’t know how he can even taste it for worrying about what’s still on the table.”

“He looks like a clever young man – he may be trying to decide if she knows how to bake.”

Joyce said, “I don’t think she made the cake. Aren’t those crumbs of chocolate on her plate, too? Look – there’s still a slice left on the table. Is that devil’s food?”

“Devil’s food? The girl or the cake?” Steve asked. “Oh, it does look good. If that frosting were any thicker it would just slide down onto the platter. Uh oh – look, he’s turning to her. I think he’s making his move.”

“My turn to ask,” said Joyce, “His move on the girl or on the cake? Look how he’s stepping between her and the platter.”

“He wouldn’t bother to wipe his mouth if he were after more cake.”

“He is talking to her. But I don’t know,” she said. “A smooth operator like him would know that a girl could never take a second slice with someone watching her.”

Steve said, “Oh, but there’s always someone watching.” The two astrophysicists exchanged knowing smiles. “Look – what’s he saying to her?”

“Like I can hear from halfway across the universe. Well, I’ll try to read his lips. Hmm… something… look at him motion to the sky with his arm – do you think he knows he’s being watched?”

“He’s telling her that their love is written in the stars,” Steve said.

“Every boy tells every girl that,” said Joyce. “Look, she’s dropping her chin to hide a grin. She’s not buying it.”

“You’re interpreting the data too quickly. Would disbelief make her pink-up like that? Such a pretty face. But a girl who wears white to a picnic – does she look like a young rocket scientist to you? Look, look – he’s reaching for it.”

“For the cake, I hope, and not her,” said Joyce. “He’s going to leave chocolate fingerprints on anything he touches. Oh, look in the eyes of that hungry beast – he’s frightening.”

“Come here, let me put my arms around you. I won’t let that monster get you.”

“Wait,” she said, “No time for kissing. What’s he doing? See – he’s picked up the cake knife.”

“What do you think, Joyce? Are her charms so wanting that he’s taking the last piece for himself, or will the young gentleman serve it to her?

Suddenly the voice of the observatory director broke in from behind them. “Are my two senior scientists making history again.” Studying their monitor, he said, “Hmph. Billions of dollars of equipment – so powerful that it can look back almost to the beginning of time, back to the Big Bang itself – and you two use it to watch your own courtship reflected on the lakes of Vulcan.” But, seeing that there were only two glasses for toasting their success, he turned for the door.

Joyce whispered to Steve, “Oh, if we’re going to watch the Big Bang, we’ll need to recalibrate, and switch to infra-red.”

He replied, “Our theory is proven – every stolen kiss is recorded in the heavens.” As the director pulled the door to, Steve slid the drawer open again and pulled out a box of cherry cordials, adding, “Every secret chocolate, too.”

Robert C Flanders

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