Red
I clearly remember the moment I first took responsibility for the earth.
It was the day I found big Red. He was a mangy male on the plus side of the scale, lots of ginger hair with some facial scars that belied his kick-back personality.
When I found Red, wandering, I drug him home with me, his forelegs hanging over both my arms, his stiff ears brushing the underside of my chin, his back legs and tail bumping along on the ground behind.
My mom let me keep him, but he was pretty much confined to outside, where he wanted to be anyway, just in case there was a chance to mix it up with the feline cuties flirting in the neighborhood.
To get a sense of Red, you must understand something: He was so large and prowlish that when he was out and about, mothers pulled their small children back inside the house.
I was very, very proud of Red; his homecoming put me in a God-like category.
Genesis 1:26 states rather underwhelmingly that in the amazing and astonishing beginning of the very beginning of us, God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible … “
And then, in perhaps the greatest omission in world literature, the text goes on to say, “for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” In other words, for Red.
The author, seemingly unawares, blithely glosses over the emotional reaction — an unbelievable ellipses! Upon creation of beings like himself, God must have jumped up and down, waved his arms and hooted! Adam and Eve must have screamed with pure delight. The animals must have jumped into a celebration chorus so raucous and joyful that it forever upstaged any and all imitative, animated, Disney-movie hit tunes!
What? The emotional response to creation was not mentioned? Perhaps, it was shockingly lost in the Hebrew oral tradition, or perhaps Moses thought he couldn’t do it linguistic justice.
But the effect wasn’t lost. According to the record, Adam and Eve jumped right into the forray and started happily naming things. With all the acumen of a Carl Linnaeus they classified the marvelous creatures they were now wonderfully “responsible” for.
Cool! They acted out the DNA of God. They named, they brought home, they cared for — Red!
To care for the creation, to name it, feed it, pet it and bring it home with us– this is the image of God in us. The image of God is reflected in human responsibility for creatures. The sacred text itself says, God made us like him, so we could be responsible.
And in a damaged world and a broken creation, it is certainly the most God-like thing we can do to find lost creatures and to bring them home and care for them.
Want to be God-like?
Feed the dog.
Bring home a lost humanoid too.
Ordering Disorder
Around him sat at least 15 open paint cans, a half-dozen paint trays half-full of paint and a good 20 rollers and brushes with paint hardening at the edges.
He looked up at me from the mess, smiled wryly and said, “It would have been a lot easier to do it myself with a paint gun and one helper.
This was what the end of a church painting project at a campground in Mexico. About 20 people had been recruited, transported, armed with paint “weapons” and turned loose on a couple of now shinning buildings. It worked — kind of.
It’s typical. The end of most attempts to order the earth have a behind-the-scenes disorder to them. It’s called clean-up.
Last week, I got out the ladder, and took down the Christmas lights. There was a pile on the lawn, then a pile in the box, then Christmas was again on the top shelf of the garage.
Life is a lot about the clean up, about ordering the disorder created in our attempts to bring about order.
I talked to someone yesterday who is in need of redoing their taxes, in a better way, a more orderly, honest way. They told me that they have a sense of an era closing. They simply aren’t going to cut corners they used to cut. A new definition of what’s orderly has inspired them and a mess is going to be cleaned up, as best it can be cleaned up.
Paint rollers, taxes, Christmas decorations, the kitchen sink, our minds, our hearts – all need attention, ordering. To leave them as they are is to complicate the future. To order them is to bring about the next thing, to provide an opportunity for something new to happen.
I just cleaned out my clothes closet in my bedroom. Some of the shirts and pants that I had not that long ago bought, placed in my closet, wore, washed and returned to the closet were now tossed in a box to be donated, in order to restore order to my closet. Some of them, I just wasn’t wearing anymore and they were complicating and hiding the clothes I am wearing.
When I finished, I felt ready, for this year and I felt something else. I felt calm.
Isaiah the Jewish prophet, claimed that the effect of being right and doing the right thing is peace.
Order equals calm. I like it, calm, a sense that for the moment things are okay.
What’s next? We decide, what to do with disorder in our lives.
A good plan for any chaos or mess might look like the following:
First an ordering of the disorder, then calm.
The garage.
The closet.
The past.
A broken relationship.
A mental confusion.
The inner-most closet of the heart — think cleanup.
beginnings
What could make you so excited that if you began
it you could hardly wait to get up in the morning to complete it?
Do that!
I like uninhibited short people who enjoy being told a good story.
This week at a party I sat down with Abigail, my nephew’s daughter, and invented a story for her. Abigail is six. Oddly enough the little girl in the story that I told her was six, and had a dog named Obi, and strangely enough Abigail herself has a dog named Obi, named after Obi Wan Kenobi.
Abigail sat still beside me and listened intently. She loved it when Obi went out on a bike ride with her, riding his “platform bike,” which her dad had invented for him, and Abigail loved it, when after Obi’s disastrous bike crash, he was comforted at home with chicken nuggets that looked like dinosaurs. Chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs are her favorite food.
Later, at the party, I found Abigail’s dad, Roger, and outlined the story to him, how Obi, the adventuresome dog, rode a “platform bike,” and crashed and was dramatically rescued by him from the sewer under the street. Then and there I and gave Roger some pointers on the next installments of the story so he could continue it, if he wanted . The next thing, I think for Obi, the adventure dog to do, is to enter a bike race. After all Roger owns a bike show and has himself raced competitively.
It’s all about timing, when you race, and when you tell little girls stories about racing dogs. Being in the right place at the right time with the right information and “bingo,” a good time is had by two!
When I was in Brazil a few years ago, I told the leaders I was working with that I thought that in institutions such as churches and schools, children should be treated as the entrée, the main course and the absolute, riveting, uncompromising center of it all. I believe that, and practice it. I believe that children should never be babysat or watched; they should be engaged, challenged, centered on and introduced to new things — dogs that ride bikes and such.
I came home from the Brazil sick and weary of not saying enough about the value of children, and so I wrote an article on children and spirituality that was published in a magazine for people who thought the same thing. It lobbied for creating super-meaningful experiences for kids.
I’m still all over this. In the beginning, we must teach children to begin thinking creatively or they’ll grow up to be adults who are blindly fascinated with the same thing, over and over and over and over again.
Know a child?
Then begin a beginning.
Are you a child?
Yes, you are, even if you are an adult you are still a child in some deep and mysterious cabinet of wonders within the psyche that exists hidden in your child-like psyche? Yes, you all are, children!
And because I love you, I want to encourage you, to begin beginning what you have in your heart to begin.
Think about it.
If you don’t begin a new story, and tell it to someone else, then how will you ever end that story so you can begin another one and tell it to another one who is so much like yourself.
So, just begin it and keep going on from there — together.
You’ll like that!
Strike While the Stress Is Hot!
Stress is up.
It’s December. Research shows that 75 % of us feel good feelings during the Christmas season, love and happiness, but the research also predicts more stress.
Shopping, traffic, financial pressures and family expectations allow stress to rule most of us at Christmas time.
It’s been noted that women, in particular, feel a responsibility to make everyone happy during the holidays. And the poor, as the world shops, are made painfully aware of their lack. People who have social anxiety, and that would be almost all of us, have more anxiety as work, family and church holiday events increase.
Perhaps only children, and students, on break, relax more in December, but that would be after finals, not before. My children will be home, and I’ll love it, but that won’t make the house more peaceful.
Christmas equals more stress.
It’s never been different. The birth of Jesus was full of stress. His parents traveled, stress. They hit traffic, in Bethlehem, stress. Mary gave birth to Jesus in a cave and laid him in a feeding trough, stress. The shepherds saw angels, stress. They were terrified, a form of stress. Later King Herod tried to kill Jesus — major stress!
God entered the stressed world stressed. The incarnation, Christmas, was and remains intrinsically stressful.
What to do?
Of course, it’s smart to find some way to relax during the holidays. Heart attacks rise, and there are ways to keep from being a Christmas statistic. To thine own self be gentle, and at peace. Take a walk, better yet, take a run.
And consider the good uses of stress.
The birth of Jesus was full of stress, so also the birth of every great thing. Every book written, play acted, song sung for others, meal prepared, wrong righted, person rescued has stress in it.
No good is done without stress, so this Christmas get stressed. To love a difficult friend or family member this December may well require stress.
To be social, with family, work associates, church family, will include more stress. Do it and you will be better for it, and so will they. Prestressed concrete is like a person who risks and acts — stronger.
Stress may kill, a few things that need killing this year – apathy, indifference, isolationism and selfishness.
This Christmas step up and strike while the stress is hot.
You’ll find more insights about stress at www.modernproverbs.net
Feedback on the Sweetwater Marsh Fable
Dear readers,
For you who have read Sweetwater, the marsh fable posted on this blog, I’d like some feedback.
This was a first draft; my plan is to do a rewrite of the whole story in the new year.
It would help to have your thoughts on how to improve it.
1. In this first draft, I know the characters are not adequately developed. I’m just getting to know them myself. What are your suggestions here. Which characters did you like, who do you want to know more about? What might be a better name for Sara? What role should the innkeeper play?
2. The setting is a character. The wind, rain and sun represent God, the trinity. Did you catch that?
3. There is a lot of physical description, say the “Sunset Revelations” chapter or “Night Sky.” Does that work for you or is it boring? Do you like it when the setting speaks, trees, soil, sun, oxygen?
4. Does a theme, a compelling idea come through. What do you think it is?
5. I now think the story is for adults, not children. Perhaps this really isn’t a kid’s story. The little bit of cute, doesn’t seem to work. Thoughts on this? Maybe this is meant to be a philosophical fable for people who like ideas and love nature. What do you think?
6. What worked? What’s good? What doesn’t work for you?
Thanks! You can email a response to me at rhasper@cox.net or you can simply added comments on the blog.
Randy
Chapter 20, Renewal
This is the final chapter of the salt marsh fable, Sweetwater, written for your astonishment and delight.
You can access previous chapters in the menu to the right on this blog, Thrive. 
That evening a high pressure moved in from the north and the sky cleared. The earth turned toward the east. The sun skipped to the west, saw the sea and sighed lovingly.
“Come to me,” said the sun.
“Catch me,” said the sea.
And catch the sea the sun did. Picking up the soft, blue sheet, the sun pulled the sea over its head. Then, the golden light peeked back out of the bed covers and gave the sea a green wink.
“So there, and there and there,” said the sun, and kissed the sea, the bay, the marsh and the uplands goodnight.
But the sun was still awake, and childishly playful, it cast a warm yellow glow into the fading day. It lit a thin crescent moon that had been hiding all day close to its side, but now was left dawdling by itself over the sea.
The sun cast itself with brilliant intensity on the back side of the moon. The thin, knife-like edge of the brightened moon floated down to the sea, as the sky darkened and darkened and darkened yet again.
Though it could not be seen from the marsh, the sun tossed a full-portion of itself upon the backside of the earth and this brilliance bounced off of the blue planet and landed on the face of the moon, extending its light beyond the crescent. On the full orb of the moon, a soft, yellow glow lit the lunar mountains, the sea-like plains and all the circular craters.
The moon, now deeply enmeshed with the sun in its diurnal dance, lingered briefly in the evening sky, showing off the reflected glory. But the time had come for the thin bowl of light to bid goodby to the earth
“Good bye,” said the moon, and flew under the watery bed covers of the sea to give way to the glittering hosts of the night.
The sky, in defiance of the city, turned dark and beautiful, blue-black at the zenith, diamonds in its hair. Leo rose up out of the west, attending Jupiter, escorting Virgo, prominading through the heavens. The night passed in starry splendor over the sea, the marsh and the little butterflies sleeping in a tattered corner in the uplands.
As morning approached, Leo set where the sun had fallen into the sea the night before, and the northern cross , with arms spread, rose up from where the sun would rise.
Then morning came again, and the sun ascended, a great roaring fire in the east.
The desert woke, Octotillo flaming, the moutains too, oaks resplendant.
The oxygen in the air shyly greeted the hydrogen and they kissed.
The nitrogen came alive in the heat and ran circles above the ground
The volcanic ash danced with star-dust and took up a waltz with the flotsam and jetsam of life, riding on the wind.
“Dance with me,” each one called out and they danced, bits and pieces of the earth spinning across the earth.
Down in the depths of the ground, the aquafir responded to the spinning earth and shook hands with the shells and the sandstone there, dreaming of huge columns and grand entablatures.
Out on the mesas, the great flat flat floors to the north, the fairy shrimp darted through the vernal pools that only weeks before had been dry dust. Looking up at the bright sun shinning down into their thin, watery worlds, the shrimp floated on their backs and called out gently, “Its enough for us today. It is so much more than enough of enough for us. We don’t need or ask for anything more than this!” And then mesa mint, growing along side of the pools, put on her fragrance and waltz across the measa perfuming the air.
Up on the tops of the bluffs to the northwest, above the sculpted wind caves of Torrey Pines, reposing on the soft green skin of the earth, the lacy yellow filaree, the lovely purple sand verbena and the golden sunflowers sunbathed. The gorgeous orange California poppies lifted their faces to the deep blue sky.
“We love you!” the poppies called out to the sky. “It’s enough! We swear it!”
The wind kissed the flowers. They ducked awasy; they popped forward again, they paused, the sun kissed them again; they smiled. Down in the blue-green waters of the sea, far below the poppies, the bright orange and lumenescent blue Garibaldi washed back and forth in the lush surf grass.
“Dance,” the Garabaldi said.
“We dance,” the poppies said, and the splotches of bright orange under the blue sky moved with the splotches of bright orange down under the blue sea.
And to all this, and more, Professor Cabbage awoke early in the tiny patch of tattered mustard he and his students had perched in for the night, a tiny bit of his lab that remained at the south edge of the uplands. He flew to the top, and looked north.
“My little students,” he cried out excitedly, “Get up! Look!”
The sea, with the sun attending it, was running into the marsh.
The water had already crossed the mud flats and begun to run into the small ditch that followed the route of the railroad tracks.
“It’s coming for us,” said the sleepers.
“It’s good,” shouted the dirt.
“It’s alive!” shouted the professor to his students, and out of the patch of mustards he flew, and all his little students flew with him, powering fast and hard toward the water and light that was running quickly toward them.
Cabbage scouted the area ahead of them as they flew, looking for a perch, a tower, a turret, an entablature to watch from. Then he saw what he hadn’t seen the day before. Not all the plants had flown.
“There,” he shouted, ”a little patch of salt wort.”
“There,” Peter called, catching on, “a bit of pickleweed at the edge of the pond!”
“Fennel!”shouted Coco, seeing patch of it at the edge of the tracks.
The butterflies flew to it.
As they lit, there was Professor Swallowtail, with all his students, looking out toward the marsh.
“Henri!” cried Swallow, “You live!”
“I do,” and fortunately you too,” said Professor Cabbage, with his students settling around him.
Along the beaches in Coronado, the surf was large, storm surf, make a wild, heavy dash for the shore. Huge swells, like great whales, powered into the beaches. The waves rose up and opened their great, dark mouths and then crashed their white teeth together on the land
The sea raised up; there was a great crack followed by a low, approaching roar and a finishing gurgly slosh, a soft swish and a light fizz as the bubbles arrived on the sand, softly popping.
“Devastation comes from what is within,” said Cabbage very quietly, “but newness, it is from without.” But the butterflies were too focused on what they were seeing to hear what he was saying.
They were fixated on the tide flowing, and in all the marsh now, the tide flowed in fast, running hard across the mud. The water was alive. It picked up the broken bits of dead plants and lifted them to the sky. Here and there a yellow or white daisy floated on the surface of the water. They tide came further in and it ran into the dry cracks of the earth. It shook hands with a bit of pickleweed that had not flown. It gently submerged a bit of salt grass lining the creek bank.
The water, sweet and nourishing, gave places for life where only moments before there had been none.
Small top smelt darted in among the stalks and stems of the newly created submarine forest. The little swimmers glided over the salt marsh floor where only moments before their had been dry dirt.
“Swimming now, over the dirt,” they called happily to each other.
“What is it, Professor Cabbage?” asked Professor Swallowtail.
There was along pause, then Cabbage mused, “We don’t know something different; we are something different.”
“Not doubt about that,” said Swallow, and he looked around at all his students. They were sitting together with Cabbage’s students, looking toward the sea.
“Yet the same,” said Professor Cabbage.
“It’s not the same,” said the innkeeper worm from within his mud burrow in the tidal creek. “It’s not the same as when Cabrillo sailed into the bay.”
“Then wait,” said Cabbage. “Good things happen inside of us when we wait.”
“I’m getting old,” said the innkeeper, “waiting.”
“Maybe you’re waiting for the wrong thing,” said Cabbage.
The tidal creek rose. A sting ray, its wings undulating gently, glided through the shallow, salty water. The creek deepened. A small leopard shark weaved its way into the marsh. A Greater Egret landed on the shore of the creek, eyes eager, neck ready. The hunt was on. His long legs and yellow boots dripping, he flared up into the sky, like Orion the hunter, and then fell into the salt creek, neck curved, bill poised. He struck the water with his feathery, white head. A large fish, suddenly appeared in his bill, fresh and silvery, flopping bread of water, sun and wind.
The butterflies watched and watched. They couldn’t see enough.
“It’s small,” said Sara, gazing over the Sweetwater marsh, “like us.”
Behind them, Melodia also watched, sitting at the eastern edge of the water, perched on the limb of a fallen Tamarisk tree. This looked familar to her, and she thought of the dream she had once had of the water, coming in, and floating her palm tree away.
Professor Cabbage felt her presence and looked back and saw her, a small gray spot of mockingbird sitting there at the edge of the water. She didn’t seem far away to him, but he said nothing to the others.
He looked over at Coco, sitting close to him. She was very close, the distance between them seemed to be hardly any distance at all. He looked as her crinkled wing.
“It didn’t keep anything from happening that was supposed to happen,” he said.
“What was that, Henri?” said Professor Swallow. “Have you taken to esoteric mutterings again?”
The water came in, and it kept coming and coming. What had only moments before been mud flats and fields of devastation, simplified into huge, glassy sheets of water. This soothed Melodia. It calmed the butterflies. It soothed all the watching earth.
“We are coming,” said the water, “We are coming in now!”
“Come in,” cried the fairy shrimp out on the mesa.
“You’re wecome here,” said the pickleweed under the water. “We both invite and welcome you here.”
“Come,” said the sun to the sea and the wind.
The marsh opened her gates to the sea and the sea came in, patted down, shaken together and running over, and the wind ran across the waters, leaving footprints everywhere.
Cabbage looked out as far as he could see, and in that moment, he could see only a watery, airy and shinning world.
Chapter 19, Aftermath
This is chapter 19 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-18 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog.
Professor Cabbage spent the night, for the first time in his life, outside of his living laboratory. He roosted in a hibiscus bush in a yard in the city. The night went by fitfully. He awoke was a start, an ache in side and images of plant war in his mind. A hopelessness seemed to hang over the earth like a fog.
Indeed, a heavy marine layer covered the city. Morning came with a vague, generalized light, diffused. The world was gray.
He looked himself over. He was gray. He was a Cabbage white, but now he seemed more gray than white. He thought of the mockingbirds. They also were gray. He wondered what had happen last night to all his little students, and to Professor Swallowtail and his students too. He felt afraid. There was nothing to do but look.
Cabbage flew out off the yard. He was unsteady, because of his notches, but he was able to fly, and he made his way across the city and over the freeway. As he approached the uplands, he stained to see what was ahead in the fog.
It was a nightmare come true. He pulled up in the air. A low groan escaped him. It was as if the uplands and the marsh had been bombed. He looked around for somewhere to land. A bit to the north, he spotted a Tamarisk tree lying on its side, some limbs sticking into the air. He few to it, and landed there. It’s branches were as leafless as a tree in winter. Its trunk was splintered and broken.
He looked out toward the bay. He felt disoriented. All the old landmarks were gone. Before him was a fast, flat plane, with little sticking up from it. Before him, only a fibrous litter. The great, Gothic fennels, the warm and cozy mustard, the shining fields of yellow and white daisies — all gone. The pickle week, the salt grass, the Sea Lavenders, the spiky cord grass — gone. A mass of litter on the ground.
“After devastation,” thought Cabbage, “the oddest thing is to see a place that you knew as pointy, spiraled, storied – flat. It it a difficult thing,” he mused, “to not be able to say precisely where ones home is.”
“It was over there,” said Cabbage, to no one, pointing to the rubble, “I think.”
Cabbage flew, but he was bewildered. He landed on the ground, beside a broken fennel. It was broken and limp The plant was still alive, its roots partially in the ground. Cabbage wondered if had been packed by the dirt after it had fallen, a futile but unyielding effort not to lose it all.
Cabbage inspected the fennel. It’s lovely yellow flowers were all beaten off; It branching architecture broken; its arches and pillars and entablatures crushed. It seemed, without fragrance.
Such was the professor’s morning. He went from plant after plant, bending over each one, calling it by its name, looking for signs of life. But where he found a spark of life left, he also found a fierce and dying anger.
“You are calling me out of my name,” one of the crushed but still living fennels insisted. The professor looked out over her length. There was a small annise swallowtail butterfly caterpillar on one of her remaining branches, looking dry, looking lost. The professor sighed very deeply.
He flew to a mustard. He spoke her name.”You have no idea who you are addressing!” she said with great indignation.
He ventured further in, approaching the uplands. There, he spied the very Sea Lavender that he had only a few days before sat into speak with the innkeeper worm. It was on its side, roots exposed. He was sure he knew this plant, but when he said to her, “I know you,” she hissed back, “I have never seen you in my life.”
Cabbage wept.
And then he heard their voices, and suddenly his students, Sara, Peter, Coco, Cleopatra, Blue and also the newly added Red Admiral, were all around him.
“Professor,” Sara enthused, throwing herself on him. The other followed until there was a pile of wings on the ground, all waving back and forth and patting and hugging and yelling, “It’s him! Professor! We thought we had lost you! We found him! You’re okay.”
The butterflies untangled and sat around the professor in a circle, glowing.
“My little students,” he began, “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again. I love you, each one, and I am so glad your survived,” he pause, and then added, “the rebellion.”
“Rebellion?” said Coco looking around, “what’s that?”
They all looked at the professor.
He looked over their heads. He gestured to the devastation, the dead and dying plants that surrounded them and he said carefully, “This was personal.”
“It’s horrible,” said Sara. “It breaks my heart to see them like this.”
“It is important in life,” said the professor, “for our emotions to match the circumstances. Sara, yours match perfectly. The appropriate response to devastation is grief.”
“What’s grief?” asked Coco.
“Grief is crying when we need to cry,” said the professor.
“But I’m not crying,” said Coco. “Give it time,” said the professor.
“I’m not sad,” said Peter, “I’m mad!” He looked at the professor to see what he would say.
A light breeze sprung up and the butterflies blew sideways for a moment. They adjusted themselves, pointing toward the bay, taking the wind head on now.
“Me too,” Peter said Cabbage, “I am angry too. This should never have happened. It’s unacceptable.”
“Who caused this?” asked Peter angrily, looking out on all the ruined plants.
“It’s the innkeepers work!” said Sara. “It was his plan to destroy the present in order to recreate the past.”
“But what about what the dirt said?” asked Blue. “The dirt thought the high salinity levels were forcing the plants out.”
“I always thought Swallow caused this,” said Peter. ”He was trying to keep things in their places, making categories, rules. No one liked that. Maybe the plants just couldn’t take it anymore They wanted to be free from the ground, like us.”
There was a pause, then the Red Admiral said cautiously, ” Professor Swallow told everyone that it was your fault, Professor Cabbage. He said that you were giving the plants the idea that they could become birds. He said that when you started trying to form connections between the differing species, you were resisting the natural order of things. He told us to stay away from you. He said it would turn out badly.”
“What was it, Professor?” called out Cleo in anguish. Then with a terrible look, she said,”I caused it!”
“No, you didn’t!” said Coco. “You’re nice.”
“But you remember my first flight — Sara, Peter. I showed off!”
“I know,” said Sara. “Somebody had something to show off!” looking at Cleo’s beautiful wings, then at her own plain ones.
“Oh, you did too Sara,” said Cleo, “Yu’ve got wings; we all do and the plants don’t. It was so fun to fly, for the first time! Maybe I made the plants jealous!”
“Wait a moment,” said Cabbage, ”There are many forces at work in these terrible events. Perhaps we all had a part in this. I’m sorry for mine, and yet, it is my belief, and I have tried to teach you this before, that the explanations for behavior must never leave out personal responsiblity. The plants must own this too. “
“What does that mean?” said Coco to Sara.
“They did this to themselves,” said Sara.
“We are all influenced” said the professor, “but ultimately we all choose.”
“What kind of crazy world is this?” cried Peter, “where things can choose to destroy themselves?”
They all looked over into the water of the tidal creek. The wind was walking on the water now; they could see his crinkly footprints. They looked down into the creek where the innkeeper lived.
“Is he still there?” asked Sara.
“Of course he is,” said Cabbage, “but now we know what is going to happen.”
“What’s going to happen?” asked Coco.
“What has happened before,” said the professor.
They flew. The professor led the way, but it was not a zigzagged way. He reeled across the marsh and into the uplands. His little students followed him, as they always had.
He looked down. “Where are my precious, precious eggs now?” he groaned. “Some did choose for others! All those precious, helpless, nameless, little lives!”
A storm of thoughts and emotions swept over him like a wave, arriving and crashing on his little devastated beach.
He called out, “The stupid, hateful, purposefulness of it, the blinded, crippled deafness of it, the self-destructive, annihilating viciousness of it.”
He flew and he burned. He said, “I hate the lack of love in this!”
Suddenly, flying with his little family, flying over his once living laboratory, which was now largely dead, he was revolted, incensed, outraged. This death was his own death. He flew over the destruction and death below him, pounding the air with his wings. He felt a great aching for the living world. “Life promised so much, and then this!”
Each wing beat, each pounding of the air, each push up and out of the uplands seem to shout to him now, “Who are we? And what have we done? And what has it all come to?”
Then the sun said, “Yes.”
And the wind said, Soon.”
And the water said, “More.”
And he knew then the professor, and each one of his little students knew, this wasn’t the end.
Chapter 18, The Rebellion
This is chapter 18 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-17 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog.
That very night, the plants flew.
The rain had quit falling; the stars were peaking through the great racks of clouds moving through the area, and the earth was soaking up the water from the storm. The wind had quit blowing; it was calm from sea to desert.
No sun, no wind, no rain.
Later it was debated, as to which plant flew first.
Some said it was a daisy, some a fennel, some a suicidal pickleweed along the edge of the marsh ponds. The matter was never settled, either in back room debate or in the many scholarly papers later written about the events that took place that night.
What we do know is that it started small, at sunset, in the northeaster quadrant, and that it spread quickly, like a wild fire in the back country, fanned by Santa Anna winds.
The mockingbirds watching, and this included Melodia, said they saw a pickleweed somersaulting through the air over a salt pond. The starlings, however, argued that it was a mustard. The dirt said it was a daisy.
Whatever the case, the first plant that flew in the Sweetwater salt marsh that evening, flew low and fast over the water, shedding leaves from its twisted stalk and trailing dirt from its tangled roots. Then to the south another plant flew, then another, streaking through the fading light like meteors. Then as if a giant carpet were being pulled up from one corner, a great sheet of green rose out of the ground. Starting at one point and spreading, it ripped out of the earth and filled the air over the uplands. A great mass of roiling roots and stalks flew like many magic carpets all at once, speeding here and there, confused and directionless.
Then another string of plants, then another, then another rose into the darkening sky. Like someone pulling loose threads from a coverlet, long, thin lines of plants ripped themselves out of the marsh and the uplands and rose into the air.
Several snowy egrets flew out of one of the tidal creek in a panic, two great blue heron too, several willets and a godwit, and they pounded through a green clouds all around them, beating the flying pickle weed and salt grass and Sea Lavenders aside with their flailing wings. One of the willets went down among the falling plants and hit the water hard.
Then the uplands to the east rose with a shout, the daisies and fennels, the buckwheats and lamb’s quarters, the radishes too. Eggs flew too, and all the little butterflies there, Professor Swallowtail and his students and Professor Cabbage’s students too, without there teacher, startled into the night air.
“Afraid,” shouted Coco.
“Follow me,” called Peter.
“Fly east,” called Sara through the din, but quickly none could see the other, nor had they any sense of which way to go.
There was a great ripping and tearing sound in the air, and it was hard to see in the fading light with all the flying, churning plants about.
The dirt and all the soldiers of the dirt rose up into the air, and sped after the plants to do battle. It was hopeless. Flying dirt smashed into flying root and stem and stalk and leaf and everywhere plants exploded over the marsh, raining bits and broken pieces of themselves on the water and the land.
Professor Cabbage himself rose into the air when the horehound he was lying in decided to fly. Up the gray, fuzzy plant came, and out of the top the professor was flung, notched wings, legs and antanea ajar. He caught himself instinctively, and he careened across the uplands toward the Tamarisk trees, wobbling through the filling air.
Almost to the trees, he saw a most terrible sight. The very skin of the earth was being pulled off. Plant after plant ripped itself from the soil. There were so many in the air now that the plants began smashing into each other. The sky itself appeared to be in motion.
Then suddenly, another terrible change took place, an strange order began to ensue. The roiling masses of plants formed into a great line, and the line began to march through the air, as if it had a captain, as if it were orchestrated by a commanding force. The professor pulled up, and best he could, and hovered in place. And as he watch the great line of plants gathered speed and mass, and then it rocketed toward a large industrial building sitting at the south edge of the marsh complex. The great green line approached the building at high-speed, and it hit the wall with a great thud. It crashed head on into the building. And plant after plant slammed into the wall, fell to the ground only to be followed by wave after wave of more crashing plants. When the end of the line hit the building, the last few stalks and leaves fell into a massive pile of debris at its base.
There was a moment of calm. The professor started again toward the Tamaisks. The air was still. There wasn’t a sound. Then suddenly it all began again.
Now it was as if someone had opened Pandora’s box. With a tremendous slurping and sucking, a great wave of cattails rose from the brackish pond at the edge of the uplands and cast themselves into the air. And as the did, the redwing blackbirds and all the starlings rose up out of them and and beat a rapid retreat toward the east.
And then as if called forth like a challenging army, all the cord grass in the mitigation marsh rose up violently, and bore themselves away from the water and coming south, approached the cattails. The cattails rose straight up in the air to meet them, rising higher and higher, and then turning, they dove down. Straight into the oncoming cord grass they came, spikes first like multiple warheads, leaves flowing back. They ripped through the wall of cord grass, scattering it here and there and knocking it from the air. They powered past it and slammed into the marsh water, some of the main stalks collapsing under the impact, others spearing the mud and sticking there, upside down, like spears cast into the earth.
Species after species now flew out of the ground, the telegraph weeds, the filaree, the baccharis, the bladder pod. And as they did, eggs scattered here and there and insects flew and fell and were covered up.
Professor Cabbage continued toward the Tamarisk trees, seeking a refuge there, while all around him, the Saint Vitus dance grew into a frenzy, the dance of the plague, attended by deranged celebrants; they danced a dance of death.
He looked back toward the bay and saw the shrike flying toward him extemely fast, a look of total terror on its face.
He turned back to the trees and flapped toward them again. It seemed as if the professor made no progress now, as if he were trapped in a dream with no door to exit from.
But he did make progress, and just as he began to enter the sanctuary of the trees, they too, with a tremendous ripping and splintering, twisted themselves from the earth and rushed toward the professor.
There was a great groan then, that seem now to come from deep in the very earth itself, and the professor fell to the ground and the earth shook and chaos reigned.
And the doves, who had been roosting in the trees shrieked, their eyes full of terror, and they beat the air helplessly.
Then total darkness fell upon the marsh.
Chapter 17, Diapause
This is chapter 17 of a marsh fable, Sweetwater, which I am writing for you. It’s a story for wise children and curious adults.
I’m writing this adventure to help you to develop an astonishment for life, to help you travel further, and to help you thrive more. If you haven’t been reading, I’m posting a new chapter ever so often. You can begin with chapters 1-16 by clicking on them under “what’s new” on this blog.
That night a whirling pool of clouds turned down the coastline and into the city. The sky clouded over, growing darker, thicker, grayer and lower.
The sun disappeared. The pepper trees lining the streets of the western part of the city, knew the rain was coming. So did all the shore crabs in the marsh, and all the mustards, all the palms and all the doves, in the uplands.
“I don’t like it,” said Coco.
“Why?” said the Red Admiral.
“We can’t go out. There’s nothing to do” said Coco.
“It’s like diapause,” said Peter.
“What’s diapause?” asked Cleo.
“It’s waiting,” said Peter, “when it’s best to wait. Remember what the professor taught us about the fairy shrimp, how they wait, in their eggs in the dry dirt on the mesa, for the rains to come again.”
“I don’t understand,” said Coco.
“Diapause,” said Sara, sounding just like the professor, ”is a delay in development in response to adverse environmental conditions. It’s sleeping through bad times, like winter, and waking when things get better, like in spring.”
The Red Admiral jumped in. “When the days get shorter and the weather gets colder and the food gets scarcer, then we know it’s time to sleep and to wait.”
“But it’s spring!” said Coco, “It’s warm! There’s more food now than before! Why is it time to wait?”
“Because the professor is gone, and the storm is coming, and the marsh is well, something bad is going to happen in the marsh,” said Peter.
“Don’t say that, Peter,” said Sara. “We don’t know that! And I’m not waiting. I’m going out to look for Professor Cabbage.”
“Don’t Sara,” said Peter. “Flying in wind this strong is dangerous, and you might get caught in the rain.”
“I can’t stand sitting here and doing nothing,” said Sara.
“It’s not nothing,” said Peter. “Waiting is not doing nothing. Important things happen while we wait.”
“Nothing happens while we wait!” said Sara angrily.
“That’s not true,” said Peter. “The professor told us that nothing is the best preparation for something.”
“That doesn’t make any sence at all,” said Coco.
“It makes perfect sense,” said Peter. “Things happen, inside of us, while we wait.”
“Well, you can argue all you want about nothing,” said Sara, but I’m doing something.”
Then, torn between love for the professor and fear of the storm, she flew out of the mustard alone, in search of her teacher.
And as she did, the trees reached out and invited the storm in. “Come,” they called.
“Dance with us,” said the peppers along the edge of the city streets to the wind.
And so the wind caught the peppers by their hands and invited them out onto the earthen floor. The wind paused, genteel, took a moment, thought things over, choreographed some movements appropriate to the occasion, then led them the peppers through some practice steps. The trees swooshed down to the ground with grace, then up they came into the air again in expressive joy.
Warming to the dance, the wind dropped the peppers hands, reached out and took them in his arms, guided them through their turns and spun them around at the end of the hall. But the peppers hadn’t danced in sometime, so the wind slowed, gently practicing them in the classics — in ballroom, in tango, in waltz.
The wind strengthened, it energized, now it inspired the dancers. It was time to go on stage.
“Dance with us too,” cried the palms along the strand. And dance with them the wind did, and they laughed and threw their wild arms into the air.
Sara felt the change. She knew what was coming. She had little time left to look for the professor.
She blew quickly over the uplands, caught in a wild gust. She was swept along toward the city, blown toward the date palm. She crossed over the freeway like paper blown from a field and across a street.
Always before, when the butterflies had crossed the freeway with Professor Cabbage, they had flown very high, and they had barely noticed the noise and commotion below. Today was different. Sara stayed down low, seeking shelter from the wind, so that when she came to the freeway, she blew down an overpass bridge and along a fenced wall.
Suddenly the wind grabbed her up and cast her against the fence. She clenched and grabbed and came to a stop. She looked down, below and — the sound! Huge shinning creatures, carried swiftly on a howling wind, flew past below her through a tremendously deep channel in the earth. They came at her and rushed away from her. They flared away from her as they approached. They disappeared under the overpass. And there on the other side, they were rushing away from her too!
Suddenly there was a loud roar amid the turmoil below, a much larger creature lunged at her, there was a great clank, she startled, and she fled back toward the uplands. She pounded her way back, against the wind. She tossed; she fell; she followed a zig-zagging path. Finally, she fell into her mustard, terrified.
“What happened?”cried Coco.
Sara said nothing, only looked at all the butterflies and shivered. They looked at her and huddled closer, just as they did when the earthquake had happened.
It was coming. You could feel it. You could smell the water in the air.
The doves disappeared into the trees.
The sidewalks suddenly had spots of wet on them. Through the air was suddenly crowed with new, tiny silver dancers. The wind mastered them and the little drops plunged toward the earth in long, parallel, slanting lines.
The mocking birds in the date palm huddled under their frond roof, taking shelter from the storm. Musica fell asleep there, warm against her sister, and dreamed of the marsh.
In her dream, she watched tide flowed in from the sea, from the bay and into the marsh. The salty water flowed all the way to the tamarisk trees on the edge of the uplands; it crept up their trunks to their first limbs. It passed them by, and it flowed to the freeway. It filled up the deep channel there, and overspilling its banks, it flowed into the city. It entered the backyards, and where she was, it crept slowly up the trunk of the date palm.
The water rose until it almost reached the top of the palm, and only the fronds remained, floating on the water like a giant green nest. Then, astonishingly, the tree floated out of the yard and down the street, carrying the mockingbirds along.
The palm floated down a great river, moving faster and faster, over the house tops it ran along. The palm and the mockingbirds were swept along toward a great, placid, shinning sea beyond.
And while Melodia dreamed, the rain continued to fall, harder and hardened on the land. The wind mastered the rain; it fell in great, unified sheets, down onto all the trees, tossing, glistening and baptizing all the Jacarandas, the Eucalyptus, the Magnolias, the peppers and the palms. It fell on the buckwheats, the fennels, the mustards, the daisies, and all the living things danced, as one.
The water overcame the earth. The water in the aquifer, down under the ground, far below the city, sat up and taking notice said softly, “Nice.”
The trees blurred into the background now. The rain was now the entrée, the drama and the dance. It fell on the great sea, it fell on the sandy beaches, it fell on the marsh, it fell on the city — everything it fell on deepened in color and hue.
It fell on the canyons, to the east; it fell on the plateaus spreading out to the north and south. There it filled up the vernal pools reposing shyly on the mesas. Thin envelopes of water pooled in shallow depressions in the ground and in each of these life seemed to spontaneously generate. Tadpoles sped through the shallows, shouting, “Horray! Too much! Can you believe this? Horray!”
Dowingia flowers, with white and purple pedals bloomed in the vernal pools, their yellow centers opening to the rain, and calling out, “Good, so much good, too good! Can we possible in all our wild imagination have expected all this!”
“It’s just a mudpuddle,” said a fennel standing near by.
“It’s sweet water!” shouted the tadpoles.
And there, in the sweet, clean water, swimming across the mesa, like the bass swimming in the great oceans of the earth, magically appeared the fairy shrimp fanning the water gently. “We totally approve of this,” they spoke softly to the rain. “Wash and wash and wash,” they whispered to the sky.
“Shrimp! cried the rain. “We love you, you shrimp who dare to swim upon the land! We regenerate and wash you twice again clean!”
And wash the sky did, and it washed the sages, the bacharis, the lemonade berries, and all the little shoots of fresh green grass down below them.
The rain fell in the mountains to the east, flying into the sides of the great Cuyamacas and Lagunas, falling on the flowering apple trees in Julian, standing and waiting for their grooms, like happy brides, dressed in white flowers, waiting in the foyers of the foothills. The rain filled up the yellow cups of the daffodils along the streets of Julian They lifted their mouths, like chalices, each one filled with wine.
“More,” they cried out, “Give us more and more and more!”
And the storm cast itself with power over the tops of the mountains and it flowed down into the Anza Borrego desert. There it fell on the Ocotillo’s red flaming flowers, lifted toward the sky; it fell on the Indian Paint bush, the brittle bushes and the barrel cactus and the chollas. The creosote bushes soaked, then putting on their perfumes, they sasshayed through the desert, spreading their sweet fragrance everywhere.
The granite on the canyon walls of the desert darkened, like stained glass cleaned, and the desert became a cathedral, full of worshippers.
The mountains ran, the great alluvial fans looked up, the boulders gazed out, dark and lovely, and they called to the wind and rain, ”Us too! Fall on us too!”
And Professor Cabbage, reposing under a soft horehound leaf, said weakly but with great joy, “It’s good.”
