Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Dust Spangles on the lips of Wayfarer's Glory

Uncle Mike gives his nocturnal lecture inside William's cafeteria where I eat breakfast and lunch during the school year. It is the first night of Heartland. Prayers and chants have been said. Students are reminded of curfue. Everyone walks around continually fidgeting with their nametags. When I walk into Williams Hall with Mike, a young kid with auburn hair pulls me over and gives me a hug.

"I remember you from last year." He says, recalling my name.

"Thanks, And-drew," I say, squinting at his nametag.

"I have to ask you something," Andrew nods. "It's personal. I mean, it's really personal."

"Ok," I nod. I'm balancing a stack of books Uncle Mike will reference in his speech.

"There was a girl who said something about you last year. I need to ask you if it's true or not." His pupils widen to the size of manholes.

"Sure," I assent. We are surrounded by bodies. Uncle Mike embraces older Baha'is from Bloomington. The room becomes a carousel of flurry.

"Only I can't ask you here." Andrew says, concentrating very intently.

"Alright," I add "No problem."

*
Uncle Mike commences his lecture by informing the audience to be audacious. To take chances. To "preservere", as Shogi Effedni would say. He relays the story about Abdu'l-baha and the cornerstone to the House of Worship in Wilmette.

"Remember what Abdul-Baha said when the cornerstone was christened? "It's already built'."

Heads bob and inwardly sway. There are approximately seven of us. The tops of the heads range from thining to glazed white to hubcap bald. It is ten at night. I'm by far the youngest.

Mike continues melting perfunctory proper speech building icebergs into fluid oratation. He quotes a spam headline scraped from his latest e-mail, encouraging his audience to be intrepid and dauntless; to be fearless in our thinking, to take chances. He encourages us not to be afraid of failure, especially when a movement is intrincially 'youthful' is learning how to walk, autonomously, only all of us are trying to keep precision and balance.

"Remember, amatures built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic."

There are a gaggle of huffed-grins and periodic nods. Uncle Mike's voice is a verbal shine, a buffed avuncular grin with a slight midwestern twang peeled into his resonance. His voice feels like it could be gently stirring autumnal leaves into a dervish scuffle beneath a pumpkin heavy October sunset. Although adavanced in years there is not a scratch of senility itched into his rhetoric. Vivid streams of dialect seem to foam from the side of his mouth. Stories salivate and grace his every smile. Uncle Mike has a gift of making the Baha'i faith simultaneously sound very mystical and extremely practical at the same time. He has a gift of coalescing these two spiritual extremes in his speech-taming them with his benevolent tongue-exhibiting how these two polarities globally mesh, constituting a singular horizon for mankind's intermindable future rather than a question mark positing anxiety culled from a collective species tumultuous past.

There is union threaded in a genetic horseshoe strand of oneness. The bulk of mankind's epistemological pinnings fuse open into a periscopic stem of similarity, sprouting from the soil of every continent.

And there are seven of us huddled around xeroxes and hard-jaundice glower of cafeteria lights, listening to Uncle Mike's parlance, as one listens to the gentle tap of rain. He seems excited and smiles.

Archived photo albums from previous Summer and Winter school lay behind the table where Mike is lecturing. Sporadically a couple saunters by, slow in discourse, pausing to listen at Mike's discussion and alights the album, sifting through each page with a golden pause and gradual smile. Mike warmly acknowledges the alumni's, tossing out his welcome matt smile.

*

"It's something really personal." Andrew says, tugging at my sleeve. I have my "David-we-really-ought-to-start-thinking-about-your-health-in-terms-of-physically-longevity" noctural cup o' jamoke toated in paw. I set down my heap of books and follow Andrew, into the corner, near the old couches where I used to sit and dream with a girl named Melissa months before.
Andrew metronomically moves closer to me and squints in my ear.

"Do you smoke pot?" He inquires, with Blakean innocence.

"What," I say, intermittently startled.

"There was a girl here last year who said that the reason you were smiling all the time was because you liked to smoked pot."

I smile.

"No Andrew. I don't smoke pot. I just smile alot. You can say alot with a smile, even if you don't have much to smile about."

A toothy grin arcs into color above Andrews chin.

"I'm sorry. I just thought about that alot since we met last year."

"No problem," I say, turning around, looking for Uncle Mike. Andrew nudges at my sleeve again.

"Remember the handshake you taught me last year?" Andrew says. I smile. I remeber Andrew. He's grown about three feet in the last year.

We perform our 'secret-brother' handshake, pummeling our clenched fists, benignly smashing our knuckels together. I tell him attaboy and tussle his hair, scooping up the mound of Books like a papoose en route to Mike's lecture. When I see Mike and spot the flock of patient-gaited friends stepping gingely into the cafeteria I am completely unaware that Andrew is behind me, stepping into the contours of my flailed shadow, watching my direction, tracing my every step.


*

"When we emblazon His name, we emblazon all the names." Mike says, with warmth and conviviality. Mike has just handed out cheaply collated Xeroxes with trignometric lines. The word ABRAHAM headlines the top of the page like a Title of a syndicated newspaper. Branching off from the word Abraham are three discrete (yet connected at the top) parrellel bars, the names of ABRAHAM'S three wives, SARAH, HAGAR and KATURAH each propagate additional black streams. Sprouting from SARAH there is a little incompleted square that ends with the names MOSES and JESUS respectively. From Hagar (who, along with Katurah, I had never previousy heard of before the lecture) is a long artery stemming down three-fourths of the page. The word MOHAMMAD opens up mightily like a island with wings in the center of the page, only the line continues through Mohmmad, down to almost the bottom of the page, ending in the words 'THE BAB'. On the far branch, the branch that demarcates Abraham's third wife KATURAH, a long, singular black river slices down the far right hand side of the page, shooting straight down like a comet in perfect linearity ending with the word BAHA'U'LLAH. Caterpillared across the bottom of the page lies what my mom might classify as a "verse of scripture." It is Genesis 22:18 :

And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.

Uncle Mike continues to discuss religious plurality and spiritual union. He discusses scriptural correlations. He quotes (a la William Sears) a Buddhist adage that heralds the forthcoming Buddha arriving in a time when "metal strikes metal" and then he notes that in 1844, the same day when the Bab declared was also the same day when Morse sent the first telegraph, saying "What hath God wrought?" (Numbers 23:23). Uncle Mike reads the word 'Jesus' in the original aramaic and then reads the name of Baha'u'llah and notes the uncanny similarities.

He does all this while smiling.


2 comments:

Daniela Kantorova said...

maybe it's the pony tail holder?

David Von Behren said...

Maybe (úsměvy!!!)