Sunset and Rain

Maria Aceveda is licking her own nipples. “They’ll be here in an hour.”

She stumbles toward the Piano Bar three blocks from the state-sanctioned border crossing. Across the street a huge concrete wall marks the imaginary dividing line between the first world and the third. It is just past midnight according to the three-story clock tower two blocks to the south. The stench of sweat and liquor fills the air outside the saloon as bodies crowd the corner around the entrance. The bouncers wear pit-stained black T-shirts, chinos, and wing-tips, and their eyes flit back and forth between the bustling corner and the bedlam raging inside the bar. Their anxiety thickens the tensions mounting in the red light district along the border. One of the bouncers with a rasping voice and a round, pock-marked face, standing just two feet outside the doorway, makes a gesture that is unmistakably obscene and at the same time incomprehensible.

Maria is reminded of a night on San Pablo, watching the street outside a dive bar erupt into a riot after her pimp knifed a mouthy john. She met a lady with a magic potion, a gift from unseen admirers who shared the same vision of a world without conscious thought. The lady said to Maria, "Destruction of comprehension is the only hope we have for annihilating desire. The potion should do the trick." How to distribute it, though? She chose Maria. She said, "Just do the fucking thing, Maria." Maria asked how. "How? Fuck how. Just do it. You know, slogans, follow the slogans and you’ll be alright. Stop thinking for yourself and this nightmare will end. Accept mediocrity and ignorance, it’ll set you free from desire. Stupidity or apathy, that’s an answer. But only a temporary solution. It can’t last. Eventually, you’ll want to know. And what then? That’s why you have to distribute the potion. It’s the only fucking way."

Maria had a compulsion, an addiction rising to the surface. A desire for love, a fucking desire for love. Maria couldn't believe it. "Of all the bullshit times to want a bullshit lie." Maria knew how to annihilate it: gambling or cocaine or prostitution, something that numbs the senses and diminishes the possibilities of connecting with other people. Relationships are pure, but futile. Misery. Maria abandoned herself to the meaninglessness of arbitrary motions. "A purposeless life is still a life. I must immerse myself in an emotionless vacuum. Straight-arrow, conformity, smile wide, say 'thank you' and 'please,' disappear in a crowd, become invisible in a room full of people, a question is asked, silent scream, a pat answer, eye contact without seeing, vision impaired by thoughts of standing perfectly still without becoming rigid, oh, bliss, thank you for the mindless arbitrary task of standing still without becoming rigid, a challenge without meaning and yet occupies the mind, the body, wastes time, I’m grateful for this respite from the search for meaning, happy with pointlessness." The moments pass. Back to square one. Longing again. "Desire consumes me. Desire to understand, know, control, usurp power, and create beauty, appreciation, affection, and love. I must abandon myself to a higher power, relinquish control, resign my free will, become a servant performing tasks without thought. This dichotomy is killing me, these conflicting desires are tearing me apart. I need to choose one and stick with it, pursue it like a woman possessed, a goal that is holy and total. Which one, which way, I have this power, a power to choose, a power I didn’t ask for but have. What do I do? How do I decide? I don’t have a fucking guidebook! Help me! Someone please help me!"

The lady slapped Maria's face. "You fucking idiot. You have the potion. Use it and no one will have desires any more. That includes you, you fucking drama queen."

...

Thomas Merton:

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with;insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.

I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the corn fields, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper… The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with it enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in a forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

But I am also going to sleep, because here in this wilderness I have learned how to sleep again. Here I am not alien. The trees I know, the night I know, the rain I know. I close my eyes and instantly sink into the whole rainy world of which I am a part, and the world goes on with me in it, for I am not alien to it.

...

Ever notice that there are many ways to use the words attention and attentiveness? It can be very confusing if you're not familiar with everyday uses of the terms. For example I've heard "pay attention," "give attention," and "be attentive" used to mean the same thing. But how can pay, give, and be mean the same thing? I've devised particular definitions for each of these three phrasings to make distinctions that preserve the integrity of the words:

Pay attention: Exchanging currency or other objects of value for observational direction.

Give attention: To relinquish control of the direction of awareness by allowing an object or other to direct it; to offer observational direction as a gift to another for the sake of that other rather than for the benefit of oneself.

Be attentive: To self-direct control and exercise of one’s attentiveness.

I believe these definitions demonstrate the being attentive is the only reasonable option. Paying attention and giving attention are ridiculous. I'm trying to right a few wrongs. Just so you don't feel like the only fool in town, I have been guilty of using pay attention as well. No one is perfect, but it can't hurt to point out how stupid we are.

...

Cormac McCarthy, The Road:

How would you know if you were the last man on earth? He said.

I don’t guess you would know it. You’d just be it.

Nobody would know it.

It wouldn’t make any difference. When you die it’s the same as if everybody else did too.

I guess God would know it. Is that it?

There is no God.

No?

There is no God and we are his prophets.

That's some of the best damn dialogue in English literature. But McCarthy's got more:

I’ve not seen a fire in a long time. I live like an animal. You don’t want to know the things I’ve eaten. When I saw the boy I thought I had died.

You thought he was an angel.

I didn’t know what he was. I never thought to see a child again. I didn’t know what would happen.

What if I said he’s a god?

The old man shook his head. I’m past all that now. Have been for years. Where men can’t live gods fare no better. You’ll see. It’s better to be alone. So I hope that’s not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it’s not true. Things will be better when everyone’s gone.

They will?

Sure they will.

Better for who?

Everybody.

Everybody.

Sure. We’ll all be better off. We’ll all breathe easier.

That’s good to know.

Yes it is. When we’re all gone then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say, Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?

...

And then there's this passage from Hegel's Philosophy of Right:

There are two kinds of laws, laws of nature and laws of right. The laws of nature are simply there, and are valid as they are. They cannot be gainsaid, although in certain cases they may be transgressed. In order to know laws of nature, we must get to work to ascertain them, for they are true, and only our ideas of them can be false. Of these laws the measure is outside of us. Our knowledge adds nothing to them, and does not further their operation. Only our knowledge of them expands. The knowledge of right is partly of the same nature and partly different. The laws of right also are simply there, and we have to become acquainted with them. In this way the citizen has a more or less firm hold of them as they are given to him, and the jurist also abides by the same standpoint. But there is also a distinction. In connection with the laws of right the spirit of investigation is stirred up, and our attention is turned to the fact that the laws, because they are different, are not absolute. Laws of right are established and handed down by men. The inner voice must necessarily collide or agree with them. Man cannot be limited to what is presented to him, but maintains that he has the standard of right within himself. He may be subject to the necessity and force of external authority, but not in the same way as he is to the necessity of nature; for always his inner being says to him how a thing ought to be, and within himself he finds the confirmation or lack of confirmation of what is generally accepted. In nature, the highest truth is that a law is. In right, a thing is not valid because it is, since every one demands that it shall conform to his standard. Hence arises a possible conflict between what is and what ought to be, between absolute unchanging right and the arbitrary decision of what ought to be right. Such division and strife occur only on the soil of the spirit. Thus the unique privilege of the spirit would appear to lead to discontent and unhappiness, and frequently we are directed to nature in contrast with the fluctuations of life. But it is exactly in the opposition arising between absolute right, and that which the arbitrary will seeks to make right, that the need lies of knowing thoroughly what right is.

...

I went inside my mind to discover what was outside; I went outside my mind to discover what was within

I sat outside a little after 8:00 PM, puffing a cigarette, enjoying the relative calm, when I looked up across the street at the Douglas Firs and noticed they had the beginnings of an orange glow. Not just any orange, but a special vibrant orange. Before I could say “HOLY SHIT” I was running to my car, trying to think how best to head west so I could catch a glimpse of this sumbitch.

There are certain sunsets that have “it” and I could tell by the light that this was one of them. The right clouds were in the sky. I had to see the sunset even if the clouds never aligned in the best way. Nevertheless, I had to see it in a certain spot and I didn’t know where that would be. An adventure with a deadline!

I found my way quickly to West Union in Beaverton, headed west toward Hillsboro, and barreled down the road chasing the sunset. I caught glimpses here and there, attractive but nothing extraordinary. Still, I saw ripe clouds, staggered, colored but waiting to be lit up with force and delicacy. A bit closer now, I floored it, trying to get beyond the cities into an open field and just as I came clear the clouds aligned, the sun dipped just so, and I saw rusty orange become neon, the edges lightning yellow, a cloud below the softest pink smudged here and there with fuchsia, and between those vertically aligned clouds the blue of the sky, a blue that rarely appears in nature, a blue created by the neon orange, the lightning yellow, the puffy pink, a blue with three hues, all with vibrancy, none blended, none with lines of demarcation between them, and all existing as one in relation to the others through color.

My breath upon seeing this coral reef in the sky ... my breath disappeared. My heart swallowed my body. My eyes, the images, they are one. When I look in the mirror today I see the sunset. The colors, the vibrancy, the life, the true sunset, lasted maybe 20 seconds before fading into a beautiful but comparatively mundane dusky sky.

Usually I’m saddened when beauty passes or fades, but this time the grace remained. I could have watched donkeys shit on puppies immediately after and still I would have genuflected in awe of that sunset. I passed a church with a steeple, the parking lot full of cars. I thought of pulling over to run inside to proclaim, “You just missed God! He smiled at me through a sunset!”

Instead I thought, “Damn, they missed it. They missed it!” If I could have felt sadness at that moment I would have felt it for them. I wondered if anyone else in the Portland area witnessed it. I may have experienced the best moments anyone in all of Portland experienced last night. For a brief time I may have been the most fortunate human being alive. I experienced the best that could have been experienced yesterday. Maybe some guy had sex with his dream supermodel for eight hours last night and as good as he felt something in him worried about whether or not she really liked it. Perhaps a woman got married to the love of her life but on her day of days she wasn’t able to completely abandon herself to love. Perhaps some guy won the lottery but in his exuberance he became possessive. Me? I never expected the colors to last yet my appreciation for them grows.

...

Today is the first time I’ve ever seen a cloud. I’ve mentioned this to several people today and, judging by their reactions, this is apparently very weird. I don’t understand why. From my perspective, it’s very strange that others have been seeing clouds their whole lives while today is the first day of my life I’ve ever viewed one. I don’t know what to make of this.

It’s possible that I’ve never seen a cloud before because I have a neck condition that prevents me from looking up. I didn’t really know there was even such a thing as a sky before today. See, a chiropractor cracked my neck and now my head is angled upward. Unfortunately, I can’t look down any more. All I’d ever known before was the ground and it’s a bit disorienting not being able to see it anymore. Now I’m staring at the sky all the time and while I’m fascinated on one hand I’m also incredibly freaked out on the other. It’s like going from seeing everything with a red tint to seeing everything with a green tint.

I understand more now about what people have been saying to me for years. They’d say, “Sure is cloudy today” or “I’m glad the sun is shining.” I’d just nod and pretend like I understood what the hell they were talking about. For a very long time in life I thought people were fucking with me. It was sort of like they were saying Santa Claus exists. Internally, I’d be thinking, “Yeah, I used to believe in the sky, but I stopped around the same time I found out Santa wasn’t real.”

Even though I could feel rain and the warmth of sunshine on the back of my head, I always wondered from where the water, light, and heat originated. I took it on faith that the people who always talked about the weather knew what they were talking about since what they said corresponded to what I experienced. Until today I thought they were talking about the weather with me because they knew I was at a disadvantage by only being able to look down. Now I find out people talk about what is obviously happening even though it’s also obvious to everyone else (except for me before today). That seems really bizarre to me. Why would someone say to someone standing right next to them that it’s windy? Is there a possibility that it could be windy in one place and not windy just a few feet away? I guess anything is possible. After all, I never believed that clouds were real before today.

It was weird seeing the cloud at first. I didn’t know what it was. It was white and fluffy, like a big popcorn surrounded on all sides by blueness. It was incredibly beautiful and I couldn’t look away for the longest time. Of course, I couldn’t look away because my neck is stuck looking upward now. Still, I think I would have looked for a long time even if my neck wasn’t stuck.

It was difficult walking home, though. The greatest benefit to looking down all the time is being able to see where one’s feet are going. It’s easy to avoid mud puddles and dog sit on sidewalks when you’re looking down. Crossing streets could be a little tough because I couldn’t look up far enough to the left or right to see if there were any cars coming, but fortunately cars are really noisy so I could usually hear if it was safe to cross the street.

Now, though, I don’t know what I’m going to do. It was easy to avoid trees while looking up, but I stumbled over bushes several times and once fell off a curb into the street. If I had been able to look down I would have easily been able to prepare for the drop. I walked mostly in a zigzag on my way home. I assume I did because I constantly felt myself veering from the sidewalk onto grass. Fortunately, I only had to cross two streets. The first time I got lucky because there was no traffic. The second time I listened as acutely as I could and when I heard a silence I started walking. Unfortunately, there was a cyclist riding by and he yelled at me as I walked in the road. As I got further across the street a car honked at me. I hadn’t heard it coming. I heard a woman across the street, she must have been walking, yell at me, “That Prius almost ran you over, you idiot!” Apparently, Priuses do not make a lot of noise.

I found out I had successfully crossed that street when I tripped over the curb. It wasn’t fun falling, but I was grateful to be across the street. As I kept walking I saw a tall building. I happened to pass by a sign that was high in the air, the sign for my apartment building. Luckily they’d placed it really high because I wouldn’t have known that the tall building was my apartment building without it. I had never seen anything above the first few feet of the first floor. It’s very difficult, I might add, to put a key in a keyhole while looking up. I had to feel my way around it quite a bit before I finally got it in the slot.

Once I got in my apartment I fumbled around and found my kitchen table. I’d left a book I’d been reading there. I wanted to relax and read my book after such an adventure. One nice thing about looking down all the time is that it’s easy to read a book. But with my head angled upward I had to hold the book above me with both hands. My arms got tired after a couple minutes and I had to stop reading. That sucks because I like to read.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about all of this. I thought it’d be a gift to be able to look up instead of down. I’m going to ask my chiropractor if he can adjust my neck so I look straight ahead. I’m guessing that would be the best way to have my neck set since it can’t otherwise move. I'm not sure what I'll do between now and my next chiropractic visit. I guess I'll try to learn as much about the sky as I can. Who knows what it will be like to look straight ahead. I've heard others have eyes and that if you stare straight ahead you can look into them. I suppose it's like looking in a hole in the ground or a jar of pickles or something else you can look into. I'll find out soon enough, I suppose.