I wanted to tell you that I just watched the sunset.
The last 10 degrees sunk below the mountains in real-time.
We say “I watched the sun set,” when really we mean “I watched the world turn.”
Our feet are rooted to the ground; our eyes live on the horizon.
A lingering blossom of auburn and dripping red and yellow and pink and pillowed blood golden sky now fades up into the coming blue hour.
Only in these slices of time do I feel allowed to be—
perhaps because I’m watching the sun set and not the world turn.
The earth revolves in constancy; the sun sets in a moment.
Yes, this also means I should remember to hold on to such a feeling.
Yes.
So we persist in the knowledge of the fact that we have different words for “life” and “death”.
Life revolves in constancy; death arrives in a moment.
We inhale and exhale, rooted to the revolution, trees of bone and dead stars, veins of ocean water, skin of salt and the electric, eyes open / only / in slices / of time / that permit us / to break with gravity, or find a safe orbit in one another.
Twilight fades into the blue, deep now in the coming dark.
No.
Not darkness. Look. (I know you would if you were here.)
Worlds upon worlds upon worlds,
spattered, innumerable, dancing with us through the void.
Sometimes, there’s a place where the grass and the sage, pine and cottonwood, rocks and scrub and a cactus or two — maybe piñon and mesquite and yucca and so forth — they all get together and make up a kind of existence that’s mildly intoxicating.
Places like this are important if you’re extra-sober to begin with. Say if, for example, you happen to be born that way.
Little breezes ruffle and shift the scents around. Sometimes the wind really kicks up and does its best to rearrange your day.
Mostly, these areas aren’t burdened with an overabundance of trees or houses. You can see the horizon. You can breathe in deep and feel your mind flatten out. Memory and time stop fighting each other. Your worst enemy might be a fence or two.
I don’t generally have anything against concentrations of trees or houses — or people, for that matter — but I need to be out in the wide angle, out in the open kind of wild.
You can see the storms coming in of an evening. Hear the wind searching. Feel the thunder unroll, look at the lightning crack. You can see the sun breaking in yellow through the mist or dying down red in the clouds, and you can watch it all coming in and get yourself together.
You can give yourself to it. It’s like getting ready for church or mass. Like a wedding or a funeral.
Folks tend to be fearful of a skeleton. Something about bone laid out bare to the weather, I’d wager. Out there, you get reminded you’ve got one inside you. You were born with it.
Things in the land and things within us consummate and live and die all the time. Out there you can feel it, know it for what it is — a sort of honesty uncontrived.
Thousands upon thousands of subatomic particles known as “neutrinos” just passed through your body.
You may have heard of the lab, deep beneath the head of the Homestake Gold Mine in South Dakota, that’s dedicated to the study of these particles – and, in turn, to a small part of the fathomless, underlying mystery of the cosmos.
Like many observable quandaries in the realm of quantum mechanics, neutrinos are produced during an event of massive energy (notably, in this case, the sustained fusion reaction of our sun). Within our sun, the prime atomic building block of the universe – hydrogen – is constantly being fused with itself into helium.
This marriage gives birth to a chain reaction of cosmotic creation, such as the transfer of some of this matter into energy, and the building of new and heavier elements.
Now, as lovely as neutrinos are (for example, they exist in three separate states at the same time), it’s mainly the Sun’s massive release of energy we’re concerned with – especially when it comes to cooking.
I promise there’s a point to all this.
Think about the food chain. Consider it. Look at the hamburger, or the salad, or the chips on your plate right now. Imagine what had to transpire for this meal to even exist. Go beyond the supermarket. Beyond the farmer. Beyond the animal. Beyond the plant. Even beyond the soil, or the sea.
No matter what the species, no matter who or what you are – human, cow, bird, fish, tree, grass – it is a vastly complex, and yet ultimately simple picture.
Gravity and energy, and the state of the very fabric of spacetime after the birth of the universe itself, all conspire to, in turn, give birth to stars… which, one day, will die themselves. As all things must.
But in their lives, which span eons, the potential for the creation and sustenance of life itself is undeniably huge and powerful.
And beyond the mere act of this creation, we as humans had to experiment for many generations in order to elevate the basic necessities of fat, protein, salt, sugar, minerals and trace elements… into something divine.
Meat over an open flame is survival. Salt from the ocean, ground beads of peppercorn, and dried rosemary make it something more.
Consider as well the miracle of a bowl of non-poisonous plants, drizzled with oil pressed from tiny, pungent fruits and the leftovers of fermented grapes (itself a product of energy conversion).
There is a hint of something here – something beyond the realm of the observable.
A great mystery presents itself in cooking, in the willful and creative endeavor of harvesting various iterations of stored energy from our sun, in the heating and reducing and chemical experimentation and mastery that can generate a simple plate – one that can make almost anything alright. Better still, this is mastery anyone can attain.
On this “pale blue dot”, moving through the inconceivable vastness of space, how strange – and how wonderful – that something as simple as preparing a meal can hold within it the mysteries of the subatomic, the competition for the energy of a slowly dying star, the subliminal experience of taste, and the gifts & lessons of generosity… all at once.
Note: a version of this article previously appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Mélange Magazine.
The storm-dampened scents of Dauphine Street gave way to something old and familiar as I opened the front door of the used bookstore.
Here in the heart of New Orleans, as in all places I visit, I’d inevitably found myself seeking out such places. Without a particular itinerary, and driven by multiple cups of chicory coffee, I found myself somewhat regrettably using Google Maps to suss out the oldest and most promising of these shops.
The smell embraced me immediately as I entered. If you’ve ever been around old books for any length of time, you know what I speak of. It’s somewhere between the dust and age of old houses and a bottle of vanilla in a woodshed. In these places, worthy treasures are never guaranteed; the calming scent of nostalgia certainly is.
Nostalgia, in this case, being the simple chemical reactions that physically occur in books as they age. As time passes, the wood pulp in a book’s pages breaks down into various organic compounds. Lignin, which makes up a generous portion of the pulp, produces acids, which in turn dismantle the pages’ cellulose. This process produces vanillin, benzenes, and hexanols, contributing vanilla-, almond-, and floral- and organic-like smells to the book itself.
This is partially what makes up what some lovingly refer to as biblichor, or “the smell of old books”. By comparison, the recently rained-on street mentioned earlier was imbued with petrichor, or “the smell after rain”. Ichor, the Greeks said, is the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods.
Given that it’s generally the hardcover books made between the 1830s and 1980s that used the pulping and adhesive processes necessary to produce what we consider biblichor, you’ll find less and less of it in volumes printed after the late 50s (when the paperback craze started to take off). Only in recent history have we begun to use materials and processes that deny the production of the scent of nostalgia.
Scent, as we know, is the most powerful accessor of memory- but also of imagined memory, of that nostalgia. You can feel it, in these old shops and old locales. Your mind, after skipping through your own memories, feels as though it’s touching the edges of others- of memories not your own.
There’s something nearly indefinable about old bookshops, something that draws many of us in, I imagine, without a specific purpose in mind. It goes beyond mere charm. This must be one of the reasons we seek them out, for what in the modern age affords us the rare luxury of true purposelessness?
That lovely lack of purpose, I suppose, lands right alongside the lure of the historical- history that can, in these places, end up being far more personal than a tour or museum. When we’re led by a guide (or by ourselves) to tours or museums, it’s with the purpose of encountering something enshrined- something important.
When we find ourselves wandering into a used bookstore, antique store, or the like, it’s not only the apposite lack of purpose that entices us, but the other side of the historical coin- things forgotten or discarded. Things left behind. The unimportant. While monuments widen our gaze within past ages, the trinkets and relics of the individuals from those ages do far more to transport us, and in turn, to ground us.
Among the wayward, proliferate stacks of the old books I navigated around in Dauphine Street, I uncovered a 1961 printing of the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran’s Sand and Foam, nestled in with several of his other works. One of Gibran’s trademark small, unassuming tributes to the meaning of language, art, time, and love, I found inside the cover that this particular volume had been gifted from one college student to another:
December 1962 Merry Christmas Brenda, Gibran says that the obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply. I hope these two books will help you see the obvious more clearly, as they have me. Best Wishes as Always, Gaye
On the following page, Brenda has marked herself as the owner of the book, along with an identifier of her residence at the time: Dorman Hall.
A bit of research shows that “Dorman Hall” was a dormitory at FSU in Tallahassee, built in 1959 after the Florida State College for Women converted to a coed institution in 1947. Researching the modern layout of FSU reveals that the original Dorman Hall was demolished in 2015; but a newer version has been built in its place.
I wonder if Brenda’s still around- happy, retired, perhaps writing a book of her own in her mid-70s. I wonder if she and Gaye remained friends. I wonder if she remembers this book, and whatever meaning it held for her.
Old bookstores make you wonder a lot of things, the least of which involve yourself and your place in the world.
Of course, with time being the great equalizer, this means that you’re as likely to find hidden treasures in one old shop as in any other. This would be proven to me somewhat humorously two years later, when someone pointed me to an even larger stack of old Kahlil Gibran volumes at a library sale in Hot Springs, South Dakota.
The territory of nostalgia is a mostly level playing field, no matter where you might find yourself. Whether it’s milk and coffee, old stone and fresh rain, or old wood and older books…
Havoc sat next to Cordell on the edge of the high hill. The whisperings of a storm gathered in the distance; one that would miss them this far beyond the mountains. It was a dry season this far south on the plateau; only patches of trees thrived near groundwater in between the bromegrass and prickly pear and scattered chaparral. The stars and the arm of the galaxy were ripe and apparent.
Remy had hunched down a short distance off, building a fire and cursing to herself.
The dog broke the silence.
“Woman angry.”
Cordell chewed on some leaves from his pouch as he checked his ammunition. “Yeah. Wearing these… these things,” he said, nudging his Rig, “hurts. Sometimes.”
“Woman not care pain.”
Cordell chuckled. “Seems like you know what’s up.”
Havoc cocked his head. “Up? No. Sense only.”
“Yeah, well…” Cordell rocked back and sat on the ground. “We just had to deal with a… you say ‘dark thing’? Not easy to… uh, understand. You follow?”
“Many of…” Havoc snorted “… many things not follow.”
“But you sense things better than me.”
Havoc glanced at Remy’s fire. “Anger. Old.”
Cordell plucked a blade of grass. “Might not be wrong about that.”
The wind moved in little eddies over the waves of the field.
“Human-Prime. You all worry. Anger. Why?”
Cordell looked at Havoc. “Huh?”
“Odd. Other dog, sometimes hurting, beaten, have bad. Many times. I see this. But human, bigger thinking. Build. Command. Rule. Try to sense…” he shook his head “…hard to. Take pain, carry around, carry on back. You. Her. Why?”
Cordell sighed. “I don’t know. I really don’t have a good answer, boy.”
“You worry of before? Or later?”
“Maybe both? Jesus, I don’t know. Bigger thinking isn’t all it’s… isn’t good all the time, Havoc.”
“You worry death?”
Cordell’s gaze locked onto Havoc. Havoc continued staring at the distant storm, smelling the air.
“You don’t?”
“Not want to die. Same. But worse for you. Much why.”
Cordell sighed. “This is way too complicated… like… too much to explain. To tell. Too big… thinking? You follow?”
Havoc turned his head to meet Cordell’s. “Cordell, Human-Prime. Think. Me. I have… thing? Inside. Inside-rain? Wind… moving-on?”
Remy swore in triumph as the fire grew.
Cordell’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
Havoc sighed and snorted. “Inside. Inside me. Not-touch. No dying.”
“Are you… what…” Cordell turned towards Havoc “…are you asking if you have a soul?”
“Not sure. I die.” Havoc cocked his head again. “Then what? Humans speak worry. Odd.”
Miles away, the low thunder rumbled on.
“Havoc… there’s… I don’t even know the answer to that. I’m sorry. Look… I…”
“OK. Not sure?”
“Well, no. Does it matter? I think… whatever the case…” Cordell looked back at the storm. “… you’re like me.”
Havoc’s tail started wagging. “Yes?”
“Humans are animals too. Remember that. Just… bigger thinking.”
Havoc grinned and panted. “Too big!”
“Ha! Pretty much.”
“Not worry then?”
“Shit. I wouldn’t.”
“OK good.” Havoc looked towards Remy’s fire. She watched now as the storm skirted the mountains. “Work to do. Die later.”
Squaring off with the Flayer, Remy brought up her guns as the creature shook itself, spitting bright green droplets of acid from its pores. It growled low, fuming and expanding its torso in and out, the sensory bulb where its eyes should be locked on to her position.
Carried by the breezes, sand and dust wafted between them.
The Flayer’s growl changed into a hacking, guttural staccato of unnatural noise as its stance shifted, subtly. Its maw opened in a flash of sizzling drool and rows of shifting razor-teeth that seemed to burn in the setting blood-red desert sun.
Remy didn’t need a translator to understand being marked for death.
“Right.”
She released the safeties and emptied both SMGs into the beast, moving forward, concentrating the fire on its upper body. Knowing the bullets wouldn’t make a dent in the Flayer’s exoskeleton, she was merely buying a few seconds in order to gain the upper hand.
The beast hissed defiantly, spraying weak acid in front of it as it stood to absorb the shock of 900 rounds per minute. The acid arced through the air in little streams, splashing on Remy’s forcefield harmlessly.
It was the much stronger acid, inside the thing’s… stomach(?) …that worried her.
Close enough to close in, she dropped her guns right as they spent their clips, gathering forward momentum, hands dipping for the hip-sling that held her wakizashi & tomahawk.
The Flayer had other plans, it seemed.
Forcing the side of its right appendage to split open, the beast disconnected some of its own tendons. Remy’s lip curled to the sound of organic twisting and cracking as the tendons emerged and snaked into the air, weaving together and then apart. It, too, was buying time- trying to find a weakness. If it wrapped one around her tight enough, exo-forcefield or not, it could pull her in and attempt a killing bite, flooding her insides with caustic juices.
The crimson sunset deepened as a coyote’s howl pierced the desert gloaming.
A stuttering snarl escaped the Flayer’s seething maw as the tendons launched out towards her approach, splitting in disparate directions, searching for a hold.
Swiftly, abandoning caution, Remy exposed herself fully to the front, shifting all energy to her feet in a wave of centrifugal propulsion, bursting forward in a rising spin, using the momentum to help her draw her axe. Dust and rock kicked and spun out behind and to the sides in puffs of red.
Its prey having closed in much too quickly for the tendons to be effective, the Flayer shot its head forward to bite, bracing its frame for the fight.
Its head came in to meet the end of Remy’s dance perfectly. The axehead cracked exoskeleton just to the side and rear on the neck, biting through into the strange flesh below as she concentrated all the Rig’s energy into her blades. She could feel the shock- and purpose directed at her -from the Flayer’s sensory bulb as it fought between the opposing objectives of pulling free and sinking its razor-teeth deep into its prey.
The fight paused for a moment. Just long enough.
Redirecting energy to her trailing foot, she slammed it into one of the creature’s lower appendages, throwing its balance forward.
Towards her.
Flowing the energy back to the blades, she pulled down hard with the axe, drawing her shortsword out and up in one fluid motion. Remy snarled in defiance as the blade pierced through the upper maw and straight inside the sensory bulb.
Her face came to within inches of the creature’s.
“F**k off.”
Its life brought to a sudden end, the Flayer stiffened in ancient reflex, falling backwards as Remy’s growl heightened to a piercing cry. She yanked the blades out to a spray of internal liquids, kicking her foe down violently as she did so. It smacked into the dust as the crown of the red sun descended below the distant mountaintops.
Remy stood over the body, watching the desert drink up green acid and dark purple fluid, wondering not for the first time what would happen if these things existed- or came through -in greater numbers.
Sensing eyes on her, she turned to see Cordell standing some distance off, his grip relaxing on his gunsword. He hadn’t figured on testing her patience again by butting in, but just in case…
Havoc came trotting up around a patch of scrub, back from running down a smaller scout-beast, and sat next to Cordell. His eyes darted from Remy to the body of the Flayer and back. Remy watched Cordell radio Hector’s backup perch, confirming a final sweep and cleanup.
Little eddies of dust moved between them in the coming dark, and in the last vestiges of clear light Cordell saw Remy silhouetted in burning crimson, her eyes afire from the kill, her body bathed in battle.
Never taking her eyes from Cordell, she distributed her energy evenly, shunting a light propulsive blast outwards in all directions, cleansing herself of acid and blood in a hellish mist that caught the long and final rays of the setting sun.
Cordell nodded, he and Havoc turning to walk the distance back to the truck.
Night came on quietly, slowly turning to a moonish twilight as Remy followed them. She stopped only to mark another small notch near the base of her axe handle.
