15 Minutes Past Sagittarius

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