Once again Mark-Andrew is in the corner. His face flapped into a pout, his arms tucked into his chest. Perhaps he is somewhere behind the avenues and curves of these sentences, dodged behind the locomotive whir, constantly rapping his knuckles at the pixilated computer screen, pointing at his watch, insinuating that, "I thought you made a covenant with your readers to scribble daily about thoses souls that whipped and tamed your persona?" Indeed, I made an appointment and I am far from overdue.
*
"Stanwood Cobb always wanted to live to be 100." Mike told me, this afternoon, inbetween shifts, while we were out purchasing plants for our garden.
"Did he," I inquir lifting up a hush of Juniper. A bushel of rosemary bog. Uncle Mike just shrugs.
"The last time I saw him lecture he was 95." Mike says. "He came down to see Pearl. He would often contact Pearl concerning spiritual matters." Mike pauses. We pass frosted shrubs. "He would always have his lectures outside, often at night, under the stars. He hated lecturing inside for some reason."
Mike admires a yucca plant. I try not to make overt eye-contact with the jean-overall checkout girl punching digits into a register.
"He would often tell Pearl that he wanted to live to be 100 and she would just smile and say, "Now, Stanwood, why."
"So he was the first American Baha'i." I say, my brain squinting, trying to remember details.
"He was the first American intellectual who became Baha'i." Uncle Mike amends as he hands me a potted lilac. I place it in the cart. The checkout girl is still looking at the register like it is hi-tech dentistry equipment sponsored by NASA.
Mike presses what looks like an infant rhododendron into my chest.
"So you knew him" I inquire again. Mike nods.
"He would come to Pearl for spiritual advice. Everyone would come to Pearl for spiritual insight in those days."
"Tell me a story about him," I demand, our cart fused with dirty pots and botany as we wend our way over to the checkout lane. Mike pauses. His eyes once again avert up into his skull.
"`Abdu'l-Bahá healed Stanwood." He says. Our plants being scanned by something that looks like a miniature skull with a neon forehead.
"What do you mean?" I retort.
"Stanwood used to suffer from bouts of depression." Mike says.
"Horrible bouts of depression. Most people you admire--so many artists and thinkers suffered from just horrible, unbelievable 'bouts of depression."
"And`Abdu'l-Bahá healed him?" I asked again. Michael nodded.
"Stanwood used to suffer recurring bouts of depression. One day`Abdu'l-Bahá was siting next to Stanwood as he transcribed tablets. Stanwood was immersed very deeply in his studies. The next thing Stanwood knew he felt a warm presence surrounding him. The master had given him a hug."
"A hug?" I inquired a little squeamishly.
"Yes," Mike says "And Stanwood was healed. He never suffered a single-bout of depression again."
I think about that for a moment as Uncle Mike swipes his credit card and autographs the receipt. I think about what it must be like to be healed by an embraced. I think about what Stanwodd Cobb, a purported "intellectual" must have felt the moment he was brushed up against the Master's perfumed cloak. Was the intellectual 'embarrased' at first that he was given an embrace, of did he feel unalloyed warmth--the tickle of `Abdu'l-Bahá's beard swiping the side of Stanwoods face like the freshly indented edge of a paintbrush.
I think about this as we leave the Greenhouse. I think about illness and suffering and pain. I think about medication and exorbitant medical bills. I think about people whose bodies are gradually waning; whose organs are solidifying; whose breath is escaping their lips.
And I think about`Abdu'l-Bahá squeezing Stanwood Cobb. Squeezing him so hard that somehow, whatever impediment that saddled his health inside was released. I think about that as I walk out of the Greenhouse, shoving a cart full of green stems and paneled leafs.
And I think about what the checkout girl must think as she sees me walking next to Uncle Mike. Does she ponder the incongruity of our appearance? Does she wonder what this crazy long-haired tree-hugger is doing flanked with this tall, elderly suited man with thick glasses, baseball diamond goatee and a strange look of eternity melted into his furrowed brow.
I wonder if she is privy of our conversation, and I wonder if she pried open our lips up, I wonder what she would find hiding there, beneath the turf of our tongues.
5 comments:
David, I am out of smokes and this seriously makes me crave one. How did YOU become a Baha'i? (-:
Thanks...My roommate was upset that I inserted the details about Cobb being a smoker (If he's ninety-five years old its not like he has to worry about Lung Cancer)...Mike was pretty adamant. So, at his request I deleted the the delighted scene. I am glad that you got to read it. Smokers Unite!!!! (Blah-yak-yak!)
Aw, that was the best part!
Tell me, do sentences so exquisite just flow out of you or do you construct them? You have such a great gift. I tried reading "The DiVinci Code" and got to page 30 before I decided to retire it. The writing was terrible. Totally flat, no depth. Your blogs have ruined me!
Thanks bloggin'-buddies. More or less just flows (which is why it's so gunked up with grammatical foibles). Writing is like any other sport. If you go to the gym or an abandoned playground and shoot 1000 three pointers daily, you'll hit the game-winning jumper with flare and panache and maybe even get a kiss from that cute cheerleader in the process. Same with writing. If you try to write the best you can everyday, have fun with it, sit on both your ass and your ego everyday; when that short story or perfect sentence comes to you at the buzzer and you throw it up on the page, it'll be nothing but net.
There are, I should stress (and I've met and even dated a few) immeasurably talented writers out there. People who hawk a loogie or wipe their ass and the next thing you know they're penning a pulitzer prize acceptance speech. From experience I can honestly say that I'm nowhere in the same ball-park area code with these writers, which is fine. The more time I spend writing, the less time I have to be a "writer"--the less pretentious, academic and authoratative I become. I learned this the hardway. I initially came to writing becasue I wanted to be Jack Kerouac. I was sure that everything I wrote was Divine and immortal and that, by the time I was say, seventeen, I would already be widely antholgized as a lierary-snob in the Norton Anthology.
What I've learned is that EVERYONE reads (even if its just the color of a stop light) and everyone writes. One thing I used to tell my students is that every sentence you write will be one more sentence that has NEVER been written before. Keep that in mind as we blog. Your world, who you are as an individual is elaborately unique and important--the likes of which--in the 14 billion people who have ever left footprints on this planet--has never been see before.
All the best!!!!
David, who is Pearl?
I think you should not need to censor the smoking bit. I mean, it's not forbidden by the laws or anything! And I have a vague notion that Baha'u'llah Himself sometimes smoked. Or am I completely wrong?
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