15 Minutes Past Sagittarius

The first nickname that firefighters gave me was ‘Guru’ – not because I showed any symptom of wisdom, but because they learned that I studied yoga and even rented a room at my instructor’s home. But an hour after the first firefighter learned that I danced classical ballet I became known across the county as ‘Tutu.’ As long as they imagined that the name irritated me they wouldn’t search for another because we all adhered to the warrior principle, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

I’m too nice a fellow for such games. Ok, mostly. There was the time I was assigned to a station where the fire lieutenant had genuine doubts about my sexual orientation. In so perfect a setup I felt compelled to follow him into the restroom to stare at him whenever I saw him go. I suppose I could have explained my life-long quest for beauty to him, and if I’d simply introduced my yoga mistress to him he would have seen how close I was. But what’s the karmic penalty for giving a man prostate problems compared to providing the rest of the crew a long-running laugh?

One of my grandfathers, Clay, was an Atlanta police officer, and the other, Jimmy, was a Southern Baptist preacher. One influenced what people did by his power, and the other changed what they were by his beauty. I am simply the stuff of these two men and their families. How their natures combined in me to form a soul is an accident of the time and place in which I live, but the spirit descended from them was determined before I was born. No one at my parents’ wedding could have foreseen that the union would produce a paramedic. But seeing me in uniform with the authority of the county in my badge, charged to the ministry of rescue and healing, one could look back and say, “Of course – that’s Clay and Jimmy.”

We are all a combination of the masculine and the feminine. Not a stagnant blend, but a fluctuating balance of the qualities. If I happen to be an extreme example, happily so, because it makes it easier for me to notice the differences.

Even the routes by which I came to the vocation of paramedic and avocation of danseur express the difference. At a very young age I lost a marriage at the same time that I was laid off from my job in printing. My wife’s parting gift was to tell me that the county fire department was expanding and hiring. I would have never considered such work, but my expectations of this life had been destroyed and I was helpless to create a new reality. By accidents, then, the world called me to be a firefighter at just the time the county was developing its Emergency Medical Service. I stumbled blindly into EMS training, but once assigned to an ambulance crew I realized I’d found my calling.

One evening during that training I attended a performance of the Pennsylvania Ballet at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. Seated there, about halfway through a piece, I heard a strikingly clear voice say, “You should be doing this.” I’d never heard this voice before, nor have I since, but it was instantly familiar. I’ve always heard that the ‘still, small voice’ calls one to a ministry, but this call was secular, to the arts. I don’t know why, but the purpose is not mine – it is Deity’s. Even now that my careers both in dance and in EMS are completed, it’s still evidently not for me to know what purpose was served. Well, so be it. At twenty one, I was too old to begin dance classes, but there was no doubting this voice.

So, both pursuits called me. One via a series of external accidents which could theoretically be explained away in a chain of cause-and-effect. The other was an internal, mystical event – Deity taking an instant to reach into this world to give me a direction. It was of course the same Deity working in opposite ways, one to expose me to the chaos of emergencies in the physical world, and the other into a realm where every step is choreographed to music. Can I help it if God loves me best?

So what are these ‘masculine and feminine’ attributes? European languages assign gender to all nouns, according to their speakers’ sense of the object named. In German, the moon is masculine and the sun feminine, while in Italian, for example, the moon is feminine and the sun masculine. If there is an essential truth, a whole people have it wrong.

I’ve no doubt that there is an absolute truth, and if we each were perfect we would be compelled to comply with the attributes of our gender absolutely, both externally by force of law and internally by our very nature. But wait – I’ve already acknowledged that I have a feminine side.

Masculine and feminine are attributes of consciousness. They aren’t two things, but rather two faces of one. We may as well look at the tricky concept right up front. It’s impossible for a physical object to be two different things at the same time, and it’s absurd to assert a logical principle which has mutually exclusive developments. Consciousness, however, is precisely this. It is a natural development of an organism’s sensitivity to its environment, and it is the a priori intention which brings that organism into being – it is both the chicken and the egg. Material and logical objects are things of which consciousness is aware — consciousness itself is a different sort of thing.

The masculine mind is individuality, and the feminine unity. One wants to see the world as an extension of himself, and the other to see herself as inseparable from all. One wishes to own, the other to belong. The masculine mind is the soul, and the feminine mind is the spirit. But soul and spirit aren’t two different things – they are two faces of one.

Power is masculine, beauty is feminine. Power is the capacity to bring about change, and beauty is the eternal unchanging. Power is unfolding drama, beauty is the intention behind the drama. Power is the movement from one frame to the next in a film, beauty is a single photograph that contains all its meaning. Power is actual, beauty potential, one is right now, the other is always. One is law, the other love. And each is the fulfillment of the other.

Because psyche is simultaneously two different things its analysis is ripe with paradox. For example, the spirit is eternal and the soul temporal – one thing, psyche, which has mutually exclusive attributes.

The method by which one analyzes psyche will itself be either masculine or feminine, and the choice will bias one’s conclusions. Feminine thinking sees relationships, while masculine eyes see each thing as distinct – one sees the forest and the other the trees. As soon as one begins breaking psyche into constituents the analysis is masculine, and yet the thing being considered, consciousness, is an inseparable whole to the extent that it’s feminine. One sees the bark of a tree or the skin of an animal and recognizes that as the extent of its being, while the other sees it within the balance of an ecosystem.

Let’s have a closer look at mortality. Western religion teaches that we each live only once, then go to another state of being permanently. Eastern religion, however, has it that our state of being is cyclical – that we continually reincarnate in a form consequential to our previous lives. There is the potential for escape from the cycle by reaching enlightenment, but this is described as surrendering one’s individuality and merging with Deity. That’s the pure feminine state. And there’s a psychic trick one must accomplish – achieving the desire to become one with Deity requires the surrender of personal desire. In the West, existence in Heaven (or Hell) is masculine because we retain our individuality – God is a separate personality, often conceived as the Lord of the Eternal Realm.

But the West has the paradox that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within,” meaning that Deity is somehow at the core of our being, a nucleus, or a seed. This hints at our duality as both spirit and soul – one with Deity and yet distinct, both feminine and masculine. We earn admission to Heaven by believing in the Christ within ourselves. Churches differ in stressing whether that belief is only to recognize Christ, or also to “accept Him as our Lord and Savior,” that is, whether the knowledge itself is sufficient, or whether trying to live according to that knowledge is required evidence of genuine faith. In any event, if we meet the condition we will each upon death be transferred into a perfected body (or all of us at once, at the end of this world) and live eternally in Heaven.

Eastern religions do not always suggest that we all aggressively seek enlightenment now, but that we will each eventually reach it through a series of lifetimes. We form a soul from the mulch of the earth, live out our lives, and return to the soil, either directly by psychic decay or indirectly by ascending into the heavens as a vapor and descending again as rain. Yes, there is a vagueness inverse to that within Western thought in how the spirit retains sufficient individuality that someone’s next life is determined by the last. The two systems are not so different as they may appear.

Westerners believe that the individual soul is the essence of our being and that spirit is entirely distinct from us, an ‘other.’ Easterners think that the spirit is the absolute truth, and that our own soul is ultimately an illusion. My position asserts the paradox – that we are both spirit and soul, masculine and feminine, consciousness both eternal and temporal, one with all and each distinct.

This discussion probably implies that I find the feminine perfect and the masculine corrupt. It should only reveal how I yearn for beauty. Again, the separation of the psyche into its attributes is partially artificial. Both soul and spirit have desires – the soul for sensations and experience and the spirit for understanding. Sins of the soul are quite familiar – indulgence and self-interest. Sins of the spirit involve failure to understand or respect the individual (perhaps even including oneself) – lack of empathy or the use of others to satisfy intellectual wants. The archeologist who violates the tomb of a pharaoh on the grounds that the pursuit of knowledge overrules the obvious will of the deceased commits a sin of the spirit. And there can be strange intermixing of the masculine and feminine – Dr. Mengele’s adherence to the Nazi principle of the ‘master race’ was masculine, and the inhuman experiments on prisoners which that allowed expressed coldly detached feminine curiosity.

Dreams often represent our own psyche to us as a house. The soul is in the basement, and the spirit is in the attic (dream attics are often open to the heavens, either via windows and skylights, or simply by being incomplete in construction.) The attic stores ideal things – hopes, aspirations, potential – while the basement holds more mundane things which have been used and stored. New-Age names for these rooms are the superconscious and the subconscious. One can see a certain generality to one room and universality to the other; the basement is sunk into the earth, and the attic open to the heavens. The difference between them is primarily that one is self-aware and the other is not. In gender terms, the masculine is instinctive and the feminine intuitive; both are connected to sources of knowledge beyond their physical senses, but one as animal consciousness and the other as spiritual consciousness. Again, we are each our own balance of both. And our lives are conducted on the floors in between.

It’s quite cliché that authors write about themselves, and I’m no different. In my novel, The Beautiful Fountain, one character is Dove Warrior because my own guide has revealed herself to me as the Dove. Yes, I’ve seen her, even before I heard the voice. It was at Atlanta’s old Municipal Auditorium during a Simon and Garfunkel concert. I knew that she was a spirit creature, and sensed my identity with her. No, it wasn’t a pigeon, and yes I was cold sober – this was before concert halls filled with illicit smokes. Live performance arts again – as with the ballet, the music had opened me to the mystical. You probably have experiences which you could compare. Anyway, my former wife made a portrait of me as a dove, which she called “the voyeur” – the watcher. This was without my telling her about the dove, but there was no need because she has the eyes of an artist. Pity that we didn’t work and play well together.

My book offers two versions of the myth of the dove descending to earth and becoming the turtle. There is the hope that the turtle will eventually become the eagle and return to the heavens, but my story didn’t lend itself to developing that point. My focus was on the dove forming a shell around herself to become an individual. This world is masculine. But dove and turtle yearn for each other’s gifts – the dove wants to experience and the turtle (when he eventually begins to awaken) to understand. She wants to immerse herself in this world, and he to see it from above.

These cross-purposes can be found in the mythology of the Navajo. Women form villages, but men tend to wander off into the forest alone. Only desire for each other motivates them to make the adjustments necessary to come together and form a nation. The feminine knows what should be built and why, the masculine knows what can be built and how. The Navajo creation story of First Man and First Woman differs from the Biblical account of Adam and Eve in that the conflict of wills is not between man and God, but between man and woman; and rather than being cast out from Eden, men and women separate from each other. The myth doesn’t shy away from the erotic nature of their desire for each other.

The current Western world-view is scientific – everything can theoretically be explained within a chain of cause and effect. This is masculine thinking, as opposed to the medieval, feminine view that all things in this world express a divine intention. The masculine mind induces laws from observed phenomena, though it can never reach an ultimate cause. The feminine mind deduces phenomena from an intelligent purpose, though she can never account for why it takes one form and not another. Plato is feminine, Aristotle masculine.

Our current, material perspective is grounded on the philosophy of the German, Immanuel Kant. He theorized that we could not know anything (any object, or even ourselves) as it truly is, but can only have indirect knowledge – a concept formed in our minds by our limited and fallible set of intellectual processes applied to the data provided by our equally limited and fallible set of physical senses. That defines the psyche as a biological computer, equipped with a specific instruction set that is applied to the datum of its input/output devices. Kant did not doubt that there is a real world beyond our senses, or even that God exists – only that our capacity to know either is quite restricted. We are minds condemned to solitary confinement within our skulls, trying to interpret noises in the hall.

Kant’s is an extreme masculine view, fixed by his resolute assumption that we are each finite in every way. We can’t really know God because Deity is an infinite being, and a finite mind cannot contain an infinite concept. Kant’s logic is inescapable, but if his premises are true then the Kingdom of God cannot be within. Kant saw us as objects – essentially animals with sophisticated minds. The religious view conflicts with this, arguing that we are subjects, having some sort of identity with Deity. Scientific proof of either the material or religious view is impossible because only objective evidence can be valid. And logical proof is inappropriate because it’s a paradox to assert that we are both soul and spirit.

We can, however, refer to the philosopher who paved the way for Kant – the French mathematician, René Descartes. In his Principles of Philosophy Descartes was seeking the sort of knowledge about which he could be absolutely certain. He recognized the fallibility of the senses, as well as the possibility that he could misunderstand things in one way or another. His meditation led him to the conclusion that he could be mistaken in every concept he held; however, he could not doubt that thinking itself was going on. And so, eureka, Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am.) Descartes then embraced his concept of the world as being reasonably accurate, if not perfect, on the grounds that God has our best interests at heart and so would not deceive us.

Kant developed Descartes’s insight into rather a sophisticated account of the interplay of mind and senses. He made the one assumption that we are finite. Descartes made two: like Kant, he never questioned the reality of God, Who has the positive characteristics generally held by Western religion; and he never examined what the “I’ is that is doing the thinking. In his philosophy, “I” is the soul, the individual, finite mind, and God is the ‘other,’ an infinite and distinct personality.

These two philosophers shifted the balance of Western thought toward the scientific, masculine world-view. Needful, and there have been magnificent developments, but neither addressed the concept that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within.” The feminine is ignored, our connection with Deity is forgotten. There can be no purpose in life, and meaning can only be the fulfillment of biological and psychological needs.

According to Kant, even though God exists, our idea of Him is an empty concept – a vague placeholder in our minds. Since Kant’s time, other philosophers have undertaken the search for what we mean by the word, “I” – what is the self – and many reached the same conclusion, that this, too, is an undefined, empty reference. Neither God nor self can really be known, and in the extreme view are not real things.

The balance point is the paradox that the infinitely small is identical with the infinitely large – that “I” refers to the same thing as God but with different characteristics, where one is Deity individualized and the other is Deity unified, the soul and the spirit, the masculine and the feminine. The two things that Descartes didn’t examine are two faces of one; and Kant’s assumption of our finitude is an error reflecting and contributing to our shifting balance from a religious to a material world-view.

Descartes’s own Cartesian Coordinate System happens to be a lovely model for the balance. As a mathematician, he saw space as sort of a continuous substance which can be defined in reference to an arbitrarily selected origin. Though he didn’t apply this to his philosophy, so too, as spirits we are a continuous substance upon which souls are drawn, each with its unique perspective of all. Don’t push the model too far – as is the Creative Word itself, this is a metaphor.

The medieval religious view was feudal – even if spirituality is feminine, God is masculine, a Lord distinct from us Whom we can only contact indirectly through a church hierarchy. Protestant reformation modified this view, capturing more of the sense that Christ is within each of us. But it could be clearer still that this is not other than us – it is our own feminine selves, our own spirit.

One of my paramedics took me serious when I told him that most people outside work call me Bob, but my girlfriend had to call me Lieutenant. Snicker. Anyway, the point is that people evoke a slightly different personality in me depending upon whether they call me Bob, Robert, Mr. Flanders, rookie, or Lieutenant (Guru and Tutu, too). The name they use reveals how they see me and our relationship, and I generally respond to that, though there times I choose to assert something different.

Within us (you, too – ‘us’ is not used here in the regal sense) are personalities with different world-views and different perspectives of ourselves. Pop psychology has it that in extreme cases some of these personalities are unaware of or in conflict with each other, but for the most part we sense the general unity. The psyche is fluid in this way. As above, so below. The cases of which I’ve heard (and one whom I knew personally) reveal that when the schism between these personalities becomes clinical, the individual personalities develop so slowly that they never mature (and are implicitly incomplete.) The masculine mind – the soul, the turtle – develops over time through experience in this world. When personalities within a mind are isolated and compete for dominance, no one of them has the time to develop.

But our dreams represent these personalities to us symbolically, as they do our beliefs and our emotions – for the healthy as well as the injured soul. Sometimes we identify with a particular character in a dream, seeing things from his perspective and feeling what he feels. And we sometimes shift that sense of identity from one to another character. Sometimes we don’t identify with any of the actors – we’re simply an audience – and sometimes our role as author comes to the fore as we rewrite and replay a dream sequence when something just didn’t seem right with the previous version.

As souls we are simply players in the divine dream. We need the feminine to connect us with the Author, else this life is but a tale told by a madman. I know my power – I’ve been a paid professional hero – but I hunger for beauty. Seeing her once has given me a glimpse of eternity, certain knowledge. And I have not only seen her – when I carried my ballerina overhead in promenade the audience saw the dove perched on my hand in as clear a light as she can express in this world, and I could feel when they recognized her. So be my little metaphor and I will be yours, and together we can enter the realm of suspended disbelief.

Robert C. Flanders

all rights reserved

Sultan’s Döner
Balabar put his finger to my forehead, thumb raised in likeness of a cocked gun, and demanded, “How would it be if I shot you right now.” I’ve never seen such deadly, focused fury in a man’s eyes. And I was in a foreign land, still learning the ways of the people around me.
Friday evening began as did many in a Turkish restaurant in Nuremberg. The staff and the regulars were friends, or so I’d felt. Guli reached to clear my coffee spoon from the counter, and looked startled when I snatched it away. She couldn’t ask why, nor I explain, because the lovely young woman didn’t speak a word of German and certainly not English, nor I a syllable of her native Kurdish. She gave me a quizzical look, then returned to the booty of dinnerware she’d successfully collected in the sink behind the counter.
Guli (pronounced ‘Goo-Lie) has an unfortunate sound to English ears, but I’m told it means ‘Rose Moon.’ Working in her uncle’s café while visiting from Turkey, she obviously delights in shopping in Western stores, as she is always dressed in a manner befitting her name and not the duties of a dish maid. Cautiously I pushed the spoon across the counter toward her till a reflected sparkle caught her eye. She didn’t raise her head, but her nose twitched. When her quarry was hopelessly within range the kitten pounced, and my silver mouse was doomed to the dishpan.
Casim came in to begin his shift – a man who loves the ladies. Eight to eighty, it was all the same to him – he would hold them in conversation till they finally saw how precious they were in his eyes, and only then release them to go on their way smiling. I couldn’t wait to tell him, in the hearing of as many who could understand my German, about the lady I’d met way across town. I had a table outside a coffee shop, and because it was so crowded a Turkish woman of about our age asked whether she could take the seat opposite. Conversation eventually drifted to telling her about my café, and I showed her pictures of my friends there. When she dealt through the deck to Casim’s photo her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “I know him.” From this day forward I will never miss the chance to call to Casim, Ich kenne ihn!
In greater numbers than usual the evening crowd drifted in, filling the tables with Kurdish men anxious to discuss politics. There was plenty to talk about because in just the past few days my country had invaded Iraq on the claim that it gave safe haven to terrorists. This café was my own haven in Nuremberg. I was always subliminally aware of being a foreigner – an Ausländer – in Germany, as were the Kurds. And nobody understands what that means as do they, made foreigners even in their own homeland in regions of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Having exile in common with me, the Kurdish community had adopted me. But the café council was conducted in their own tongue, and my German was too slow and awkward to thrust into the day’s urgent matters.
I didn’t care. I was preoccupied with Guli, wondering whether she would toy with her mercilessly cleaned prey by returning the spoon to me for the chance to reenact her triumph. ‘Rose Moon’ – the guys probably told the truth on this one, since it fits her so well. Still, I remember their teaching me sounds to parrot to Akan before he came in one day. Not that I would ever indulge in such a prank myself, but I knew not to repeat their message until the counter was between me and Akan. Fortunately he turned on his laughing comrades rather than me.
The debate behind me sometimes swelled enough to intrude on my game with Guli. Who needs language when a man’s eyes can tell a lady how lovely she is, and hers how she enjoys discovering she’s an international delight? I was only dimly aware that Balabar had become very drunk. Were my attention not diverted, I would have realized how out of character that was for him. Though he was young – about thirty – he normally had such dignity that even the elderly men listened when he spoke.
But Balabar finally commanded my attention, coming to the counter and demanding whether I thought war was a good thing. Frankly, I was happier thinking of Guli than of the current events. Still, the Kurds were our allies in the conflict, fighting shoulder to shoulder with us against the regime which had committed atrocities in their villages. I answered, “Maybe not good, but I think this one is necessary.”
I would have returned to the more pleasant diversion, but Balabar shouted something to the council in Kurdish, and gestured as if he had identified the Devil himself. He placed his finger to my forehead and demanded, “Good! How would it be if I shot you dead right now – would that be good?”
His comrades circled us – there were so many that it made the café seem dark – but they gathered him back to their table and were able to quiet him. Guli looked indecisive whether to stay at her post for my comfort or retreat to the kitchen. Mixed German and Kurdish words from Balabar’s table – no chance that I could understand the charges leveled against me. Had I lost my name and become the unwilling representative of America in this alien court? But if I left now I could never return to this little café.
In time his comrades’ balms failed Balabar, and he returned to demand the same answer from me. Again the fleshly gun to my forehead, again the mortal question. But this time several of his sturdier comrades moved my trial to recess by escorting Balabar out the door and away into the darkened streets.
On Monday I returned to the café. Not eagerly, but I recalled that the week after the World Trade Center was destroyed my parents (in their seventies) ended their debate about whether to visit me in Germany, and grimly bought tickets for the overseas holiday. I could at least venture down the street.
Casim was the only one there in the late afternoon. I asked him whether Balabar was dangerous, and received a delayed shrug which said Casim only knew that he damn well could be. He left me alone to drink my coffee quietly.
And as if paged, Balabar came in. He took a seat at the far end of the counter and talked quietly with Casim for a long while. Just when it became obvious I was the subject of their conversation Casim returned to me. He said, “Balabar wants to admit treating you unfairly, and wants to know if he can buy you a raki.”
Raki is a Turkish liquor, much too strong for my taste, but this was not a drink to be turned down. Casim set the glass before me, and when I accepted it Balabar came to take the stool beside me. He said no more than to repeat that he had treated me unfairly the other night. When I offered my glass in solute he touched his to mine.
We each made a long, minute study of the counter before us. Finally I tested, “Have you lost someone to the war?”
“My sister. ” His answer did not come easily. “She was killed in a bombing on Friday.”
The knowledge and the raki burned in my throat. I let the minutes eliminate the question of which side had dropped the bomb. Instead I asked, “What is her name?”
“Nesrin.”
The liquor was going to my forehead. I returned to my examination of the counter, allowing the dignity of privacy for his wet eyes. Guli came out from the kitchen. Had she been carrying anything it would have been dropped when she saw the two of us drinking together.
Though neither Balabar nor I was fluent in our intermediate language of German, I managed, “What is she like?”
“She leaves children behind.” He seemed to be replaying a film in his mind, but finally told me what he saw, “She was always finding something to laugh about.”
How could I share his pain without the insult of stealing it? All I found to say was, “I will remember Nesrin.” I have no picture to offer in honoring this promise, but this is how I remember her cousin, Rose Moon:

The names in this history have been changed to honor my friends in their own language, remembering that only recently Turkey repealed the law that had made it illegal to give a child a Kurdish name. It is, however, impossible to substitute any other for Guli’s name.

Robert C. Flanders

The Sinkhole
When I walk from the locker room to the exercise floor in my gym, the whirlpool always catches my eye. After finishing the first half of my routine in the weight room I go to the cardio floor to use a couple of machines there, and for the motivation of seeing the ladies on the treadmills. Today my eyes brushed those of a woman I haven’t met before, the contact exchanging invitations for conversations of introduction.
But before we could blink, the radio station being aired broadcast an ad for a cream which ‘enhances the experience,’ and is available at a local adult store. The communication between our eyes was immediately rendered coarse, and vulgar.
Not for the first time, I go to the front desk to ask them to change the station. Well, you either understand the objection to public indecency, or you don’t. I think of the scene from ‘Apocolypse Now’, in which Chef expresses his horror at seeing hundreds of pounds of prime beef being dumped into a vat and boiled down till it turns grey. Georgia’s governor’s office confirms that broadcasts are beyond local control, and my congressmen have all written me that the standards are regulated by the FCC, implying that they have no say, either. Helpless anger in seeing the power of modern communications reducing women to a consumer product, the media teaching generations of girls that forming a family is incidental to their personal fulfillment. No doubt the civilization which replaces ours will deal with this in their turn – it’s happened before. But I’m angry for all, and angry for the damage being done to the woman I would love.

I carry the frustration to my bed. In a dream I see a man’s eyes close to this world, his light disappear into the darkness of an underground river. I have saved her, but not him. His life was in my hand, and I let him slip away.
My role in the dream is the same I played during my career – an EMS lieutenant. I was charged to coordinate the efforts of paramedic teams at several stations scattered around the county, and to that end spent most of my time in the cruiser assigned to me, listening to radio communications and responding to alarms where I deemed it appropriate for an officer to be present.
But in the dream no alarm had been given. I was simply driving newly opened streets to familiarize myself with its landmarks; a strip mall was being built atop the left bank of the road, and an exotic dance club had already opened. But just as I approached the shopping center, a geyser burst out of the pavement directly in front of me. I turned my car sideways and stopped, flipping on the strobes to warn anyone on the road behind.
With amazing speed the asphalt dropped away, seeming to feed an increasing roar. And even while I radioed the dispatcher about the sinkhole, I saw a car approaching from the other side. It’s brakes locked down, but not in time. The car teetered on the edge for a moment as if indecisive, then committed itself to the maelstrom.
Fire Rescue was given the alarm, but their station was several minutes away. What a luxury it is to have time between receiving a call and arriving on scene to get mind and body focused. What a joy it is to feel the power course through me during the emergency run. Assigned responsibility for my fellows, I have the authority, too – the scene and all the roadway to it are mine to command. I absorb the power and responsiveness of my cruiser during the run, and upon arrival the blood has filled my flesh and flushed my mind of all but the task before me. But not this night – I was thrown into the disaster cold. Trained, but not braced for an emergency.
Thankfully it was late night – no other headlights in sight, less chance that others would follow the car into the vortex. Soon enough the police would have the roadway blocked, and be dealing with drivers irritated to have their routines interrupted. Street lamps from the parking lot on the hill gave some illumination, but the bursts from my strobes rendered the scene surreal.
The pavement continued to crumble, the hole broaden. It would be derelict to run onto unstable ground recklessly, so I took the time to fetch the rope from my trunk and tie one end around my waist. Making a loop around a fire hydrant which appeared far enough away from the sinkhole to be secure, I fed myself line, and approached the precipice.
A huge water main had burst, and was spraying toward the opposite bank. The car had sunk to its windows, but I could see a woman being pushed out, helped onto its roof by a man inside. She crawled face down and grasped at the opposite side, struggling to stay atop the slippery roof. The man quickly climbed up beside her.
The torrent had apparently washed itself an outlet under the mall – a whirlpool was becoming defined. A mixed blessing – the water was leveling out in the hole, but the vortex was tugging at the car.
The couple could not hear my shouts over the roar, but as the man scoured frantically around the pit he spotted me descending its side, and tapped the woman’s back to show her that help was at hand. I was near the end of my rope – enough to play out and get me to the car, but no extra.
Looking about for options, I could see several security guards standing on the hill above. They should at least be preventing people in the parking lot from getting too close to the danger, but their backs were to the crowd – they were more an audience to the scene than participants. A cat sat on the curb in front of them, and my glance took in a dog, too, who paced anxiously, as if he already felt the pain from sirens too distant for me to hear. I had no means to gesture for help, as both hands were needed on the rope, but it didn’t matter anyway – the guards couldn’t get from their balcony box to a position to aid any sooner than the firefighters who were on the way. The car was clearly moving toward the whirlpool – all was up to me.
I rappelled away from the wall and thankfully landed hard across the two victims. They grasped my arm just as the car slid away from underneath us. I watched it circle deliberately in the whirlpool and vanish. There was nothing left on the surface but the two people facing me, clutching my right arm. I felt the water pulling their feet toward the whirlpool, turning us all. The free end of the rope was still in my left hand, at the rapelling position behind my back. With just that arm to work with, I struggled to make several turns of the rope around the loop at my waist, all the while trying not to move jerkily, lest I shake the victims loose from the other arm.
I couldn’t hear, and could not turn to see, but I felt the rope being pulled from behind, away from the whirlpool – I knew and trusted that Fire Rescue had arrived. Now I could do no more than serve as the final length, the hook at the end of the rope. Surely a firefighter was securing himself to another line, ladders were being dropped, and we would soon be joined.
I had locked onto the woman hand to wrist, with the man clinging on, but his hands were slipping down my wet arm – he was obviously exhausted. If another rescuer didn’t arrive soon.. I ached to let go my left hand’s grasp on the rope at my back and reach for him, but my body refused, seeming to know that the knot would slip if I did, and I would lose them both.
A bump to my leg told me that a firefighter was behind me, so I finally flung the left arm around to the man. He saw, and plunged for it, but so lethargically that he reached my hand with only one of his own. My fingers were hooked, cramped in their curled position from the rope, but he didn’t have the strength to lock his to mine against the pull of the water. Before the firefighter could lunge for him he slipped away. All that tied me to him were his eyes, and when his feet reached the whirlpool the lids closed in surrender, and he was gone.
Another firefighter reached us, and the two quickly got a line around the woman and worked her up a ladder, getting me out soon after. The woman was walked to my EMS crew at their ambulance. Her hair and clothing were tangled and soiled from the filthy water, but she has survived. Her partner did not.

Robert C. Flanders
all rights reserved

The Short Path
Strange sound - almost like a young woman’s voice calling, “Ja-mey,” very slowly. The notes were drawn out as if passing through a hollow instrument as long as an Alpine horn. There’s no telling whether it originated behind one of the doors down that corridor, or somewhere well beyond the blinds and the hedges on some distant mountain peak outside.
Unsettling. Sometimes you hear moans like that at the dentist’s office while waiting to get your teeth worked on – not calling a name, or any other real word, just an anonymous voice expressing recognition of some remote unpleasantness beyond the cloud of the doctor’s gasses. But I was at the ophthalmologist’s clinic. Must be my mind playing tricks on me, too desperately interpreting the sparse information available to my senses in this sterile, alien environment. It’s just a machine, and my ears only think it’s speaking to me.
Just being in this waiting room shows readiness to admit a weakness to a stranger, readiness to confess to a mere mortal that I have sinned, and to show him the manifestation of that sin in my flesh. But I can’t deny the distortion in my right eye – an astigmatism, I guess it’s called. A line that to my left is smooth and horizontal has a couple of spikes in it to my right eye. It looks strikingly like an electro-cardiogram, as if my inner being were holding a sign before my face, advising me to give more attention to my heart.
“The doctor will see you now,” said the nurse. I suppose she’s a nurse – she’s dressed all in white – but standing in the doorframe guarding the knob she’s reminiscent of a temple virgin charged to be very cautious of whom she allows beyond the veil. Her summons to the doctor stirs that other voice to plead again, “Jam-ey,” but the nurse shows no response.
She ushers me into a room and closes the door behind me. This is no brothel and she will remain a virgin – she’s gone, and I’m left alone to contemplate how these several apparatuses will be applied to my eye. The cell is lit dimly, as if by torchlight. I’ve surrendered myself into the hands of the inquisitors of science now for sure. There’s the doctor’s diploma – Emory University’s ordination of James Boyle as a Doctor of Ophthalmology. Well, if I must do this – and I must, if I’m to continue to drive – at least he’s said to be among the best. I made the appointment despite the recommendation that he’s on the cutting edge of new technologies.
I wonder if doctors are trained to give us these moments to study their implements before making their entrance so that we have time to realize our utter dependence on their mercy and develop the proper reverence. When Dr. Boyle does enter the cell and asks what my problem is, my voice sounds to me like a child’s, pleading, “Forgive me, Doctor, and deliver me of the karma I truly deserve for what I have done, and for what I have failed to do.”
But my neck hair bristles when he stares through his bizarre devices into my eye. My regular optometrist is a woman, and as much as I welcome the proximity of her face to mine during an exam, my flesh quickens for a fight when a man comes nose to nose with me. A woman’s aura is healing and nurturing, but there’s no natural reason to be close enough to another man to smell him.
Mostly to bring myself round to a more civil attitude, I ask him about the watercolor of quite a refined woman on the wall beside his diploma.
“My wife,” he answered, “My mother made this portrait as a wedding gift of how she might mature once we had time together for a family.” He summed the matter up, “My wife died before I could finish medical school. ” There was a finality to his tone, like a mathematician who’s given the complete equation – there was nothing more to the subject.
Again I heard the strange tone, and asked Dr. Boyle, “What is that? It sounds like someone calling a name.” As I was looking in that direction, I glanced over his diploma again, and laughed a little awkwardly, “Like your name, maybe, if your friends call you ‘Jamey.’”
His answer belied Dr. Boyle’s proximity, delayed as if our words had to travel great distances to reach each other. “Only one ever did.” He followed my gaze to the watercolor, studying it to see whether his mother had somehow encoded his private name in the portrait. But he saw nothing, and said, “I don’t hear anything.” Whether he did or not, his every utterance reasserted the protocol of confining conversation to his sphere of professional expertise.
“I think for you,” he said, “I will apply a new technique I’ve been developing, to bring your vision to the same acuity you seem to have in hearing.”
My defenses snapped back in place. Although no such meaning was overt in his words, they somehow projected the pretension for which chiropractors are notorious, that because they are expert in mysteries of the body they are also authoritative in matters of the spirit. – Just listen to me – so cranky that I condemn a whole profession for trying to express the very sensitivity that I complain conventional practitioners lack. So much do I dislike asking anyone for help.
Dr. Boyle ushered me from my cell, down to the end of the hall, and opened its terminating door. Beyond it a wrought iron staircase spiraled up a brick tower. Quite unlike the rest of the clinic, the colors and even the smell were earthen.
By the time we reached the top the combination of the tight circles and the height had made me a bit dizzy, and I hoped that it hadn’t had the same effect on the man to whom I was entrusting my eye. His senses did seem immune when he motioned me into his operating theater. The room could have been in the bell tower of a medieval cathedral; the walls squeezed one’s attention into the only direction still open – straight up toward the spire, and beyond. The tower surely did spear into the heavens, and as I took in the dark leather chair on which I was to recline I couldn’t help speculating that the spire was a lightning rod somehow affixed to the doctor’s apparatus.
It was to be laser surgery. The technique has only been in use for about a decade, and Dr. Boyle is reputed to be among its innovators. In answer to whether it would hurt, he said that it would at worst be uncomfortable, like looking directly into the sun. Not to worry, though – he controlled the light beam so that it would never reach the nerves at the back of my eye and damage them.
The light was indeed very bright. If it weren’t reaching my retina directly, it did stimulate multi-colored flashes. At first they were simple geometric patterns, but they began to merge. The shapes tried to assemble into organic forms, but accelerated through that phase toward a single, all-inclusive white light. And I sensed a wondrous, breathtaking Presence in the light. Quite the opposite of irritating, it was as seductive as being received back into the bliss of my mother’s womb.
Too soon the light receded from me, and Dr. Boyle’s calls grew closer. He said, “I’ve never seen a patient so comfortable during the procedure that he fell asleep. Are you back with me? Well, no matter – rest your eye here for a while before descending to test it against the harsh lights below.” He offered his best approximation of a laugh and added, “Obviously I needn’t suggest you relax.”
I was anxious for him to leave, regarding him like the cherubim guarding the gates of Eden, from which I’d just been expelled. I was drawn irresistibly toward the doctor’s now unsupervised equipment, not unlike one who’s become an addict with his first experience of opium. It could not have been the doctor’s personality I’d sensed because the life had been in the light, and whatever humanity the physician had was beyond it. No – Deity can use anyone, however unenlightened, as an instrument to reach us.
And so I began piddling with the switches on his laser, remembering as best I could the procedure he’d followed. A flickering developed at the end of the probe. But before I could direct it toward my left eye and open it, too, to the clarity I’d known, the spark jumped from the tip onto the cabinet at my side. It expanded in a mist, taking the shape of a woman of translucent white. The same woman as in the portrait so far below, though drained of color – Dr. Boyle’s unnamed wife. And I heard her calling from beyond hope, “Ja-mey.”
In this tiny tower room she was right at hand, but was evidently quite unaware of me. Her call was tearing my heart. And it only grew worse. More sparks from the laser formed into pale silhouettes of children. Her children, or children that could have been hers. I could feel the vapor of which she was formed against my cheek, but she wasn’t quite real – she was the ghost of a life who’d dissipated too soon, and the children spirits of those who’ve never yet been. She had loved a great man, but what she’d needed was simply to live with a good man.
Now the groan was mine, for my voice could not carry to comfort her, nor touch her children. The shapes were lost, merging into a single luminous ball. But now there were dark fractures in what I’d seen as the universal light. Was it I who’d rendered Deity imperfect by seeking spiritual experience like a narcotic?
The light began to break into colors again, and firmer organic forms. I could see people, children in desperate circumstances they might overcome or avoid entirely if only I were there, living among them. How dare I presume to think the world below would be fulfilled if I escaped to dwell up here in the heavens, alone.
There was something in Dr. Boyle’s comment about my hearing – Yes, I seem better fitted to absorb what flows into my ears in the river of time than to have everything presented all at once before my eyes. I chose to descend, to leave the tower for the doctor, in hope that one day he will hear his wife’s call. On the way out the hall I saw the nurse about to enter another door. I gave her a smile to show that I wouldn’t be at all opposed should she invite me in, and follow this very mortal man into the cell to muss up our karma together. It should only take a few generations for us to tidy up.

Robert C Flanders
all rights reserved

The Mathematical Mean

The math professor, Miss Priest, was surely herself a Euclidean Solid – her form appeared sculpted and her features were so classical that when she moved it could be startling, as if seeing an ancient statue come alive. Indeed, movement seemed the only change she ever expressed – her face never showed any emotion, unless one counts such things as curiosity, contemplation, and the occasional flash of intellectual recognition.
Mark admired her from his desk midway in the classroom, but was distracted by the arrival of a new student. The girl was as light-haired as Miss Priest was dark, and her face betrayed the timidity which most people experience upon entering a new environment, especially when late. Mark made certain to draw her attention to the empty desk beside his, and smiled her a welcome when she took it.
The Professor continued her lecture without marking the new student. “Φ (pronounced Phi )is not the mathematical mean, but can be constructed from one.”
The girl whispered to Mark, “What does the ‘mathematical mean’ mean?”
‘What does ‘mean’ mean?’ – Mark toyed with the question in his mind. “It just means ‘average’,” he replied. But his usual playfulness fell under a growing shadow, a sense that this answer was somehow incomplete.
Miss Priest said, “Φ is called a ‘mean’ because it is a ratio, but it can’t be reduced to a simple fraction. In decimal terms it works out to one point six one eight dot dot dot, with the digits right of the decimal repeating infinitely, without a pattern. Thus Φ is an irrational ratio.”
The new girl stifled a giggle.
Mark remarked, “She means what she says quite literally – she has no sense of humor at all. But go ahead and laugh – she won’t be offended because the woman has no emotions whatsoever.”
He blanched, suddenly realizing that Miss Priest was now standing fairly close and looking at him – she very likely overheard his remark. But he dismissed his alarm by reasoning that if what he said was true then she couldn’t resent his characterization any more than the girl’s amusement.
The professor strolled to the chalkboard as if her entire demonstration was choreographed. Drawing the figure, she said, “Take a square ABCD, with sides of x. Now find the midpoint of the side AC – we’ll label it ‘E’. From E draw a line to an opposite vertex of the square, to B. The line EB is the hypotenuse of a right triangle, h, with one side x, and the other one half x. From the Pythagorean theorem we determine that h has length x times the square root of five divided by two. Now, swing the hypotenuse erect from E, above point A…”

“My my,” murmured Mark, “I hadn’t realized that our hypotenuse was limp.”
“..and label that point F. Complete a rectangle by extending BD up to point G, and connecting points F and G.”

Mark studied the movements of the professor’s body while she drew her figure. Amazing, really, that she never got chalk on her clothes during her lectures. As she stretched to draw FG her left side swept quite a pretty arc from heel to wrist, and every pause she made appeared posed.
Miss Priest did the math to show that when x equals one, the line FC has length Φ and the segment FA has length φ (phi, lower case Phi) because for any value of x the ratio of FC to AC is Φ.
Mark recited in his thoughts,”Fee fie fo fum – Reach for the vertex, my Pythagorean mum.”
The professor cocked her head as if trying to identify an unfamiliar noise while continuing,
“What we have constructed is the Golden Rectangle – so called because this is the most aesthetic proportion for a rectangle. From this, Φ is called the Golden Mean. Interestingly, when a square is deducted from this figure, the remaining smaller rectangle will have the same proportions – it will also be a Golden Rectangle.”
The professor marked off the discarded squares with arcs, reflecting “Perhaps Φ delimits the proportion of truth that Plato thought is lost with each successive mirror of Beauty on its downward spiral into our world.”
Miss Priest paused. “Having derived Φ by geometry, we can also find it algebraically. Remember that when x is one, the long side of the Golden Rectangle is Φ, and that the addition to the side of the original square is φ. But Φ is not only φ plus one – φ also happens to be directly related to the reciprocal of Φ. So we can set up an equation for Φ – ‘Find a number Φ which is equal to its reciprocal plus one.’” Developing the equation on the board, she concluded, “..and so by the Quadratic Theorem, Φ equals one plus the square root of five, divided by two, which you’ve seen is the value of Φ in our Golden Rectangle. The other Quadratic root is negative – meaningless as a line length and so cast out.”
“Pythagoras I know, and Euclid I know,” thought Mark, “But who is Quadrat?”
The professor turned, the chalk in her hand a pointer which probed among the students until marking Mark. She appeared puzzled by the humor shining in his eyes, but resumed, “We’ll examine the more exotic qualities of Φ in the next lecture. Now let’s take a break to go over your progress evaluations.”
It was unusual and certainly not required for a professor to provide these reviews, and it spoke well of her intention that each student do his best. She conducted the evaluations individually, letting half the students leave the room while she called the others in alphabetical turn to her desk.
During the initial shuffle Mark overheard Miss Priest telling the new student, “When I was a little girl in Ohio, I used to play along the Chattahoochee River, too.”
Mark protested, “Professor, the Chattahoochee is in Georgia, not Ohio.”
“I know what you mean,” she said with a warning look. “Nothing interesting ever came out of Ohio, so we have to borrow features from other states.”
Mark went outside to take his break with the first group, thinking about her odd remark. “What could that mean? What could she mean by that? What does ‘mean’ mean?”
He mused,”‘What does that mean?’ is asking what thought something is intended to convey. But ‘What did she mean by that?” is more like asking what motivates the thought that was actually expressed, or what effect the idea was intended to produce.
He recalled from logic class that a mean argument is a middle term in a syllogism, uninteresting in itself, but a necessary step between the premises and the conclusion. The hypotenuse that Miss Priest drew in deriving Φ from a square was like that – the hypotenuse itself was discarded once the Golden Rectangle was drawn, but it was needed in the middle stage of construction. “Sometimes ‘mean’ is the intention, and sometimes it’s the technique used to achieve it. Then the hypotenuse was a mean used to derive the Golden ‘Mean’.” Mark sensed that his conclusions were spiraling down toward non-being.
Again Mark panicked, realizing that because his last name belonged in the first half of the alphabet he should have remained with that group for the evaluations. Whatever the professor may think of it, he would regard himself guilty of a serious academic breach if absent when called. He rushed back into the classroom, but fortunately she was counseling the student just before him in the order. She showed no regard for privacy, conducting the interviews at her desk in full hearing of anyone else interested. Still, she meant well by her counsel. Mark took a seat in a quiet corner near the front to be at hand when called.
He noticed a pair of curvy parallel lines drawn on the blackboard. Maybe they were sine waves. “More aesthetic,” Mark thought, “for this professor of polygons to be drawing curves than straight lines.” Then he noticed that the figure could be a quick sketch of a river winding its way – had she reasserted her claim on the Chattahoochee? But it could equally well be the hastily drawn symbol for ‘approximately equal,’ or even the glyph for Aquarius – that was surely Miss Priest’s sign. He could feel the meaning in the mark like a verb in a sentence with subject hidden and object unexpressed.
Then a familiar rascal in his mind whispered that if the bottom wave was flipped, the curves would be become the sketch of a reclining female form. Mark imagined the Golden Rectangle as a horizontal picture frame around a portrait of Miss Priest lounging on a sofa, inadequately draped, of course. “And so our professor is the pi in Phi,” he thought. “Aesthetic indeed – Φ(π) is a sweet function.”
He leisurely painted the curve of her hips in his mind, his brush strokes making them blush pink, when he began to sense a cold scrutiny. The professor had finished the current evaluation, and was studying Mark prior to counseling him. Feeling her attention as a marked presence, he suddenly realized that she was a psychic, and was using that skill now as a guide in how to approach her next interview. Even worse – she was an empath; she hadn’t only been eavesdropping on his thoughts – she was actually experiencing them through him. Her face was becoming sweaty and blotched as it reflected the hormones in his blood. As she examined him, what had simply been his boyish fun in imagining something vaguely naughty looked quite beastly on her. Positively negative. Mark felt violated, nasty – and now she was calling his name. The logical inquiry of Professor Priest was quite mathematical, and mean.

Robert C Flanders
all rights reserved