He loved the drudgery of it. Walking into the busy, noisy kitchen hustling to get up to speed for the dinner service, he’d approach the sinks like a gladiator taking the field. In the short time between the lunch rush’s end and the dinner start-up, when no dishwasher was on duty, the chefs would produce a pile of pots filling both of the deep stainless steel tubs overflowing into piles on the counter. Days when the three chefs were really working up something special, the piles would overflow under and around the tubs on the floor.
Undaunted by the task ahead, Amos would kick aside a path through the pots, making room to take a stand at his post, turn on the taps - take Chef’s “hurry up and get started.” in stride - and begin. The challenge was to make progress through the pile while the three chefs kept continually adding to it through the night. Soon the busboys would begin bringing in their carts of dirty dishes, glasses and silverware that all had to be done immediately to re-supply for the next sitting.
Dirty dishes were stacked into the heavy square plastic trays, hosed down and run along the stainless steel counter into the big industrial stainless dishwashing machine. Lift the lever, push the clean tray out the other side to cool before restocking the waiter’s supply, run the dirty tray in, lower the lever, pulling the steel box over the tray and hit the wash button for it’s five minute cycle. Back to the soaking pots for two minutes, then quickly back to stack the cooled dishes, and prep the next tray before the machine’s cycle was over. If the machine’s red “off” button glowed for more than a few seconds Chef was there to take out his stress on the low man “Hey – what are you wasting time for? Get those dishes moving!” It kept Amos’ mind on a short leash.
He’d come to the place of toil in the hero’s journey. The adventure was well wrought. He’d found the Grail, come to terms with the demons who’d trip him up, conquered the fearsome mountain trolls, and rescued the damsel – wait – no, there’d been no rescues. And here there wasn’t much chance. Amos was the grunt boy of the Resort. He’d taken on the low job, been given “whites” to wear that didn’t fit – the pants not covering his ankles, the shirts pulling at his armpits, buttons that couldn’t be done up over his t-shirts. Terrible pay, no tips, and a good daily dose of verbal abuse. It all only added to his ridiculous-ness, his humbling, his sanctification. It was more like he needed rescuing.
“Any port in a storm.” thought Amos. He’d skied Red Mountain for ten days and headed out when he realized his funds were getting low. He “had” to ski Banff before heading east. But between Trail and Banff there were a few clubs to try and by the time he made Banff his cash flow was down to a trickle.
He’d picked up a French Canadian hitchhiker just after he turned east again towards Banff. How could he pass up a guy standing at the side of the road with skiis in one hand and his other hand empty, arm out in that humbling gesture, thumb up, begging for a lift? Amos had traveled these mountain highways on the generosity of others. It was part of the code to now return the gift to the great universal recycling effort. He was a believer after all. And believers must practice their faith – putting it into action without hope of ever seeing the return – ever knowing how long, far and wide the arc of the cycle might be.
Jean-Claude spoke about as much English as Amos spoke French – to point a fine point on it – fucking little. The Canadian school system had ill-prepared them for this encounter. But somehow they managed to share their stories. Jean-Claude was also on a quest. He’d worked as a fishing guide, taking tourists by canoe into Northern Quebec where only the Indians lived. He was here to ski the Rockies with the funds he’d saved.
Jean-Claude told Amos about a winterized Youth Hostel where they could stay for cheap. It turned out to be a big old log cabin in the woods between Lake Louise and Banff. You cooked your own food and Amos got talking to people there about how they each were managing skiing with few funds. The Unemployment office in Banff held postings for all the jobs in local Resorts and Restaurants and Hotels. There was a steady turnover of positions as people got fired for skiing too much and working too little or moved their way up the job ladder.
Next morning Amos took a trip in and found a job posting for a waiter at the Sunshine Mountain Ski Resort. He called and set up an interview for the next day. He’d have to take the gondola up to the resort the guy explained. “Just give them my name and they’ll let you on.” he told Amos.
Back at the Youth Hostel, he and Jean-Claude agreed to ski Sunshine the next day. Amos just took his skiis along on that free Gondola ride and once up on the mountain no one seemed to be looking for proof of ticket purchase. The job interview lasted maybe ten minutes. Amos had tried to bluff his way into a waiter’s job – lying about his extensive experience. How hard could taking food orders be? But when the guy started quizzing him about how many tables at a time he could handle, the veil of lies became thin and he could see he wasn’t foolin anyone. The guy might have given Amos a chance if his beard, hair, and clothes hadn’t given a first impression of a wooly lumberjack fresh out of camp.
So, he found Jean-Claude and joined him for a sunny day of hitting the slopes. Up until that day, Amos had been thinking that his skiing was pretty fine. But Jean-Claude had skiis like Amos had never seen. Telemark bindings, Jean-Claude explained, were for mountaineering. They’d allow you to lift your heel to climb on the way up. On the way down however, you’d have to perform some pretty complicated dance steps involving almost kneeling with one leg dragging behind while your forward leg swept a wide arc as you shifted your weight onto it, turning to control your descent, while bringing the back leg forward as the forward leg dropped back into the kneel. Jean-Claude was tackling a whole new way of descending snowy slopes – with many tumbles and tries - that Amos had never encountered. “Just when you’ve conquered the mountain”, thought Amos, “the peak only shows you the next, more difficult, one to climb.”
At dinner back at the Hostel, they sat at the long crowded tables with an older guy. His middle age made him kind of stick out in that crowd of youth. Amos noticed that before starting his dinner, he bowed his head for a few long moments. Intrigued, Amos started pumping him for his story. John was from Calgary. He was walking to Vancouver. He was well spoken and well read and didn’t seem like a nutbar to Amos - but a very normal looking guy. John explained that he was taking this time in his life to spend mostly with God as he walked. “Just when you think you’ve cooked up an incredible spiritual quest,” thought Amos, “another more difficult one comes into view.”
Now, Amos was really broke. He might have to start walking east he thought. The last of his money had gone into another night at the Youth Hostel and some groceries for dinner and breakfast. In Banff he found a job posting for a dishwasher at the Post Hotel in Lake Louise. His last 5 bucks went into the Fleshmobile. He drove the thirty miles to the Post Hotel. He didn’t call ahead. He just showed up. He didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t get the job – but - he figured “there was only one way to find out”.
-----
Amos had just spent most of a month living in a tent. And he looked it. His curly hair was long and his thin beard was wisping over his lips as he tried to convince the owner of a five star Hotel that he’d fit right in. Sitting there in the lobby’s leather chairs. Henri, the Swiss Hotel owner, cut the interview short after a couple of quick questions and offered Amos the dishwasher position. It had opened up just that morning.
“Yeah, great, I’ll take it” Amos jumped at the morsel. When Henri told him room and board was included, Amos couldn’t’ conceal his joy. “Really?” Amos beamed like a birthday boy “Right on!”
Henri smiled. He introduced Amos to his beautiful Swiss wife Heloise, who nodded an acknowledgment in Amos’ direction before Henri passed him off to Wendell the desk clerk, telling Wendell to give him room #12.
On their way down into the Hotel’s basement, Wendell filled him in. Wendell was a wiry little guy. A few years younger than Amos, he came to the Hotel straight out of high school, starting as a dishwasher and had worked his way up to the front desk. Amos could see he was plenty proud of his position and obviously considered himself an authority. “You’re in luck boy, you and me got the only single rooms in the staff quarters.” He opened the door to reveal a dingy, small room with one very small basement window at ceiling height letting in the late afternoon sun. “It’s also the only double bed down here.” explained Wendell “I don’t know how you rate this – but Henri’s the boss. He must like you.”
To Amos, who been sleeping in the snow for a month, this dark little cave with a bed was luxury – a gift! “Bathroom’s down the hall. Staff dinner’s at five.” Wendell told him. “be sure to use the back kitchen door. Kitchen staff’s not allowed to mix with the quests.”
“That’s fine with me man. Thanks.” Amos replied closing the door. He knew he’d only be able to take this small man’s officious directions in small doses. Wendell was eager to give him some advice. “Thanks for your help. I’ll figure things out.”
Amos found that he reveled in the humble task of dishwasher. He loved being a spoke in the kitchen’s wheeling, chaotic, order. It felt like a ship in a storm; the captain barking orders, all hands working with skill and speed to keep the boat abreast of the hungry waves. He was working the bilge pump; bailing seawater from the hold – ignored but ennobled by knowing that he too was saving the ship and the day.
With his back turned to the frenzy, with the chefs’ hot pans sliding past his elbows into the sinks, he could listen to the talk, the bustle, the waiters bringing orders in and the chefs tossing together the plates of food. It was so good to have heavy, steady work to speed the hours by, with absolutely no responsibility on his shoulders. There was no doubt about it. Dishwashers were at the bottom of the Hotel totem pole. Chambermaids were slightly higher. Waiters stood a good head and shoulders above this lowly caste. The chefs lived like the Thunderbirds their wings outstretched with only the owners, who also managed from on high, sitting atop their shoulders.
After a month of being Mr. Hermit in the mountains, Amos felt that he’d lost his ability - or was it his desire - to make conversations. He kept quiet and to himself the first few weeks. Doing his shift, reading or walking at night. If he worked the afternoon/night shift, he’d ski. The Lake Louise mountain proved to be an extensive club with many challenging slopes. His favourite were off the back of the mountain. In that valley there was a chalet with a chairlift that went up the next mountain. It took time to get there and it was often less crowded than the main runs. The cost of the lift tickets would eat away at his minimum wages but he was loving this waystation on his way home and not too concerned just yet about needing to save the funds to get him the rest of the way back to Ontario. Not while there was still snow on the hills anyway.
Slowly, Amos got to know the Post Hotel family. It was a small exclusive Hotel. The staff was only the size of a large family. Chef was the notorious alcoholic father, with a legendary temper. He’d pounce on Amos, his black beady eyes glaring, and shout out some order at him like he should have known what was on his pickled French mind already. “Get me some rutabagas from the basement you Eastern bum!”
Amos hurried down into the cellar - only realizing when he got there that he had no idea what a rutabaga was. He sheepishly returned to Chef and told him so. Amos thought he could see the steam coming out of Chefs ears as he swung a heavy butcher’s knife in the air. “It’s a bloody turnip you imbecile. Where did you come from – a hole in the ground?” Amos could have asked someone else what a rutabaga was but like a cat who’s attracted to those who don’t like cats, he found he enjoyed getting under Chef’s feet. Amos retreated back to the basement before Chef could see the smile on his face.
Henrick was the other lead chef in the kitchen. As far as Amos could see he was the one who actually ran things. He had his own chalet behind the hotel on the banks of a quick wide stony stream. He’d been lured from Europe at great expense, according to him, to make a name for the Post Hotel.
Sebastian was the pastry chef. He worked away in his section of the kitchen with large windows and broad prep tables separated from the rest of the kitchen by ovens the size of a small zamboni. He was a happy mouse. Saying little, Sebastian worked away quietly creating mouth-watering pastries. At the end of a shift, kitchen staff could choose between a beer on the house or one of Sebastian’s creations. Amos rarely chose beer. Beer you could get anywhere.
The Sous-chef was Claude. He was a dark eyed, dark haired, attractive French Canadian lad from somewhere north of Montreal. He’d been to school in France, apprenticed in Swiss Hotels, and had now achieved a position as a Sous chef under Henrick’s demanding eye. He was also an accomplished mountaineer. He would trek up to the peaks surrounding Lake Louise, strap on his skiis and conquer the slopes with the same quick humour and skill he used in the kitchen.
One of the waiters, Mark, had been living in Lake Louise for a number of years. He was considered to be one of Lake Louise’s finest downhill skiers. After an evening shift at the restaurant, he convinced Claude to take him on the trek he had planned for the next day. Claude was hesitant, but Nick insisted. The next evening the kitchen crew was astonished to hear Claude’s sorry tale. Nick had missed a turn on his skis, fallen off a cliff’s edge and broken an arm. Rescue helicopters had to be called in to fetch him from a gulch. Claude was quite apologetic. Nick showed up a few days later with his left arm in a cast, reduced to slinging plates one-handed - and a reputation also reduced to ski slopes instead of mountain passes.
The waiters typically didn’t socialize with the dishwashers, chambermaids, and sundry hotel staff. The sat at their own table in the staff dining room Only Francine, would come and join their table. She’d learned that Amos was a student of literature and she would talk books with him. Amos warmed to this attention. She brought him out of his shell with a favourite subject he could talk easily about. Her attentions shone some light onto Amos. She invited him to ski with her some time. The other waiters took note.
There were three chambermaids at the Hotel. They were led by Marlene; a tall buxom barmaid type with long dark hair, strong limbs and a tough chick demeanor. Amos guessed she’d grown up in a family of brothers. Marlene’s first once-over assessment of Amos had been “just another cowboy.” Her two sidekicks were as different as dog and cat. Heather was a dyed-blonde party girl. A heavy metal rocker, she hadn’t been at the Hotel long and no one expected her to last. The other one was very different. She could often be seen talking in close confidence with Marlene. She was boyishly thin - thin legs, thin hips, thin torso, thin arms, and a thin oval head with pointed features and thin lips. Her short black locks were always a mess.
Jacynthe always wore black and seemed like she’d be more at home in a darkened studio than in the bright sun-sparkling streams and clear mountain airs of Lake Louise. She was not good-looking but Amos found the way she moved and kept to herself attractive. Her English was terrible and it took some coaxing to get her talking. She’d respond to Amos’ questions with curious looks and coy questions of her own – as if she was ignoring the surface question and looking for what Amos was really after.
It was Vince, one of the other dishwashers who first convinced Amos to visit the Cave. The Cave was the pub at the Holiday Inn where the Post Hotel staff would hang out. Amos had been questioning Vince about how he’d ended up in Lake Louise. As a cabbie, Amos had learned the skill of questioning – a way of keeping the attention off ones’ self and learning more about the ever-intriguing depths of human nature. Turns out Vince had escaped Vietnam in an open boat with forty people jammed together in a run for their lives. He promised to tell Amos more of the story if he’d buy him a beer at the Cave after work.
The place was almost empty. The chambermaids were there and while Amos headed for a table in the opposite corner, Vince walked right over and joined them. Amos reluctantly followed. The music was loud. Too loud to talk. The bar had a large disco dancefloor surrounded on all four sides by tables. The dancefloor was empty except for Jacynthe. She was dancing by herself – doing a strange, self-styled, expressionistic performance - the nature of which Amos was sure that bar had never been treated to before. She seemed totally absorbed in what she was doing and oblivious to anyone or anything else. Amos watched curiously – at first with some embarrassment for her. But as he watched he could see that she was totally into what she was doing and that intrigued him.
Marlene was watching him watching her. She was surprised he didn’t laugh and make jokes. Instead he began bouncing his head to the music enjoying the performance. He and Vince had a couple of beers, said goodnight to the three, and left. Amos wanted to get the rest of the story from Vince.
He told a harrowing tale of survival. Amos just kept shaking his head. Off Vietnam’s coast, they’d managed to escape the chase of pirates – who would have taken the women and all valuables – by running straight into a raging storm. Vince and his partner had fought the waves and kept their boatmates from panic. It took them six weeks to cross the Pacific. They lost 13 people to starvation and thirst and arrived at Vancouver Island where authorities locked them up for another 6 weeks. Eventually the Canadian government relented and issued the Vietnamese boat people – as the media called them – work permits. Vince had heard of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and jumped at the chance to be a dishwasher in Lake Louise. Amos regarded his new friend with much greater respect. His first impression was of a friendly, harmless, little man. Now, he saw a man with a lion’s heart and a backbone of fired steel. Amos doubted if he could ever produce such a courage himself.
Amos also discovered that Vince had never visited Chateau Lake Louise. They were just a short car ride down the mountain from the great CN Hotel on the picture postcard turquoise lake. “Do you have a swimsuit?” Amos asked him. Turns out he did. “Bring it along and meet me in the parking lot after the dinner shift. We’ll go for a swim.”
Vince was there waiting in the parking lot. To Amos’ surprise so was Wendell - and Jacynthe hung back behind the two of them. “Do you mind if I join you?” she asked shyly. “More the merrier.” Amos replied. She looked at him quizzically. “That’s a strange thing to say for someone who spends so much time alone.” she said slipping into the back seat.
Amos explained the drill on the drive up the mountain. “It’s all about being at home – acting like you belong.” And just like he’d told them, they sauntered through the grand lobby with high chandelier ceilings and deluxe carpeting and couches like they owned the place. Well – sort of. Amos greeted the staff behind the front desk with a smile and a wave as he led his party towards the stairs at the far end. Vince was gawking, his head turning left and right, spinning around every ten steps to take it all in. Wendell was trailing behind whispering urgent warnings “we can’t do this! we can’t do this! we can’t do this!” Jacynthe strode step for step with Amos, looking straight ahead, cool, collected and purposeful. Mom and Dad with a couple of kids in tow.
The young guy on staff at the pool probably wasn’t fooled by this small family of strange-looking swimmers. But there were no guests in the pool and either he didn’t care or he didn’t dare challenge Amos’ unsmiling request for four towels. Within minutes the guys were splashing around, jumping and diving off the spring board, a great racket bouncing off the stone walls and vaulted ceiling of the large elegant poolroom. They didn’t even notice Jacynthe slip into the water.
As if some chemistry in the water had changed them, the guys’ loud excitement waned. Vince and Wendell decided to head for the sauna. Not a big fan of the heat, Amos told them to go ahead. He sat on the edge of the pool and watched as Jacynthe began to move through the water. As in the Cave the other night, she moved freely letting one motion lead spontaneously to the next without plan or a need to perceive how she was perceived. She moved to a music now that was within. Amos watched and tried to catch the rhythm and tune. After a deep dive she rose facing Amos and gave him a wide smile. He’d never seen her smile more than a grin.
Amos slid off the edge in under the surface. With a few strokes he was beside her. She responded to his presence with a spin and a swirl. He circled her with long side strokes, watching her lithe motions. She dove deep and he dove to follow. They met at the bottom of their dive. She reached out and touched his hip. He touched her shoulder and it was like a current had found a path through them. Amos felt a warmth flow from hip up to his arm and out through the hand that touched her. It lasted just an instant as their buoyancy lifted them suspended in the moment together. They surfaced to find Vince and Wendell cannonballing into the pool on either side of them. They splashed water at the guys and played like three puppies and a cat in the deep end.
---
The next night, Wendell knocked on his door and opened it wide. Amos was reading in bed. Wendell had a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. “Hey man, come join us why don’t you?” Amos’ first instinct was to send him away. But Amos felt like it was time to squeeze the sponge. He’d been soaking up the spirit alone for a month now – and it was time to share it. He followed Wendell down the narrow hallway where half the staff were crammed into Billy and Steve’s – dishwashers too - tiny room with two single beds. Smoking and drinking and talking loudly over Billy’s banging on a guitar to the Eagle’s “Hotel California” they welcomed Wendell and Amos with a cheer. Marlene and Jacynthe made room for Amos to sit on the bed between them, backs to the wall. The chambermaids were chatting with others around them but their legs pressed on Amos’ on either side. It seemed a long time since he’d felt the warmth of human touch. He let out a long sigh and relaxed – enjoying the embrace of friends again.
Jacynthe passed him a joint and as their hands touched he again felt a warmth wash through him. After passing the joint along, he reached for her hand and – afraid of what the others would think and not caring – held it. She snuggled closer beside him on the bed saying nothing. Marlene elbowed him, looking away, pretending not to notice.
When the party broke up they were still holding hands. In the hallway people dispersed to their rooms either not noticing the couple or being modest and gracious enough to not notice. Amos’ heart was pumping as he led her to his door and without hesitation drew her behind him into the dark room. They embraced and enjoyed a long first kiss, mouths opening and enjoying the taste they found in one another. Clothes were slowly removed. She led him in an unhurried dance. Each time he went to push or speed things up she pulled away until he calmed and slowed and met her rhythm.
They coupled in the deep double bed. His large long limbs stroked and entwined with her thin strong arms and legs working together to draw and pull him in. Her fingers found every part of him and his hands cupped and wrapped around her small waist, buttocks, legs. He could put his thumbs on either side of her breasts and touch his fingers together in the small of her back. She took him in, breathing in his orgasm as he exhausted himself into her.
He rolled onto his back with a generous sigh. “That was good.” He said. “For a writer - good - is such an empty word.” She whispered throwing her leg across him and shifting onto him with kisses to his nipples. Had he told her he was a writer? “Is good the best you can do?” she teased, kissed and tongued him, stroked and pulled him into a new beginning when he thought they were finished. The dance continued. Every time he thought he’d completely expressed himself, she drew him out of himself further and further and he discovered a new passion, a new heat, a new rhythm that he hadn’t imagined there before. He lost track of the orgasms between them. They weren’t the end of the dance but only a peak or a valley in their journey into the night. He was fascinated that she found new places to explore in his bed and he never knew how many ways he could kiss and tongue and stroke and hold her. Each time he came up for air she would draw him back down into the pleasure of their bodies. She found in him an endurance he didn’t possess – or couldn’t find - alone. There were no words. Their hands and limbs, cock and vulva spoke what needed saying.
She finally let him go when the dawn’s light found it’s way in through the basement window at the ceiling of the room. There was no time to sleep. Time only for a shower and a shit and quickly dress to make the morning breakfast shift. The adrenaline kept Amos going all morning. After lunch he ate with the staff. Jac was there but only looked at him across the room like a cat. Keeping her distance. He smiled and let his attention get drawn into a conversation with Nick. He never thought he’d want sleep more. He left for his room, undressed and dropped into bed. In the second it would have taken to fall asleep she came into the room, undressed and joined him again in a coupling. He didn’t remember her leaving. He must have passed out.
In the weeks to come Amos seemed to be in demand. Staff members kept seeking him out; wanting to spend time talking in his room with him or inviting him for trips to scenic spots. Even Rod, the crusty thirty-something Hotel handyman who seldom spent words on the other staff, would stop just to shoot the breeze with Amos. This wasn’t missed among the small circle of staff and Amos found he’d developed a reputation without doing anything.
Amos wasn’t used to this popularity. Socializing had always been something he felt he had to work at. Now, the more he tried to keep to himself, the more sought out he became. He was happy to spend time with people; share thoughts, stories, laughs. He enjoyed meeting each person where they lived, talking about what they wanted to talk about, poking fun at them and always curious about what made them tick. He learned how to make Jacynthe laugh and she seemed to be coming out of her dark corner and blooming a bit in his presence.
Their dance continued. If he displayed any adolescent bravado it was like she didn’t even see him. If he pursued her, she slipped away. But if he was cool and collected and let her come to him, they would connect. They spoke about art. What it is to be an artist. He wrote her a poem - train thunder, clouds make the moon wonder – it started. She gave him a charcoal sketch of a nude that struck him as both ugly and erotic and it disturbed him – like her. She told him that before he’d arrived they where a bunch of people who worked together. With Amos among them, she said, they’d become a family.
He couldn’t see it but it made Amos feel ready. He felt like he was still a long way from knowing what he was ready for. Just that the sponge had been squeezed and she had done the squeezing – found the juice in him and gave him a taste for it. What had happened to him wasn’t just something in his head, it had changed him somehow, charged him with an energy and a spirit that wasn’t his own, but was his to share.
When the stones beneath the snow began carving chunks out of the base of his skis, it was time to go. Henri and Heloise always held a big Easter party for the staff – a thank you at the end of the season. Amos had given his notice a week before but hadn’t told anyone else. That night he said his goodbyes to each person not giving them a chance to grow sentimental. Jacynthe was catching a ride east with him. Nick was coming along too. Between the three of them they figured they had the gas money. Probably. He thanked Henri for such a wonderful going away party. Henri laughed and wished him well.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
In too Deep
He’d found the Golden Fleece. Now he just had to get it home. He’d discovered the Holy Grail. But would it just vanish when he brought it out to show family and friends? He’d reach into the bag that held it and find only dust? Before he made it home, there were things he still had to do. Things he still had to prove to himself. Things he still had to discover – live and breathe. Taste and digest and turn into muscle.
Skiing the mountains of B.C. was the metaphor for how he would live out the rest of his life. The way he went about this sojourn was the way he would tackle his next fifty years.
Did he know this? Could he have put that into words? Probably not. But he knew it still. He knew that this trip, this effort was about more than having a good time. He was watching and listening for more than what was going on - below the surface – for the meaning of what was said, not said, done. He had opened up his soul as a canvas for lasting impressions. A new innocence was within him. New eyes, new heart came as accessories along with the new purpose. To serve the Lord. But how? On this trip he was fasting from the food of friends – the influence of what sustained his sense of self – and trying to live only on the watery company of the One who knew his true nature.
The first stop Amos had planned was at an obscure little mountain ski club a day’s drive from Vancouver. He’d found it listed in the directory of ski clubs he’d researched and photocopied at the Library. It was late afternoon by the time he drove the Dodge Dart Fleshmobile up the winding mountain road. On the way up he noticed a driveway into a clearing – like an empty building lot protected from the road’s view by a band of trees. That would be his hotel room for this resort he decided – giving thanks to the Creator for that gift.
There was nothing else up there on that road. No condos, no restaurants, just a few homes here and there along the road. The big sign for the resort looked pretty tired. Needed paint. That was okay. Amos liked the idea of hitting a club off the tourist map as his first stop.
It was off the tourist map alright. The parking lot wasn’t plowed. The chalet was dark. The chairlift was still and empty. Amos pulled the Fleshmobile up and got out. “Well” he said to his quiet companion Jesus “The line ups won’t be too bad.”
He looked around a bit. Trudging through deep snow to get a look at what he’d missed. Considered camping there beside the chalet but it felt too lonely and sad. He didn’t like the feeling that “he was too late – he’d missed his chance”. Was this an omen for the trip ahead?
Back in the Dart, he drove back down to the clearing he’d spotted on the way up. He parked the car close to the snow bank on the road side and dragged the heavy canvas tent out of the trunk. The sun dropped low over Vancouver lying hidden beyond the hills. It took his thoughts to the small life he’d planted, and now uprooted, there. Should he go back? Was he giving up on a new life of promise? Was he giving in? Was going home gonna mean he’d fall back into the rut he left behind?
The tent up, chili heated and spooned down, he was in the sack reading Neitsche when he noticed the light outside. It was like a streetlight. Had to check it out. Pulling on his boots and not bothering with his coat he climbed through the tent door and out into the windless, frigid night. Out over the valley, where the sun had set just hours before, a big full moon was smiling at him. Amos smiled back.
While the sun had a power to pull, the moon repelled and pushed and cooled off the day’s passions. It said let go and keep going. It said there’s more to find in the dark night than the day’s sun can show.
Amos turned and took a few steps to the side of the tent to pee – to mark this moment of letting go. Enjoying the release, the sound of water tunneling down thru snow, steam rising, he looked up over his shoulder to the moon again. His heart stopped as his eyes narrowed and muscles tensed. A large white wolf stood at the edge of the clearing, head high, ears erect, watching him. No sound. No sense of aggression in the air between them. Just each noticing the another.
The pee had stopped flowing. Amos let out a breath that misted the sight line just for a second. He tucked away his dick to free his hands and shifted his right leg to face the wolf but in that instant - the wolf was gone.
Had it been there at all? Amos doubted it. And he knew it had been too. He stood there til the cold made him shiver and move for shelter. Before retreating into the tent again, he grabbed the lantern and walked over to where the wolf had stood. There were no tracks in the snow. Just as he’d suspected.
If he’d seen what he’d seen – it was spirit that he’d met. Was it just a reflection of his imagination? A projection of the lone wolf persona he was playing? Whether it came from somewhere deep within or somewhere beyond - like the moon - it was telling him that he was on the right path – and to keep going.
He’d heard a lot about Red Mountain – home of Nancy Green. Skiers at Whistler had told tall chairlift tales about the powder snow. Down on the border next to Idaho, sat the railway-mining town of Trail B.C. Amos headed south for Trail.
On the way was Kelowna. Big White Mountain was a disappointment. He spent two nights in a cheap motel. It left a sour taste – wasting away his stash of funds waiting out heavy snows and high winds watching crap TV. He was betraying his mission.
Peter had given him a novel and an address of an old girlfriend living in Kelowna. He’d made Amos promise to deliver it. The novel was about sexual freedom and discovery – a semi-spiritual, semi-porn, pop literary story. Amos called Sue up right away when he arrived in town. She gave him directions to find her place in a suburban outskirt townhouse. Sue was friendly but not exactly warm. Attractive for sure, Amos noticed, but she was world weary. Life had tired her out it seemed. For a young woman she lacked any true curiosity. Her life held no mystery. As if it’d all been laid out from here to the end and she just had to keep the car on the road. Neither was she curious about this stranger who had pulled up beside her. They chatted over a beer. It was her birthday and she invited Amos to a bar that night to celebrate with her friends.
He’d found the cheapest motel he could and showered and put on his best plaid shirt but somehow couldn’t find the party spirit to get out the door. He knew that in some mystical way he’d been delivered to that place on that day as a birthday present. He knew that the stars, or Peter at least, had set him up for some free love. He told himself he was crazy to pass up such a fantasy opportunity. The voice that tried to pry him loose and out the door was hollow and distant. He’d responded to it a million times before and it had always left him empty and alone in the end. He’d rather be by himself than betray himself again.
So he spent a night and a day receiving kicks from that old demon but refusing to budge. His mind filled with fantasies of what might have been. He got a pizza from the joint next door. Chatted with the bored pizza chef. The storm was keeping business slow. Watched some old movies on the cable TV. Tried reading but he was too angry. Amos was angry for being too timid to dive into a sexual adventure and angry because it wasn’t like he was being pure anyways – eating junk food and watching junk TV and spending precious time and cash wasting away in a room like a million other motel rooms.
Refusing to kill a third day in the motel room he checked out early the next morning and drove through the blizzard – that showed no signs of letting up - to the Big White Resort and bought a lift ticket.
It was literally a white-out – Big White all right – he could barely make out the ends of his skiis and from what he could see, which wasn’t much, the hills didn’t hold the kind of challenges he was looking for. It had nothing to teach him.
He left the Resort and got on the highway at dusk. It was still snowing hard but the plows had pushed the worst of it off the roads. He found the highway south and headed for the famed Red Mountain down along the edge of Canada.
This road hadn’t seen a plow in while and the snow was getting to be - what you might call - deep. Amos pulled the Dart up behind a transport truck stopped at the road’s side. He found the driver putting chains on his eighteen wheels. “The road ahead’s deserted. There’s nothing between here and Trail. It’s a mountain pass so it’s tricky goin. If you take it – don’t make any mistakes son. Me - I’m turning back.”
For some reason, Amos figured he could make it. Turning back didn’t seem like an option. There was nowhere level enough to camp and he wasn’t going to waste another $50 on a motel. So - into the night and snow he drove with two white-knuckled fists on the wheel. He didn’t even play tunes on his stereo – afraid of any distraction. Corner after corner, up one long steep climb, and down the next, fishtailing at times but too scared to stop – going slow but not slow enough to get stuck. Just fast enough to maintain momentum and control – if that’s what you could call it. Down another long black stretch, not knowing where the next bend would come, not knowing what obstacle around it might send him into a spin. Up the next pass he plowed on.
The road went on and on for hour after hour. The fuel gage was now hovering just above empty and every time he glanced at it, his grip on the wheel tightened again. Amos found that he was singing a hymn from his childhood. When he realized that, he also realized that the snow had finally let up. Just as he was beginning to compose his thanks into words, around the next corner, that larger than life – still almost full moon greeted him. It washed the dark road in a sparkling, other-worldly light. It felt like he had crossed over into another realm. He wound the window down and let the crisp cold air fill the car - clearing out the heavy air of the fear he’d been breathing.
The car was floating Amos over clouds as he cruised along through the night - his hands now tapping that hymn out on the steering wheel. Praising his Maker and his trip’s Mate. In such good company Amos at the same time realized suddenly how lonely he was. He was wishing he had someone to share such a special moment with. A moment like this is meant to be shared he thought. His heart reached out into the future for the one he’d find to share it with. One day he’d tell his love the story of this night and how he had thought of her then.
As enchanted as the mountain drive had become, Amos was still hugely relieved to see the sign that read “Trail 10 miles”. The gas gauge was sunk below E and he knew he was cruising on fumes. Coming into the outskirts of town, he passed the sign for the Red Mountain Resort. Figuring that was why he was there, he pushed his luck further still and cut off the main road onto the sideroad and wound his way up to the Resort’s parking lot. He could coast back down the mountain to a gas station tomorrow he reasoned. Tomorrow he’d deal with such a small problem. Today angel’s wings had carried him here and he knew they’d take him all the way to a safe landing now.
He parked his trusty steed in a far corner of the Resort’s dark lot, climbed out and stretched hands to the sky, arching back to take in a skyfull of lucky stars – the Milky Way like a thick band he’d followed here full of promise and high hopes. Amos tossed the heavy canvas tent over an eight foot snow bank as if it was his sleeping bag. Crawling up over the bank and down into the woods with the stove and his pack, he set up the tent in the clearing he just knew would be there. Cooked up some soup and settled down – wondering just how laid back the management of Red Mountain Resort might be? After surviving the threats the mountain trail had posed that night, any fears about human authorities seemed somehow not worth the worry. So he hunkered in and slept the night through like a bear down for the winter.
Next morning, Amos awoke to the sound of cars crunching through deep snow pulling into the parking lot. He climbed out into a sparkling sunlit winter wonderland to pee into the thigh deep snow. Hidden from sight behind the tall snow bank, Amos cooked a quick breakfast of oatmeal and raisins and apples chunks washed down with mint tea. Over long johns and a wool layer, he pulled on his Toronto Hydro issued (donated by a friend’s sister who worked there) baggy beige coveralls – his favoured ski apparel.
With a toothbrush hanging from his mouth like a cigar, he crawled over the snowbank and into society. The look on the coiffed middle-aged guy’s face as he stopped in his tracks beside his Jaguar had a kind of “do I have to share this mountain with a street person?” shock in it that made Amos’ day.
Amos smiled and waved at him – all bright and chipper like. The Jaguar owner turned, shouldered his skiis on his ski suit – together worth more than Amos’ car - and headed for the chalet. His wife closed her mouth and followed. Amos laughed out loud. He couldn’t have been happier if he’d been a two year old making art with the pungent brown stuff he’d just produced.
He bought a lift ticket at the outdoor booth and went directly to the chairlift. His plan, developed from weeks of practice at Whistler, was to stay completely out of the chalet, or any indoor spaces, as much as possible. His body had adapted to the cold now and he didn’t want to throw off his internal thermostat by adjusting and re-adjusting to indoors/outdoors temperatures.
He shared the first chairlift of the day with a guy whose beard and hair was even longer than his own. They traded stories on the way up. This character’d been skiing Red Mountain for a decade. He told Amos he’d left Ontario in his tracks. Amos thought “here is a man truly dedicated to a lifestyle.” He’d taken Amos’ dream, and made it into a life.
When he heard Amos’ story, he said “You gotta come with me when we get to the top man. The real powder’s off the back of the mountain in the powder fields.”
“Yeah, right on man, that’s what I’m here for.” agreed Amos.
“Wahoooo!” the wildman let holler go out across the still mountainside.
“Yeeee-a-ow!” Amos responded in kind, truly excited by this connection the mountain gods had arranged.
At the top, the hairy local took right off skating into the woods like a big cat after prey. Amos could barely keep up. There was no trail – just what the Wildman’d left in his wake. He pushed himself through the deep snow and branches and was panting heavy when he caught up with the big cat standing beyond the trees grinning back at Amos.
Approaching, puffing, Amos saw they were standing on a four foot ledge just above a field of pure white powder. The sun on the snow was blinding bright. The steep slope fell down the mountain for maybe a hundred yards before a boundary of trees stretched completely across the view down. Without a word except for a “WHOOOOOHAAAAAAH” the Wildman was airborne. Expertly plunging into the powder below, he carved one, two, three wide arcs through the virgin’s bed before disappearing into the trees.
Amos was alone. He knew he’d never tackled a hill like this before. He was in way over his head – whaaaaaayyy over his head.
For some reason, Amos figured he could make it. Turning back didn’t seem like an option. He’d been skiing the Rockies for a couple of months now and had taken on some pretty wicked slopes. He’d had a bit of experience in deeper snow - not this deep - but THIS is what he’d come there for.
And so, with a “WHOOUUOOOEEEE” to drown out the whispers of fear - he jumped. To his amazement, he landed soft and immediately sat back on his skiis carving one, two, three perfect turns through the snow performing the turns just like he’d read about in the magazines. “This must be what flying is like for birds” thought Amos, “the wind offering just enough resistance to lift and turn their weight as they simply shift their wingtips.”
Then, the forest came at him like a wall of reality about to wake him from his wonder. He was moving way too fast to stop now. Straightening out his skis, he plunged in like a needle into a haystack.
If you asked Amos how he made it through that twenty yards of forest, he couldn’t tell you. The best explanation he could come up with later was that he was killed instantly - but God sent him back into the forest just to see what would happen next.
He shot out the other side like a human cannonball. Except he wasn’t in a ball. He was more like a wildly thrashing windmill careening off its post. The landing was mercifully soft. The cold, deep, goose down received his tumbling limbs and smothered his velocity with its gentle white resistance.
It took long, long minutes before his mind caught up with him and he swallowed his good fortune . When the wind returned to Amos’ lungs and the puzzled expression finally left his face, he lay there still a bit more - thanking the Maker for what seemed like an appropriately humbled time.
Then, the trusty, sombered knight began the task of hunting and slowly gathering his gear, and his courage, together again. There was no sign of the Wildman – although Amos thought he’d heard a long hysterical hyena laugh as he’d flown through the air. It took him easily an hour to find his scattered skiis and poles and goggles, and then maybe another fifteen minutes to put his nerve back in place. After all, he still had a lot of mountain to ski before he’d make the bottom. But make it he did - eventually. After several more tumbles and a long hike at the bottom back around the mountain to the chalet.
He skied the groomed trails the rest of that day. Slept like a rock. A very happy rock through the long quiet winter’s night. Somewhere in the night, in a dream that told him he’d never be this way again. That he was working with more than luck. He found the resolve to try the back of the mountain – just one more time - again.
This time, he found a trail cut by other crazy types, and followed it for a long, long time through the woods. Just when he was ready to turn back and forget the whole thing, he the woods ended and he came out to stand at the top of cliff with a single narrow chute. It wasn’t a hill. It was a chute on just enough of a slope to hold snow. Bare rock shouldered either side. It was maybe ten feet wide, really, really steep and ran straight down in a really, really long – there was no other word for it - chute. There was no other way down. Amos made an oath right then, that if he survived, he would never again tempt the gods by looking for more mountain than he could handle.
He jumped, hopping his way down that chute – from ski edge to edge to edge to edge, left, right, left, right, there was no where to stop and it was either keep hopping or tumble all the way down risking crashing into the unforgiving rocks on either side.
On sight of the bottom, Amos went into a tuck, turned his skiis straight and sped past the rocks in a blur, thighs on fire, until the deep powder at the bottom slowed him and quenched the fire with the wonder of his heart still pumping life to his eyes instead of the black oblivion he deserved.
At the bottom, Amos and broke his discipline and headed into the chalet for a whisky. He’d just done something impossible. He should have been broken in two by the attempt but instead he’d been blessed with strength and skill beyond his measure to make it through the test – whole – somehow.
Why?
The turns in the snow these past few days had carried him to a new place. Fears were simply food, like pleasure, to be tasted, digested, and dropped off along the way. Each day brings turns only to those who choose to travel on beyond the circles already known.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Skiing the mountains of B.C. was the metaphor for how he would live out the rest of his life. The way he went about this sojourn was the way he would tackle his next fifty years.
Did he know this? Could he have put that into words? Probably not. But he knew it still. He knew that this trip, this effort was about more than having a good time. He was watching and listening for more than what was going on - below the surface – for the meaning of what was said, not said, done. He had opened up his soul as a canvas for lasting impressions. A new innocence was within him. New eyes, new heart came as accessories along with the new purpose. To serve the Lord. But how? On this trip he was fasting from the food of friends – the influence of what sustained his sense of self – and trying to live only on the watery company of the One who knew his true nature.
The first stop Amos had planned was at an obscure little mountain ski club a day’s drive from Vancouver. He’d found it listed in the directory of ski clubs he’d researched and photocopied at the Library. It was late afternoon by the time he drove the Dodge Dart Fleshmobile up the winding mountain road. On the way up he noticed a driveway into a clearing – like an empty building lot protected from the road’s view by a band of trees. That would be his hotel room for this resort he decided – giving thanks to the Creator for that gift.
There was nothing else up there on that road. No condos, no restaurants, just a few homes here and there along the road. The big sign for the resort looked pretty tired. Needed paint. That was okay. Amos liked the idea of hitting a club off the tourist map as his first stop.
It was off the tourist map alright. The parking lot wasn’t plowed. The chalet was dark. The chairlift was still and empty. Amos pulled the Fleshmobile up and got out. “Well” he said to his quiet companion Jesus “The line ups won’t be too bad.”
He looked around a bit. Trudging through deep snow to get a look at what he’d missed. Considered camping there beside the chalet but it felt too lonely and sad. He didn’t like the feeling that “he was too late – he’d missed his chance”. Was this an omen for the trip ahead?
Back in the Dart, he drove back down to the clearing he’d spotted on the way up. He parked the car close to the snow bank on the road side and dragged the heavy canvas tent out of the trunk. The sun dropped low over Vancouver lying hidden beyond the hills. It took his thoughts to the small life he’d planted, and now uprooted, there. Should he go back? Was he giving up on a new life of promise? Was he giving in? Was going home gonna mean he’d fall back into the rut he left behind?
The tent up, chili heated and spooned down, he was in the sack reading Neitsche when he noticed the light outside. It was like a streetlight. Had to check it out. Pulling on his boots and not bothering with his coat he climbed through the tent door and out into the windless, frigid night. Out over the valley, where the sun had set just hours before, a big full moon was smiling at him. Amos smiled back.
While the sun had a power to pull, the moon repelled and pushed and cooled off the day’s passions. It said let go and keep going. It said there’s more to find in the dark night than the day’s sun can show.
Amos turned and took a few steps to the side of the tent to pee – to mark this moment of letting go. Enjoying the release, the sound of water tunneling down thru snow, steam rising, he looked up over his shoulder to the moon again. His heart stopped as his eyes narrowed and muscles tensed. A large white wolf stood at the edge of the clearing, head high, ears erect, watching him. No sound. No sense of aggression in the air between them. Just each noticing the another.
The pee had stopped flowing. Amos let out a breath that misted the sight line just for a second. He tucked away his dick to free his hands and shifted his right leg to face the wolf but in that instant - the wolf was gone.
Had it been there at all? Amos doubted it. And he knew it had been too. He stood there til the cold made him shiver and move for shelter. Before retreating into the tent again, he grabbed the lantern and walked over to where the wolf had stood. There were no tracks in the snow. Just as he’d suspected.
If he’d seen what he’d seen – it was spirit that he’d met. Was it just a reflection of his imagination? A projection of the lone wolf persona he was playing? Whether it came from somewhere deep within or somewhere beyond - like the moon - it was telling him that he was on the right path – and to keep going.
He’d heard a lot about Red Mountain – home of Nancy Green. Skiers at Whistler had told tall chairlift tales about the powder snow. Down on the border next to Idaho, sat the railway-mining town of Trail B.C. Amos headed south for Trail.
On the way was Kelowna. Big White Mountain was a disappointment. He spent two nights in a cheap motel. It left a sour taste – wasting away his stash of funds waiting out heavy snows and high winds watching crap TV. He was betraying his mission.
Peter had given him a novel and an address of an old girlfriend living in Kelowna. He’d made Amos promise to deliver it. The novel was about sexual freedom and discovery – a semi-spiritual, semi-porn, pop literary story. Amos called Sue up right away when he arrived in town. She gave him directions to find her place in a suburban outskirt townhouse. Sue was friendly but not exactly warm. Attractive for sure, Amos noticed, but she was world weary. Life had tired her out it seemed. For a young woman she lacked any true curiosity. Her life held no mystery. As if it’d all been laid out from here to the end and she just had to keep the car on the road. Neither was she curious about this stranger who had pulled up beside her. They chatted over a beer. It was her birthday and she invited Amos to a bar that night to celebrate with her friends.
He’d found the cheapest motel he could and showered and put on his best plaid shirt but somehow couldn’t find the party spirit to get out the door. He knew that in some mystical way he’d been delivered to that place on that day as a birthday present. He knew that the stars, or Peter at least, had set him up for some free love. He told himself he was crazy to pass up such a fantasy opportunity. The voice that tried to pry him loose and out the door was hollow and distant. He’d responded to it a million times before and it had always left him empty and alone in the end. He’d rather be by himself than betray himself again.
So he spent a night and a day receiving kicks from that old demon but refusing to budge. His mind filled with fantasies of what might have been. He got a pizza from the joint next door. Chatted with the bored pizza chef. The storm was keeping business slow. Watched some old movies on the cable TV. Tried reading but he was too angry. Amos was angry for being too timid to dive into a sexual adventure and angry because it wasn’t like he was being pure anyways – eating junk food and watching junk TV and spending precious time and cash wasting away in a room like a million other motel rooms.
Refusing to kill a third day in the motel room he checked out early the next morning and drove through the blizzard – that showed no signs of letting up - to the Big White Resort and bought a lift ticket.
It was literally a white-out – Big White all right – he could barely make out the ends of his skiis and from what he could see, which wasn’t much, the hills didn’t hold the kind of challenges he was looking for. It had nothing to teach him.
He left the Resort and got on the highway at dusk. It was still snowing hard but the plows had pushed the worst of it off the roads. He found the highway south and headed for the famed Red Mountain down along the edge of Canada.
This road hadn’t seen a plow in while and the snow was getting to be - what you might call - deep. Amos pulled the Dart up behind a transport truck stopped at the road’s side. He found the driver putting chains on his eighteen wheels. “The road ahead’s deserted. There’s nothing between here and Trail. It’s a mountain pass so it’s tricky goin. If you take it – don’t make any mistakes son. Me - I’m turning back.”
For some reason, Amos figured he could make it. Turning back didn’t seem like an option. There was nowhere level enough to camp and he wasn’t going to waste another $50 on a motel. So - into the night and snow he drove with two white-knuckled fists on the wheel. He didn’t even play tunes on his stereo – afraid of any distraction. Corner after corner, up one long steep climb, and down the next, fishtailing at times but too scared to stop – going slow but not slow enough to get stuck. Just fast enough to maintain momentum and control – if that’s what you could call it. Down another long black stretch, not knowing where the next bend would come, not knowing what obstacle around it might send him into a spin. Up the next pass he plowed on.
The road went on and on for hour after hour. The fuel gage was now hovering just above empty and every time he glanced at it, his grip on the wheel tightened again. Amos found that he was singing a hymn from his childhood. When he realized that, he also realized that the snow had finally let up. Just as he was beginning to compose his thanks into words, around the next corner, that larger than life – still almost full moon greeted him. It washed the dark road in a sparkling, other-worldly light. It felt like he had crossed over into another realm. He wound the window down and let the crisp cold air fill the car - clearing out the heavy air of the fear he’d been breathing.
The car was floating Amos over clouds as he cruised along through the night - his hands now tapping that hymn out on the steering wheel. Praising his Maker and his trip’s Mate. In such good company Amos at the same time realized suddenly how lonely he was. He was wishing he had someone to share such a special moment with. A moment like this is meant to be shared he thought. His heart reached out into the future for the one he’d find to share it with. One day he’d tell his love the story of this night and how he had thought of her then.
As enchanted as the mountain drive had become, Amos was still hugely relieved to see the sign that read “Trail 10 miles”. The gas gauge was sunk below E and he knew he was cruising on fumes. Coming into the outskirts of town, he passed the sign for the Red Mountain Resort. Figuring that was why he was there, he pushed his luck further still and cut off the main road onto the sideroad and wound his way up to the Resort’s parking lot. He could coast back down the mountain to a gas station tomorrow he reasoned. Tomorrow he’d deal with such a small problem. Today angel’s wings had carried him here and he knew they’d take him all the way to a safe landing now.
He parked his trusty steed in a far corner of the Resort’s dark lot, climbed out and stretched hands to the sky, arching back to take in a skyfull of lucky stars – the Milky Way like a thick band he’d followed here full of promise and high hopes. Amos tossed the heavy canvas tent over an eight foot snow bank as if it was his sleeping bag. Crawling up over the bank and down into the woods with the stove and his pack, he set up the tent in the clearing he just knew would be there. Cooked up some soup and settled down – wondering just how laid back the management of Red Mountain Resort might be? After surviving the threats the mountain trail had posed that night, any fears about human authorities seemed somehow not worth the worry. So he hunkered in and slept the night through like a bear down for the winter.
Next morning, Amos awoke to the sound of cars crunching through deep snow pulling into the parking lot. He climbed out into a sparkling sunlit winter wonderland to pee into the thigh deep snow. Hidden from sight behind the tall snow bank, Amos cooked a quick breakfast of oatmeal and raisins and apples chunks washed down with mint tea. Over long johns and a wool layer, he pulled on his Toronto Hydro issued (donated by a friend’s sister who worked there) baggy beige coveralls – his favoured ski apparel.
With a toothbrush hanging from his mouth like a cigar, he crawled over the snowbank and into society. The look on the coiffed middle-aged guy’s face as he stopped in his tracks beside his Jaguar had a kind of “do I have to share this mountain with a street person?” shock in it that made Amos’ day.
Amos smiled and waved at him – all bright and chipper like. The Jaguar owner turned, shouldered his skiis on his ski suit – together worth more than Amos’ car - and headed for the chalet. His wife closed her mouth and followed. Amos laughed out loud. He couldn’t have been happier if he’d been a two year old making art with the pungent brown stuff he’d just produced.
He bought a lift ticket at the outdoor booth and went directly to the chairlift. His plan, developed from weeks of practice at Whistler, was to stay completely out of the chalet, or any indoor spaces, as much as possible. His body had adapted to the cold now and he didn’t want to throw off his internal thermostat by adjusting and re-adjusting to indoors/outdoors temperatures.
He shared the first chairlift of the day with a guy whose beard and hair was even longer than his own. They traded stories on the way up. This character’d been skiing Red Mountain for a decade. He told Amos he’d left Ontario in his tracks. Amos thought “here is a man truly dedicated to a lifestyle.” He’d taken Amos’ dream, and made it into a life.
When he heard Amos’ story, he said “You gotta come with me when we get to the top man. The real powder’s off the back of the mountain in the powder fields.”
“Yeah, right on man, that’s what I’m here for.” agreed Amos.
“Wahoooo!” the wildman let holler go out across the still mountainside.
“Yeeee-a-ow!” Amos responded in kind, truly excited by this connection the mountain gods had arranged.
At the top, the hairy local took right off skating into the woods like a big cat after prey. Amos could barely keep up. There was no trail – just what the Wildman’d left in his wake. He pushed himself through the deep snow and branches and was panting heavy when he caught up with the big cat standing beyond the trees grinning back at Amos.
Approaching, puffing, Amos saw they were standing on a four foot ledge just above a field of pure white powder. The sun on the snow was blinding bright. The steep slope fell down the mountain for maybe a hundred yards before a boundary of trees stretched completely across the view down. Without a word except for a “WHOOOOOHAAAAAAH” the Wildman was airborne. Expertly plunging into the powder below, he carved one, two, three wide arcs through the virgin’s bed before disappearing into the trees.
Amos was alone. He knew he’d never tackled a hill like this before. He was in way over his head – whaaaaaayyy over his head.
For some reason, Amos figured he could make it. Turning back didn’t seem like an option. He’d been skiing the Rockies for a couple of months now and had taken on some pretty wicked slopes. He’d had a bit of experience in deeper snow - not this deep - but THIS is what he’d come there for.
And so, with a “WHOOUUOOOEEEE” to drown out the whispers of fear - he jumped. To his amazement, he landed soft and immediately sat back on his skiis carving one, two, three perfect turns through the snow performing the turns just like he’d read about in the magazines. “This must be what flying is like for birds” thought Amos, “the wind offering just enough resistance to lift and turn their weight as they simply shift their wingtips.”
Then, the forest came at him like a wall of reality about to wake him from his wonder. He was moving way too fast to stop now. Straightening out his skis, he plunged in like a needle into a haystack.
If you asked Amos how he made it through that twenty yards of forest, he couldn’t tell you. The best explanation he could come up with later was that he was killed instantly - but God sent him back into the forest just to see what would happen next.
He shot out the other side like a human cannonball. Except he wasn’t in a ball. He was more like a wildly thrashing windmill careening off its post. The landing was mercifully soft. The cold, deep, goose down received his tumbling limbs and smothered his velocity with its gentle white resistance.
It took long, long minutes before his mind caught up with him and he swallowed his good fortune . When the wind returned to Amos’ lungs and the puzzled expression finally left his face, he lay there still a bit more - thanking the Maker for what seemed like an appropriately humbled time.
Then, the trusty, sombered knight began the task of hunting and slowly gathering his gear, and his courage, together again. There was no sign of the Wildman – although Amos thought he’d heard a long hysterical hyena laugh as he’d flown through the air. It took him easily an hour to find his scattered skiis and poles and goggles, and then maybe another fifteen minutes to put his nerve back in place. After all, he still had a lot of mountain to ski before he’d make the bottom. But make it he did - eventually. After several more tumbles and a long hike at the bottom back around the mountain to the chalet.
He skied the groomed trails the rest of that day. Slept like a rock. A very happy rock through the long quiet winter’s night. Somewhere in the night, in a dream that told him he’d never be this way again. That he was working with more than luck. He found the resolve to try the back of the mountain – just one more time - again.
This time, he found a trail cut by other crazy types, and followed it for a long, long time through the woods. Just when he was ready to turn back and forget the whole thing, he the woods ended and he came out to stand at the top of cliff with a single narrow chute. It wasn’t a hill. It was a chute on just enough of a slope to hold snow. Bare rock shouldered either side. It was maybe ten feet wide, really, really steep and ran straight down in a really, really long – there was no other word for it - chute. There was no other way down. Amos made an oath right then, that if he survived, he would never again tempt the gods by looking for more mountain than he could handle.
He jumped, hopping his way down that chute – from ski edge to edge to edge to edge, left, right, left, right, there was no where to stop and it was either keep hopping or tumble all the way down risking crashing into the unforgiving rocks on either side.
On sight of the bottom, Amos went into a tuck, turned his skiis straight and sped past the rocks in a blur, thighs on fire, until the deep powder at the bottom slowed him and quenched the fire with the wonder of his heart still pumping life to his eyes instead of the black oblivion he deserved.
At the bottom, Amos and broke his discipline and headed into the chalet for a whisky. He’d just done something impossible. He should have been broken in two by the attempt but instead he’d been blessed with strength and skill beyond his measure to make it through the test – whole – somehow.
Why?
The turns in the snow these past few days had carried him to a new place. Fears were simply food, like pleasure, to be tasted, digested, and dropped off along the way. Each day brings turns only to those who choose to travel on beyond the circles already known.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Heading Home
Amos skied the Whistler mountain resort as often as he could. He’d drive up Highway #99 in the late afternoon. That twisting, coast and mountain-hugging drive was almost as much fun as skiing a slope in spots. He’d drive slowly through Squamish to the outskirts of the small town outside the Whistler resort. In the twilight, he’d find the dead end parkette he’d scouted out last summer and wrestle the large canvas tent out of his trunk, over the snow bank, and into the deep snow.
Getting the two centre poles between the eight foot cross bar up was like roping a calf in the deep snow. He’d lasso both poles then, holding both ropes, yank both poles with cross bar between into the air. Then he’d scurry to quickly peg the ropes deep beneath the snow into the icy ground swinging a hatchet out from his coveralls’ deep pockets. If he pulled too hard the whole thing would fall towards him to the ground. If he was too slow, the pole that wasn’t being pegged would yearn for attention and twist this way or that and fall to the ground pulling the centre bar out. When that happened, Amos would have to drop everything and begin the process all over again.
He’d work up a sweat by the time it was up and secure. Next he carried his bulky bed roll from the car, over the snow bank and laid it out inside. Two heavy blankets beneath a half decent sleeping bag and two more blankets on top. He’d bought the blankets at an Army Surplus. They were heavy mover’s blankets quilted with well sewn edges that wouldn’t fray.
The next trip was for the Coleman Stove and food pack. Only half of the eight man tent was up. The side with the door. In Toronto before heading west, he’d searched out a tailor down off of Spadina, in a basement shop, willing to put a new zipper on that door. He’d had to try many a shop before finding someone willing to take on his old canvas tent.
His family had inherited it from another family at church whose camping days were over. They’d used it on the great Canadian family car trek west and east in summers of his childhood. Amos had invested a hundred bucks into that new zippered door. The tent must have weighed close to a hundred pounds – with the steel poles for sure. Half the tent still gave him a 6’ by 8’ apartment. He could stand up at the centre poles and even the low side stood four feet tall where three poles held the corners and centre between two good sized screen windows with canvas flaps tied down against the wind.
He’d cook up a soup with noodles, or a pot of chili with crusty bread on the Coleman. Yes, he knew that running a Coleman stove inside was dangerous. But he’d keep the flaps open while cooking to draft the fumes. He’d read by lantern, spooning down his dinner along with Friedrich Nietzsche into the night’s fall. Even though he’d met his Lord, his friend Jesus, he wasn’t drawn to the scriptures.
The experience of Christ was still fresh with him. he was still living it – tasting it – savouring it anew with signs and signals in his every day that he wasn’t walking alone. A lyric from a song would strike him with meaning – a message lifted to his attention – to encourage. He’d notice and give thanks. A snatch of conversation in his cab – an encounter with a stranger was an angel’s lift or a devil’s test. An old alc-y could speak truth with a steady gaze piercing through the booze, A young lady’s subtle lie could twist him into seduction til he saw it for a cheap trick and could laugh it off. Sunlight breaking through the clouds and shining on his path across the Vancouver bridges wasn’t just nice scenery. It was his Maker letting him know he was on his way. He was noticing. Awake. Alive to the mystery present in every subtle and simple flow of moments strung together like pearls.
He didn’t want to spoil it – turn it into an academic exercise by reading about it. His days were holy scripture. The tent that had held his childhood family of five was now a lonely cocoon that he filled with great thoughts and questions of fate and future quests. How would he best serve his Lord? It had replaced the question “How would he make a living?” Now, instead of making the world work for him, he only wanted to work for the world’s hope.
Before climbing under the covers he’d strip down naked and go out into the frigid night for a pee. Lowering his skin’s temperature after stoking his stomach’s furnace was part of the winter camping strategy he’d picked up from library books. Diving in under the cold blankets, he’d wait for his body to warm their surfaces and begin holding it close to him. He was the heater. He was the source of the night’s comfort. He was the keeper of the fire that burned within – a sacred fire that required careful tending.
The next couple of days, he’d ski – systematically trying all the different hills those mountains offered – returning to the one’s that had beat him last time until he found his “line” to follow. He’d take a run for pure pleasure. Then he’d take on a hill beyond his skill level. Laughing, swearing, crashing, tumbling, collecting himself and his gear to begin again. He was competing against only his own sense of limitations and fears. He’d try to talk himself out of taking on that hill again. But, a courage kindled a confidence that gently led him back to the top of that hill – fear and fury stirring in his guts til he plunged down into the run letting out a wild war cry whoop – crazy for the thrill of finding a way down just beyond the edge of being in control. Tasting the place where body, mind and spirit synched with snow, slope and speed.
There was no one to pat him on the back if he did it. No one to notice the accomplishment. No one to prove a thing to. Just the man in the mirror. And the man unseen just behind – with his steady hand on Amos’ shoulder. Amos could see his grin in the snow blowing off the trees. Could feel his presence in the birds he shared his lunch with in a quiet snowy sunny spot away from the slopes.
The next week, he’d be up there again. Weekdays the line ups were thinner – and so were the cab customers – so he’d ski and ski. The evenings in the tent got lonely sometimes so he’d try out the Chalet scene. But he had no heart for it and the expensive drinks would cut into his skiing budget. He sought the company of people less and less and learned to enjoy the solitude of the green canvas walls, starlit sky, and blanket’s nest.
When Amos found that he could manage any and all of the hills to his satisfaction – dancing down even the most difficult in a style all his own - he knew it was time to test himself on whatever else the Rockies had to offer. This winter was his one chance to ski the Rockies. It wasn’t likely he would ever be rich enough to spend winter vacations skiing Rocky Mountain Resorts. He knew he wasn’t cool enough, or maybe care-free enough, to become a permanent fixture among the Mountain denizens.
Amos didn’t yet know what he would do, or where he would end up, but he knew that now was his chance to ski the Rockies – and he went after it with a puritan work ethic.
He found that he was getting settled in to life in Vancouver. He was beginning to actually know his way around the streets in his cab. Taking people where they wanted to go without asking them for directions or resorting to the map book, gave him a sense of propriety over the place. Almost like he belonged there.
Amos had a circle of friends now too; a girlfriend, and a soul brother in Danny who had given him much to carry and the muscle to carry it with. He could see that it would be easy to settle in and let some roots start growing in this fertile rainforest coast.
But it would be a transplant. He was an eastern species. His quest for meaning and purpose – the meaning and purpose for his life – wasn’t going to be found in the laid-back comforts of a Vancouver lifestyle. The new identity he was fashioning here wasn’t as important as the new sense of himself in his old shoes. The demons that chased him out here had been put in their places. He’d faced them and found he could walk strong among them without losing his way to their fearful diversions and distractions.
Besides, Vancouver was just too beautiful. It still seemed surreal to Amos. He felt that his fate lay somewhere in the cold, uptight, city streets of Toronto. They seemed more real and urgent and potent with trials waiting around the next corner. Toronto called him back to its centre like an electron back from the edge of its arc.
Goodbyes were always awkward for Amos. He felt like they were a test of friendship – how sincere, or insincere, would the pledges of staying in touch be? Let’s just say “so long” and leave it at that. He hated expectations of social ties he knew he’d lug around and never untie again. He was touched by sincere efforts to convince him to stay. But, his friend’s love was proven by their unselfish best wishes for him. They listened to him try to explain what was in his guts. They couldn’t understand it because Amos couldn’t either - really. It was just time to head home.
So, with as few promises as he thought he might keep, and some sincere words of thanks, with new rubber on his wheels (a deal from his new friend at the cab company’s garage), he left – heading east. It was a Sunday morning that he left Vancouver. On his way out of town he got the idea to stop at the skid row church in the East End that he'd been curious about but never yet visited. It was mid morning and he figured he’d have time to make the service.
It stood right on the southeast corner of Hastings and Main. The main crossroads of the downtown eastside. It was where the guys he’d pick up from Detox would want to be dropped. Where hookers and pushers and all kinds of folk footloose and free from society’s claims would cross paths. Amos was curious what kind of a church service he might find in the midst of such waters. He’d written a poem about Jesus in the alleys, helping junkies with their needles. He wondered if that kind of Jesus might be hanging out in there.
The service was in progress. He’d turned around on the sidewalk about three times between the car and the front door. Thinking it was dumb and a waste of time and what was he doing this for? Inside the front door he found an old man in an dark old suit. He put a bulletin into Amos' left hand and shook the other and left him to find his way into the sanctuary.
It was a large wide space. Two aisles ran between three rows and columns of pews up to a raised platform with oak railing and an empty choir loft. Silent brass organ pipes were the backdrop within a nave the size of whale's mouth. Over the nave was enscripted a banner that read “All ye who are weary, Come and I will give you rest.” The speaker who was introducing the next hymn stood - not up on the platform hidden behind the oak pulpit – but instead down on floor level, to one side, exposed behind a simple pine podium – a bookstand really with a single post to the floor. A piano accompanied the two dozen singers spread in bunches throughout the mostly empty pews.
The speaker had on a suitjacket and no tie. He looked like an ordinary young man of the cloth. No wild eyed street preacher. Not even a beard. Just a guy you might find working in an office downtown. He had a regular kind of voice. He gave a regular kind of message to a regular kind of Sunday morning crowd. There were no streetpeople in the pews. Amos was kind of disappointed by that. But not surprised when he thought about it. Sunday morning was for the good people.
There was an offering and Amos putting five twenties on the plate feeling large about it - making a thanks offering for what that city had given him. The closing hymn was all about moving on.
“I feel the winds of God today. Today my sail I lift.” In the last verse he discovered why he was there that morning. It spoke the vow he didn’t know was in him until he sang it.
If ever I forget your love
and how that love was shown,
lift high the blood-red flag above;
it bears your name alone.
Great pilot of my onward way,
you will not let me drift.
I feel the winds of God today;
today my sail I lift.
He lingered after the service. Said good morning to a few of the other worshippers. No one seemed much interested in him. All kinds of young guys must drift through there Sunday mornings he figured. Getting too friendly with them could cost you a five or a ten to send them on their way. He thought there might be an angel among them he was supposed to meet. But on his way out he realized he’d already been given the message he was looking for. So he lifted his sail and headed east mountain by mountain.
Getting the two centre poles between the eight foot cross bar up was like roping a calf in the deep snow. He’d lasso both poles then, holding both ropes, yank both poles with cross bar between into the air. Then he’d scurry to quickly peg the ropes deep beneath the snow into the icy ground swinging a hatchet out from his coveralls’ deep pockets. If he pulled too hard the whole thing would fall towards him to the ground. If he was too slow, the pole that wasn’t being pegged would yearn for attention and twist this way or that and fall to the ground pulling the centre bar out. When that happened, Amos would have to drop everything and begin the process all over again.
He’d work up a sweat by the time it was up and secure. Next he carried his bulky bed roll from the car, over the snow bank and laid it out inside. Two heavy blankets beneath a half decent sleeping bag and two more blankets on top. He’d bought the blankets at an Army Surplus. They were heavy mover’s blankets quilted with well sewn edges that wouldn’t fray.
The next trip was for the Coleman Stove and food pack. Only half of the eight man tent was up. The side with the door. In Toronto before heading west, he’d searched out a tailor down off of Spadina, in a basement shop, willing to put a new zipper on that door. He’d had to try many a shop before finding someone willing to take on his old canvas tent.
His family had inherited it from another family at church whose camping days were over. They’d used it on the great Canadian family car trek west and east in summers of his childhood. Amos had invested a hundred bucks into that new zippered door. The tent must have weighed close to a hundred pounds – with the steel poles for sure. Half the tent still gave him a 6’ by 8’ apartment. He could stand up at the centre poles and even the low side stood four feet tall where three poles held the corners and centre between two good sized screen windows with canvas flaps tied down against the wind.
He’d cook up a soup with noodles, or a pot of chili with crusty bread on the Coleman. Yes, he knew that running a Coleman stove inside was dangerous. But he’d keep the flaps open while cooking to draft the fumes. He’d read by lantern, spooning down his dinner along with Friedrich Nietzsche into the night’s fall. Even though he’d met his Lord, his friend Jesus, he wasn’t drawn to the scriptures.
The experience of Christ was still fresh with him. he was still living it – tasting it – savouring it anew with signs and signals in his every day that he wasn’t walking alone. A lyric from a song would strike him with meaning – a message lifted to his attention – to encourage. He’d notice and give thanks. A snatch of conversation in his cab – an encounter with a stranger was an angel’s lift or a devil’s test. An old alc-y could speak truth with a steady gaze piercing through the booze, A young lady’s subtle lie could twist him into seduction til he saw it for a cheap trick and could laugh it off. Sunlight breaking through the clouds and shining on his path across the Vancouver bridges wasn’t just nice scenery. It was his Maker letting him know he was on his way. He was noticing. Awake. Alive to the mystery present in every subtle and simple flow of moments strung together like pearls.
He didn’t want to spoil it – turn it into an academic exercise by reading about it. His days were holy scripture. The tent that had held his childhood family of five was now a lonely cocoon that he filled with great thoughts and questions of fate and future quests. How would he best serve his Lord? It had replaced the question “How would he make a living?” Now, instead of making the world work for him, he only wanted to work for the world’s hope.
Before climbing under the covers he’d strip down naked and go out into the frigid night for a pee. Lowering his skin’s temperature after stoking his stomach’s furnace was part of the winter camping strategy he’d picked up from library books. Diving in under the cold blankets, he’d wait for his body to warm their surfaces and begin holding it close to him. He was the heater. He was the source of the night’s comfort. He was the keeper of the fire that burned within – a sacred fire that required careful tending.
The next couple of days, he’d ski – systematically trying all the different hills those mountains offered – returning to the one’s that had beat him last time until he found his “line” to follow. He’d take a run for pure pleasure. Then he’d take on a hill beyond his skill level. Laughing, swearing, crashing, tumbling, collecting himself and his gear to begin again. He was competing against only his own sense of limitations and fears. He’d try to talk himself out of taking on that hill again. But, a courage kindled a confidence that gently led him back to the top of that hill – fear and fury stirring in his guts til he plunged down into the run letting out a wild war cry whoop – crazy for the thrill of finding a way down just beyond the edge of being in control. Tasting the place where body, mind and spirit synched with snow, slope and speed.
There was no one to pat him on the back if he did it. No one to notice the accomplishment. No one to prove a thing to. Just the man in the mirror. And the man unseen just behind – with his steady hand on Amos’ shoulder. Amos could see his grin in the snow blowing off the trees. Could feel his presence in the birds he shared his lunch with in a quiet snowy sunny spot away from the slopes.
The next week, he’d be up there again. Weekdays the line ups were thinner – and so were the cab customers – so he’d ski and ski. The evenings in the tent got lonely sometimes so he’d try out the Chalet scene. But he had no heart for it and the expensive drinks would cut into his skiing budget. He sought the company of people less and less and learned to enjoy the solitude of the green canvas walls, starlit sky, and blanket’s nest.
When Amos found that he could manage any and all of the hills to his satisfaction – dancing down even the most difficult in a style all his own - he knew it was time to test himself on whatever else the Rockies had to offer. This winter was his one chance to ski the Rockies. It wasn’t likely he would ever be rich enough to spend winter vacations skiing Rocky Mountain Resorts. He knew he wasn’t cool enough, or maybe care-free enough, to become a permanent fixture among the Mountain denizens.
Amos didn’t yet know what he would do, or where he would end up, but he knew that now was his chance to ski the Rockies – and he went after it with a puritan work ethic.
He found that he was getting settled in to life in Vancouver. He was beginning to actually know his way around the streets in his cab. Taking people where they wanted to go without asking them for directions or resorting to the map book, gave him a sense of propriety over the place. Almost like he belonged there.
Amos had a circle of friends now too; a girlfriend, and a soul brother in Danny who had given him much to carry and the muscle to carry it with. He could see that it would be easy to settle in and let some roots start growing in this fertile rainforest coast.
But it would be a transplant. He was an eastern species. His quest for meaning and purpose – the meaning and purpose for his life – wasn’t going to be found in the laid-back comforts of a Vancouver lifestyle. The new identity he was fashioning here wasn’t as important as the new sense of himself in his old shoes. The demons that chased him out here had been put in their places. He’d faced them and found he could walk strong among them without losing his way to their fearful diversions and distractions.
Besides, Vancouver was just too beautiful. It still seemed surreal to Amos. He felt that his fate lay somewhere in the cold, uptight, city streets of Toronto. They seemed more real and urgent and potent with trials waiting around the next corner. Toronto called him back to its centre like an electron back from the edge of its arc.
Goodbyes were always awkward for Amos. He felt like they were a test of friendship – how sincere, or insincere, would the pledges of staying in touch be? Let’s just say “so long” and leave it at that. He hated expectations of social ties he knew he’d lug around and never untie again. He was touched by sincere efforts to convince him to stay. But, his friend’s love was proven by their unselfish best wishes for him. They listened to him try to explain what was in his guts. They couldn’t understand it because Amos couldn’t either - really. It was just time to head home.
So, with as few promises as he thought he might keep, and some sincere words of thanks, with new rubber on his wheels (a deal from his new friend at the cab company’s garage), he left – heading east. It was a Sunday morning that he left Vancouver. On his way out of town he got the idea to stop at the skid row church in the East End that he'd been curious about but never yet visited. It was mid morning and he figured he’d have time to make the service.
It stood right on the southeast corner of Hastings and Main. The main crossroads of the downtown eastside. It was where the guys he’d pick up from Detox would want to be dropped. Where hookers and pushers and all kinds of folk footloose and free from society’s claims would cross paths. Amos was curious what kind of a church service he might find in the midst of such waters. He’d written a poem about Jesus in the alleys, helping junkies with their needles. He wondered if that kind of Jesus might be hanging out in there.
The service was in progress. He’d turned around on the sidewalk about three times between the car and the front door. Thinking it was dumb and a waste of time and what was he doing this for? Inside the front door he found an old man in an dark old suit. He put a bulletin into Amos' left hand and shook the other and left him to find his way into the sanctuary.
It was a large wide space. Two aisles ran between three rows and columns of pews up to a raised platform with oak railing and an empty choir loft. Silent brass organ pipes were the backdrop within a nave the size of whale's mouth. Over the nave was enscripted a banner that read “All ye who are weary, Come and I will give you rest.” The speaker who was introducing the next hymn stood - not up on the platform hidden behind the oak pulpit – but instead down on floor level, to one side, exposed behind a simple pine podium – a bookstand really with a single post to the floor. A piano accompanied the two dozen singers spread in bunches throughout the mostly empty pews.
The speaker had on a suitjacket and no tie. He looked like an ordinary young man of the cloth. No wild eyed street preacher. Not even a beard. Just a guy you might find working in an office downtown. He had a regular kind of voice. He gave a regular kind of message to a regular kind of Sunday morning crowd. There were no streetpeople in the pews. Amos was kind of disappointed by that. But not surprised when he thought about it. Sunday morning was for the good people.
There was an offering and Amos putting five twenties on the plate feeling large about it - making a thanks offering for what that city had given him. The closing hymn was all about moving on.
“I feel the winds of God today. Today my sail I lift.” In the last verse he discovered why he was there that morning. It spoke the vow he didn’t know was in him until he sang it.
If ever I forget your love
and how that love was shown,
lift high the blood-red flag above;
it bears your name alone.
Great pilot of my onward way,
you will not let me drift.
I feel the winds of God today;
today my sail I lift.
He lingered after the service. Said good morning to a few of the other worshippers. No one seemed much interested in him. All kinds of young guys must drift through there Sunday mornings he figured. Getting too friendly with them could cost you a five or a ten to send them on their way. He thought there might be an angel among them he was supposed to meet. But on his way out he realized he’d already been given the message he was looking for. So he lifted his sail and headed east mountain by mountain.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Stop Making Sense
John, Zachariah’s son, out in the desert at the time, received a message from God. He went all through the country around the Jordan River preaching a baptism of life-change leading to forgiveness of sins,
“The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
Luke 3 from “The Message”
He woke up on his back but couldn’t see. Aware of ten thousand conversations all happening at once, his ears took him out to the edges of the auditorium. Then the circle became very small. Amos was aware of a circle of people standing just above him although he couldn't see them.
Slowly, it dawned on him that he was lying on the ground – waking from a dream – or was it a dream? If it was a dream, it was one of those where you try to open your eyes but can’t. He blinked his eyes but there was only blackness – only sound was reaching him. In his ear someone was asking, in a voice heightened with concern, “Are you alright man?”
He didn’t recognize the voice. “Yeah, its okay – I’m epileptic” he instinctively lied like a rug
“Get me outa here will ya?”
The Voice helped him to his feet and took his arm and they began pushing through the crowd of Talking Heads fans. It was the 1983 Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” Tour at the Vancouver Civic Auditorium. He sensed - because his eyes still weren’t working, that they were passing through a doorway and out into the halls. The dull roar of auditorium conversations dropped now into a more intense, flatter hallway babble. They kept walking. The Voice gave quick curt explanations “It’s okay – I’m just taking him back here.”
The babble stopped suddenly as they pushed through another door and into the empty echo of what Amos guessed was a washroom. The Voice put Amos’ hands on the cold porcelain of a sink.
“You okay?”
“Thanks, just give me a minute will ya?”
“I’m going to call an ambulance. I’ll be right back.”
Amos bowed his head over the sink. This was it. The edge. He was at the edge of totally losing it. They were gonna take him away; lock him up, medicate him – he could feel the spiral’s centrifugal force, sucking him down into a vortex that would take just way too much effort to escape. He’d been dancing around its edges for months and suddenly now he was in a state of vertigo on the tipping point.
“Its decision time Amos Brown” he told himself. He felt the sweat turning cold on his scalp. “Either you pull it together and get back in the groove, or they’re gonna take you away and lock you up.” His hands fumbled for the taps and he lifted water to his face. The cold splash was like waking up – like suddenly remembering from a deep dislocated dream where you are and who you are – still freaked a bit by the forgetting.
Raising his head, Amos saw a ghost in the mirror. A pale, scary, stupid expression stared back at him. “This is no time to fuck around man” he told the ghost “get your shit together – now!”
It was the first mirror he’d looked into in months. Amos Brown was so desperately trying to figure out who he was that he hadn’t wanted to get distracted by any superficial glassy impressions. He didn’t trust himself not to project some internal fantasies onto his own reflection. He’d devoted his twenty-third year on the planet to finally figuring out what was what with Amos Brown. Done with following a crowd, done with the influences of friends and families, he was doing only what he thought was worth doing. That is - without much money.
Now, his path had taken him to the edge of a dangerous madness. It would be so easy to just let it slip and let someone else take care of things. No one expects much of a crazy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
He’d been surprised that his conversion – his “religious experience” out on the tidal flats after Christmas – hadn’t really changed him much. He still had the same array of silly and sincere thoughts each day. He had the same hungers and wants and fantasies and worries. He was in the same skin. So what had changed?
He had a direction. Did he? Well, no not really. He still didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to be doing with his life. He kept doing shifts, driving the cab to pay the rent. He spent his Christmas tip cash skiing at Whistler mid week to avoid the crowds. Working on his carves kept his mind occupied. But on the long chairlifts back up again he’d wonder.
It wasn’t that he had a direction. It was that he had a guide. He’d met the one who knew him better than he would ever know himself. So, he concluded, why not let go of the wheel and ride the bus instead? There was a great sense of relief in that. And there was an incredible sense of excitement. Like there was an incredible adventure ahead. More than he could cook up for himself. Serving this Master would mean a ride beyond the boundaries he’d always try to hide behind. Amos Brown could cook up some fun adventures. But Jesus the Christ could take him places he’d never think up on his own.
It wasn’t that he had suddenly become a nice guy. He was still self consumed and petty. But now he knew that it was all about giving. Whatever he had in him - it was put there to give. He'd been trying to get somewhere with it, trying to figure out what he could trade it for. Now, because he'd met a friend who was there for him unconditionally, he would do the same. He was trying to look at his choices with another set of eyes.
He was still judging the characters that jumped into the back of his cab from his Scarboro point of view. But now, when he would think to take a second look, he could see what he hadn’t seen before. It was like he could see beneath a layer or two on the surface – like he got glimpses of the heart inside. Sometimes he saw a child in the hooker’s smile. Sometimes he saw fear in the guy who was being a prick. He saw how lonely the braggart was. He saw how sad the laughing party gang was.
He still was having trouble seeing where he fit in to the picture. His ideas about being an author were still buzzing around his ears like house flies. But more and more they were losing their potency as a pull forward.
When he tried to tell his Vancouver friends about his experience the words and phrases fell flat on the ground between them. They sounded cliche. His friends would look at each other and raise their eyebrows - and he didn't blame them. Instinctively he knew that what he was trying to explain couldn't be told except with action.
His sister called him one day to say she'd be arriving the next. He picked her up at the airport. Andrea was two years younger than Amos. If Amos had been his older brother's first accomplice, Andrea was Amos' first confidante. The first female, besides his mom, who he’d loved to spend time with. They’d shared innocent hours playing – lost in imagination’s mansion where endless doors could be opened for children to explore – scenarios, dramas, adventures, pushing their tiny experiences into larger than life dramas overheard from adults or soaked up from bedtime stories, or – who knows where that idea came from?
He had fun showing her around Vancouver, telling her stories about his cabbie adventures and the strange people and places they’d go. Andrea had always looked up to him and she was full of questions about what he was doing out there?
She met Danny and he was charming and sweet. Amos told her about his experience with Christ and what he thought it was about. He didn’t know how – but he knew he just wanted to serve.
Andrea immediately assumed that meant he wanted to be a Minister. Amos told her he’d thought of that – it was the family business after all. But it didn’t seem quite right. Serving in a church seemed so limited to him. So ordinary and normal – not the adventure he thought Jesus was getting him into.
She spent four days with him. They walked the cool grey January beaches. She'd knitted him a huge grey wool sweater. Took her all fall she said. It really was huge – even on him. She explained that she’d had to guess his size from memory – hoping it would be big enough. He really was larger than life in her eyes. He liked that. The sleeves had to be rolled up and it came down halfway to his knees. It had a zipper all the way up front and a big wide collar that sat around his ears. He loved it. When she left he wore it every day. It was like wearing a hug. Better protection even than the shield of a leather jacket.
It made him realize that no one loved him like his family. While he was seeking freedom from their too large expectations and to small judgments they’d impose on him, there were also strong chords of connection there that he could never totally severe – even if he wanted to. Could he be who he was while living in the box they’d provided? Their province, their lifestyle choices, their safe and sacred church. He was afraid he might lose the ground he’d gained out here if he slipped back into the mold waiting for him.
Amos and Danny and their pals had been looking forward to the concert since before Christmas. On the big day, they gathered at his place and got tuned up smoking dope and drinking Jack Daniels. They were ready to let loose and have some fun with some heart pounding music they all loved. David Byrnes’ lyrics crossed the border from Rock’s cynical anger to a new place – hints of a spirit place to dance from in the midst of modern madness. The "Speaking in Tongues" album invoked the wild rhythm of a world beat and a world soul moving beyond, or maybe beneath, the box of religion and respectability. They’d listened to the album a thousand times and knew most of the lyrics – discussed where Byrne was coming from. Was he suggesting a new spirituality? Hard to unravel from between his strange art school poetry and quirky images of insanity and fun.
David Byrne was acting out his life on stage. He was dramatizing Amos’ internal confusion and lack of identity. He was singing about madness and losing touch with what matters in the messy world of the silly and superficial. He was cutting Amos to the bone with surgical precision and making a joke of his ego's holy quest.
There, in a crowd of thousands of people, Amos was exposed as the sniveling, weak and worthless human being he really was. All charades were over. He was being portrayed on the stage for the amusement and mockery of all.
"Watch out you might get what you're after
Cool baby strange - but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house
People on their way to work say
baby what did you expect
Gonna burst into flame
My house S'out of the ordinary
That's right Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house"
Suddenly the music stopped and the house lights went up. Exposed to the glaring stares of everyone around him, he began to leave, walking from the front near the stage down an aisle past rows of seated people. Every face he looked at was a face from his past. Some one who’d tested him, teased him, scarred or stabbed him. Aisle after aisle, he’d find in each row an enemy, a foe, a friend that’d betrayed his trust and was now mocking him. He’d quickly avoid that stare only to be confronted by another and another of those who had judged him and seen only what they didn’t like. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, schoolteachers, that nasty Sunday school teacher he was sure he’d forgotten – but there she was. The floor was on fire. He quickened his pace keeping his gaze to the floor but the fire was kindled brighter by his haste. It enveloped him. He knew what was happening. The hero of his story was being tested in the furnace. The dross and ugly parts of his soul were ignited by shame and self hate and his psyche was being steeled by a consuming fire. All impurities were being burned and, if he survived, he would be a new creation. He passed out at the end of the aisle and hit the floor like a felled tree.
Looking in the mirror now, sight returned, he straightened. He saw something he hadn't seen before. Out in the auditorium he'd seen himself through the eyes of those who'd found him wanting. Now the Lord gave him new eyes. He saw in his own eyes the light of Christ. He saw how all his imperfections were but fuel for that fire burning bright within.
In that moment he knew that the one he called friend and Master would use whatever Amos offered to acheive the redemption of the world. It was a battle worthy of the best Amos could offer. It was won already. Not because of strength and skill but because of an eternal weapon that was unquenchable. Love without measure, without bounds, beyond judgment and fear, untouchable and intimate. It was so impossible that it put a smile on Amos' face. It might have been Christ's eyes that were looking but that smile was all Amos. He turned away from the sink and headed for the door.
A young man came in and said “Hey where’re you goin? The ambulance is here.”
He recognized the Voice as his guide through the darkness. He didn’t look at him - just said "Thanks for your help man" and kept walking. The ambulance attendants almost crashed into him as swung through the washroom door and strode out into the hall.
A small group who must’ve watched him being led like an invalid into the washroom - and were waiting to see him carted off - were startled like geese to see this large smiling man striding right through them back towards the auditorium brushing helping hands aside.
As if on cue, as he entered the arena, the lights dimmed and the band started playing. He slowed his strides as the crowd closed between him and the stage. But he never stopped - he began gently bumping into concert goers as if they were flotsam in his path. They’d turn indignantly and then, looking into his face, would step aside.
“My eyes must still be on fire” Amos thought – enjoying the startled reactions. When he was close to the stage, he found his spot and began to dance. The show that had mocked his weaknesses now celebrated his strengths and fed his courage.
"Whatabout the time?
You were rollin’ over
Fall on your face
You must be having fun
Walk lightly!
Think of a time.
You’d best believe
This thing is real
What’s the matter with him? (asked Byrne)
He’s alright! (the chorus girls sang)
I see his face
The lord won’t mind (they assured)
Don’t play no games
He’s alright (no doubt)
Love from the bottom to the top
Turn like a wheel
He’s alright
See for yourself
The lord won’t mind
We’re gonna move
Right now
Turn like a wheel inside a wheel
Tina Weymouth, the hot bass player noticed him and they began dancing. The ten yards between them didn’t seem to matter. Their eyes locked and their smiles played back and forth. Amos saw David Byrne glance over at Tina between verses. Surprised that her gaze was fixed and not returning his look, Byrne traced it across the crowd to Amos. Amos grinned wide at him - still dancing. And the spell was broken.
He had nothing left to prove. Amos left the front as the next song started - hardly believing what had just happened (no one else ever believed that story either). From the very front, he now made his way to the very back of the auditorium. At the top of the stairs - where the seats met the roof, he sat and wondered about what had just happened to him. His metal had been tested – tested and purified somehow.
Of course his mind had just gotten overloaded with whiskey and weed and his body had thrown a reset switch. Sure, that was true. But in his imagination – a place as real to Amos as the concrete steps he sat on – he’d passed through hell’s doors and could no longer be scared by his own shadow. He was bigger and stronger than any box he’d grown up in. He’d pulled the sword from the stone, slaughtered the dragon, found the key, the treasure was his to take home and share.
[Letter from Thomas Merton to Czeslaw Milosz, Feb, 1959] Milosz, life is on our side. The silence and the Cross are forces that cannot be defeated. In silence and suffering, in the heartbreaking effort to be honest in the midst of dishonesty (most of all our own dishonesty), in all these is victory. It is Christ in us who drives us through darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair. Everything has to be tested. All relationships must be tried. All loyalties have to pass through fire. Much has to be lost. Much in us has to be killed, even much that is best in us. But Victory is certain.
Thomas Merton. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers, Christine M. Bochen, editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993): 57-58.
“The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
Luke 3 from “The Message”
He woke up on his back but couldn’t see. Aware of ten thousand conversations all happening at once, his ears took him out to the edges of the auditorium. Then the circle became very small. Amos was aware of a circle of people standing just above him although he couldn't see them.
Slowly, it dawned on him that he was lying on the ground – waking from a dream – or was it a dream? If it was a dream, it was one of those where you try to open your eyes but can’t. He blinked his eyes but there was only blackness – only sound was reaching him. In his ear someone was asking, in a voice heightened with concern, “Are you alright man?”
He didn’t recognize the voice. “Yeah, its okay – I’m epileptic” he instinctively lied like a rug
“Get me outa here will ya?”
The Voice helped him to his feet and took his arm and they began pushing through the crowd of Talking Heads fans. It was the 1983 Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” Tour at the Vancouver Civic Auditorium. He sensed - because his eyes still weren’t working, that they were passing through a doorway and out into the halls. The dull roar of auditorium conversations dropped now into a more intense, flatter hallway babble. They kept walking. The Voice gave quick curt explanations “It’s okay – I’m just taking him back here.”
The babble stopped suddenly as they pushed through another door and into the empty echo of what Amos guessed was a washroom. The Voice put Amos’ hands on the cold porcelain of a sink.
“You okay?”
“Thanks, just give me a minute will ya?”
“I’m going to call an ambulance. I’ll be right back.”
Amos bowed his head over the sink. This was it. The edge. He was at the edge of totally losing it. They were gonna take him away; lock him up, medicate him – he could feel the spiral’s centrifugal force, sucking him down into a vortex that would take just way too much effort to escape. He’d been dancing around its edges for months and suddenly now he was in a state of vertigo on the tipping point.
“Its decision time Amos Brown” he told himself. He felt the sweat turning cold on his scalp. “Either you pull it together and get back in the groove, or they’re gonna take you away and lock you up.” His hands fumbled for the taps and he lifted water to his face. The cold splash was like waking up – like suddenly remembering from a deep dislocated dream where you are and who you are – still freaked a bit by the forgetting.
Raising his head, Amos saw a ghost in the mirror. A pale, scary, stupid expression stared back at him. “This is no time to fuck around man” he told the ghost “get your shit together – now!”
It was the first mirror he’d looked into in months. Amos Brown was so desperately trying to figure out who he was that he hadn’t wanted to get distracted by any superficial glassy impressions. He didn’t trust himself not to project some internal fantasies onto his own reflection. He’d devoted his twenty-third year on the planet to finally figuring out what was what with Amos Brown. Done with following a crowd, done with the influences of friends and families, he was doing only what he thought was worth doing. That is - without much money.
Now, his path had taken him to the edge of a dangerous madness. It would be so easy to just let it slip and let someone else take care of things. No one expects much of a crazy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
He’d been surprised that his conversion – his “religious experience” out on the tidal flats after Christmas – hadn’t really changed him much. He still had the same array of silly and sincere thoughts each day. He had the same hungers and wants and fantasies and worries. He was in the same skin. So what had changed?
He had a direction. Did he? Well, no not really. He still didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to be doing with his life. He kept doing shifts, driving the cab to pay the rent. He spent his Christmas tip cash skiing at Whistler mid week to avoid the crowds. Working on his carves kept his mind occupied. But on the long chairlifts back up again he’d wonder.
It wasn’t that he had a direction. It was that he had a guide. He’d met the one who knew him better than he would ever know himself. So, he concluded, why not let go of the wheel and ride the bus instead? There was a great sense of relief in that. And there was an incredible sense of excitement. Like there was an incredible adventure ahead. More than he could cook up for himself. Serving this Master would mean a ride beyond the boundaries he’d always try to hide behind. Amos Brown could cook up some fun adventures. But Jesus the Christ could take him places he’d never think up on his own.
It wasn’t that he had suddenly become a nice guy. He was still self consumed and petty. But now he knew that it was all about giving. Whatever he had in him - it was put there to give. He'd been trying to get somewhere with it, trying to figure out what he could trade it for. Now, because he'd met a friend who was there for him unconditionally, he would do the same. He was trying to look at his choices with another set of eyes.
He was still judging the characters that jumped into the back of his cab from his Scarboro point of view. But now, when he would think to take a second look, he could see what he hadn’t seen before. It was like he could see beneath a layer or two on the surface – like he got glimpses of the heart inside. Sometimes he saw a child in the hooker’s smile. Sometimes he saw fear in the guy who was being a prick. He saw how lonely the braggart was. He saw how sad the laughing party gang was.
He still was having trouble seeing where he fit in to the picture. His ideas about being an author were still buzzing around his ears like house flies. But more and more they were losing their potency as a pull forward.
When he tried to tell his Vancouver friends about his experience the words and phrases fell flat on the ground between them. They sounded cliche. His friends would look at each other and raise their eyebrows - and he didn't blame them. Instinctively he knew that what he was trying to explain couldn't be told except with action.
His sister called him one day to say she'd be arriving the next. He picked her up at the airport. Andrea was two years younger than Amos. If Amos had been his older brother's first accomplice, Andrea was Amos' first confidante. The first female, besides his mom, who he’d loved to spend time with. They’d shared innocent hours playing – lost in imagination’s mansion where endless doors could be opened for children to explore – scenarios, dramas, adventures, pushing their tiny experiences into larger than life dramas overheard from adults or soaked up from bedtime stories, or – who knows where that idea came from?
He had fun showing her around Vancouver, telling her stories about his cabbie adventures and the strange people and places they’d go. Andrea had always looked up to him and she was full of questions about what he was doing out there?
She met Danny and he was charming and sweet. Amos told her about his experience with Christ and what he thought it was about. He didn’t know how – but he knew he just wanted to serve.
Andrea immediately assumed that meant he wanted to be a Minister. Amos told her he’d thought of that – it was the family business after all. But it didn’t seem quite right. Serving in a church seemed so limited to him. So ordinary and normal – not the adventure he thought Jesus was getting him into.
She spent four days with him. They walked the cool grey January beaches. She'd knitted him a huge grey wool sweater. Took her all fall she said. It really was huge – even on him. She explained that she’d had to guess his size from memory – hoping it would be big enough. He really was larger than life in her eyes. He liked that. The sleeves had to be rolled up and it came down halfway to his knees. It had a zipper all the way up front and a big wide collar that sat around his ears. He loved it. When she left he wore it every day. It was like wearing a hug. Better protection even than the shield of a leather jacket.
It made him realize that no one loved him like his family. While he was seeking freedom from their too large expectations and to small judgments they’d impose on him, there were also strong chords of connection there that he could never totally severe – even if he wanted to. Could he be who he was while living in the box they’d provided? Their province, their lifestyle choices, their safe and sacred church. He was afraid he might lose the ground he’d gained out here if he slipped back into the mold waiting for him.
Amos and Danny and their pals had been looking forward to the concert since before Christmas. On the big day, they gathered at his place and got tuned up smoking dope and drinking Jack Daniels. They were ready to let loose and have some fun with some heart pounding music they all loved. David Byrnes’ lyrics crossed the border from Rock’s cynical anger to a new place – hints of a spirit place to dance from in the midst of modern madness. The "Speaking in Tongues" album invoked the wild rhythm of a world beat and a world soul moving beyond, or maybe beneath, the box of religion and respectability. They’d listened to the album a thousand times and knew most of the lyrics – discussed where Byrne was coming from. Was he suggesting a new spirituality? Hard to unravel from between his strange art school poetry and quirky images of insanity and fun.
David Byrne was acting out his life on stage. He was dramatizing Amos’ internal confusion and lack of identity. He was singing about madness and losing touch with what matters in the messy world of the silly and superficial. He was cutting Amos to the bone with surgical precision and making a joke of his ego's holy quest.
There, in a crowd of thousands of people, Amos was exposed as the sniveling, weak and worthless human being he really was. All charades were over. He was being portrayed on the stage for the amusement and mockery of all.
"Watch out you might get what you're after
Cool baby strange - but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house
People on their way to work say
baby what did you expect
Gonna burst into flame
My house S'out of the ordinary
That's right Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house"
Suddenly the music stopped and the house lights went up. Exposed to the glaring stares of everyone around him, he began to leave, walking from the front near the stage down an aisle past rows of seated people. Every face he looked at was a face from his past. Some one who’d tested him, teased him, scarred or stabbed him. Aisle after aisle, he’d find in each row an enemy, a foe, a friend that’d betrayed his trust and was now mocking him. He’d quickly avoid that stare only to be confronted by another and another of those who had judged him and seen only what they didn’t like. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, schoolteachers, that nasty Sunday school teacher he was sure he’d forgotten – but there she was. The floor was on fire. He quickened his pace keeping his gaze to the floor but the fire was kindled brighter by his haste. It enveloped him. He knew what was happening. The hero of his story was being tested in the furnace. The dross and ugly parts of his soul were ignited by shame and self hate and his psyche was being steeled by a consuming fire. All impurities were being burned and, if he survived, he would be a new creation. He passed out at the end of the aisle and hit the floor like a felled tree.
Looking in the mirror now, sight returned, he straightened. He saw something he hadn't seen before. Out in the auditorium he'd seen himself through the eyes of those who'd found him wanting. Now the Lord gave him new eyes. He saw in his own eyes the light of Christ. He saw how all his imperfections were but fuel for that fire burning bright within.
In that moment he knew that the one he called friend and Master would use whatever Amos offered to acheive the redemption of the world. It was a battle worthy of the best Amos could offer. It was won already. Not because of strength and skill but because of an eternal weapon that was unquenchable. Love without measure, without bounds, beyond judgment and fear, untouchable and intimate. It was so impossible that it put a smile on Amos' face. It might have been Christ's eyes that were looking but that smile was all Amos. He turned away from the sink and headed for the door.
A young man came in and said “Hey where’re you goin? The ambulance is here.”
He recognized the Voice as his guide through the darkness. He didn’t look at him - just said "Thanks for your help man" and kept walking. The ambulance attendants almost crashed into him as swung through the washroom door and strode out into the hall.
A small group who must’ve watched him being led like an invalid into the washroom - and were waiting to see him carted off - were startled like geese to see this large smiling man striding right through them back towards the auditorium brushing helping hands aside.
As if on cue, as he entered the arena, the lights dimmed and the band started playing. He slowed his strides as the crowd closed between him and the stage. But he never stopped - he began gently bumping into concert goers as if they were flotsam in his path. They’d turn indignantly and then, looking into his face, would step aside.
“My eyes must still be on fire” Amos thought – enjoying the startled reactions. When he was close to the stage, he found his spot and began to dance. The show that had mocked his weaknesses now celebrated his strengths and fed his courage.
"Whatabout the time?
You were rollin’ over
Fall on your face
You must be having fun
Walk lightly!
Think of a time.
You’d best believe
This thing is real
What’s the matter with him? (asked Byrne)
He’s alright! (the chorus girls sang)
I see his face
The lord won’t mind (they assured)
Don’t play no games
He’s alright (no doubt)
Love from the bottom to the top
Turn like a wheel
He’s alright
See for yourself
The lord won’t mind
We’re gonna move
Right now
Turn like a wheel inside a wheel
Tina Weymouth, the hot bass player noticed him and they began dancing. The ten yards between them didn’t seem to matter. Their eyes locked and their smiles played back and forth. Amos saw David Byrne glance over at Tina between verses. Surprised that her gaze was fixed and not returning his look, Byrne traced it across the crowd to Amos. Amos grinned wide at him - still dancing. And the spell was broken.
He had nothing left to prove. Amos left the front as the next song started - hardly believing what had just happened (no one else ever believed that story either). From the very front, he now made his way to the very back of the auditorium. At the top of the stairs - where the seats met the roof, he sat and wondered about what had just happened to him. His metal had been tested – tested and purified somehow.
Of course his mind had just gotten overloaded with whiskey and weed and his body had thrown a reset switch. Sure, that was true. But in his imagination – a place as real to Amos as the concrete steps he sat on – he’d passed through hell’s doors and could no longer be scared by his own shadow. He was bigger and stronger than any box he’d grown up in. He’d pulled the sword from the stone, slaughtered the dragon, found the key, the treasure was his to take home and share.
[Letter from Thomas Merton to Czeslaw Milosz, Feb, 1959] Milosz, life is on our side. The silence and the Cross are forces that cannot be defeated. In silence and suffering, in the heartbreaking effort to be honest in the midst of dishonesty (most of all our own dishonesty), in all these is victory. It is Christ in us who drives us through darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair. Everything has to be tested. All relationships must be tried. All loyalties have to pass through fire. Much has to be lost. Much in us has to be killed, even much that is best in us. But Victory is certain.
Thomas Merton. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers, Christine M. Bochen, editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993): 57-58.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Crisis and The Christ
It seemed like everything was coming apart at the seams again. Like a baseball losing its cover. Amos was like a tire that’s lost its tread - slippery on a wet road. He’d thought that he could see, but all he saw was how blind he was. His plans to recreate himself on the coast were tripped up by his self same old ways. He was tumbling down the mountain side and hitting every rock and hard place on the way down; every soul he’d ever hurt, every selfish turn he’d taken was painfully clear and bruising him all over again.
Trying to slow the fall was as difficult as escaping a schoolyard circle of scorn. Once the circle is formed and the target identified, the anger of the crowd is a contagious fever that infects every child. Whatever the accusation, how it started, and whether it’s true, becomes unimportant. Once a self-righteous momentum of condemnation has begun, the smell of blood pulls back the screen of adult civility and a vein where shame and anger run is opened. Friends and allies are swept up in the blood sport and as you turn, looking for support, their scorn pierces the skin and hits bone deep. The flesh of trust is rent open and self love, love of the other, love of life bleeds out.
But Amos had left all that behind. Out here on the coast he’d cast off the effects of a fearful past, claimed a fresh start – wounds healed - and vowed to reinvent himself. So why was he still haunted by this circle of demons? It was as if all his minor faults and insecurities had got together and conspired to tear him down. Every time he tried to build himself up with memories of accomplishments, they’d turn sour on him. He’d see that what he was trying to take pride in was really just another selfish grabbing for ego-glory. The good that he’d done was really only all about Amos proving once again what a good boy he was. It was all an act.
Where was the backbone? What held his skeleton together? What mattered so deeply to Amos that without it – he’d puddle like jello in his bed – his muscle and will only resulting in a jiggle.
When he’d try to go to his comfort places of imagination, He found a self-absorbed little boy whimpering and complaining in the midst of comfort and wealth. His enemy was stabbing at his newly exposed flesh and he knew that the knives were of his own design – forged in the bowels of deep mountain memories.
You might say that Amos was feeling a little depressed. The Christmas season had descended like a low cloud over Vancouver. As the year’s days were running out, so it seemed, was his sense of humour. This was not a new thing for Amos. Christmas wasn’t spoiled when he found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. (That was a relief. Knowing that it was only his parents judging whether he’d been good enough for gifts instead of some fat fairy elf made it an even game again. There were only four eyes between them and, if his siblings didn’t turn him in, he could keep his best side facing them most days.) No, his loss of Christmas innocence was more like an unrequested exchange for pubic hair.
It was early December and he’d been flipping through a Life magazine’s review of the year 1972. Along with the heroes of industry and politics and culture, there , in full colour, were the horrors of the year. The pages stopped flipping at a full page colour photo of a Viet Cong soldier holding two severed heads like dead chickens at his side. The heads - upon closer examination - were not American soldiers – that would seem like a horrible, bloodythirsty revenge – ugly but somehow rational. No, the heads were clearly Vietnamese. To Amos that was just crazed. It was an evil hatred turned in upon itself. To hate one’s enemy was a dark and ugly human trait. But to hate one’s self – one’s kin - was a black despair driven from a place even darker than the human soul.
If anyone had asked that twelve year old boy how the photo had affected him, Amos couldn’t have put it into words. But it went deep. It struck a chord in him that had never been struck before. It drummed a last vestige of childhood out of him and a shadow entered where an innocence had dwelt.
He was stung by the false hopes of a Christmas that celebrated “goodwill to all men”. Faced with the stark evil truth of war - naked without a Hollywood good guys/bad guys story – hope for the triumph of the good guys - hope for the redemption of the bad guys - slipped through his grasp like water in cupped hands. He lost a faith in human beings that he didn’t even know he had. He’d taken it for granted that good and bad were different worlds and not two sides of the same street. The bright lights of Christmas now only accentuated just how dark the human soul could be.
For the first time in his life, he wept tears that were not for himself. Those first tears of compassion were for the misery of his brothers and sisters. Sunday school had taught him well that on this small green planet we were all God’s children. The Apollo missions had captured a God’s eye view of our small round home. He’d grown up on the wave of Hippies’ songs of love and peace that were everywhere battling - and overcoming ignorance and fear and war. He’d been to the world Expo ’67 in Montreal and seen with his own eyes how happily all the world’s cultures could come together. He believed. He was a believer.
And then, a single photo had exposed the ugly truth that changed everything. He saw how human beings are their own worst enemy. The photo stayed with him as if he’d clipped it out and carried it around in his wallet.
A Christmas that claimed we were all happy, generous, people was now like eating too much cotton candy before the Wicked Whirlwind ride. Once he’d puked it up - he was off it for life. The sweet smells of Christmas now turned his stomach. Those tears of compassion he’d wept had a few sobs in there for himself too. He cried - knowing it without naming it - for what he’d lost. He was a child no longer.
For the next decade he managed to deal with this unnamed grief over the death of his childhood in a variety of ways. Christmas presents were still welcome. He began the practice of last-minute shopping –delaying the pain as long as possible. He gave presents always fearful that they weren’t good enough because no present he received was ever good enough. It could never fill, or even touch, that dark empty place inside. Nothing out of a box could convince him that he was a “good and deserving” boy.
He now knew the truth. He was a piece of shit just like everyone else. Some were just better at pretending it wasn’t so. It’s only other people’s shit that stinks isn’t it? Christmas – he noticed - really seemed to bring out the bullshit in the culture. Charlie Brown’s sad and unloved Christmas tree came close to naming it. But Amos’ loss went deeper. Cynically pulling the tinsel off of consumer’s spiritual hyprocrisy was fun - but it wasn’t enough. It helped to be “above it all”. But it never took away the shadow left where hope had once lived.
Amos became a fan of whatever could cut through the phony and expose the ugly, or laughable, truth. He was in good company of course. In many ways, Amos was only riding his generation’s wave. From Mad magazines to Monty Python, the Seventies youth culture developed a cynical, mocking sense of humour that slammed into sacred cows at every opportunity. From the Black Panthers to the Sex Pistols cultural tastes turned angry. It was cool to be angry and show it in all kinds of creative, destructive ways.
Self-destruction was Amos’ favourite method. His creativity went into living out a double-life. While maintaining a thick veneer of socially acceptable behaviours (school grades, after school jobs, even volunteer leadership work) he spent the rest of his waking hours destroying brain cells in suburban basements and risking his life in cars tearing around streetlit suburban corners.
After a decade of honing this attitude, Amos had declared himself bored by his cynical self-destruction. It was now time for a change. The power and authority of manhood hung like tools on a basement wall. It was up to him to pick them up and use them to make something of his life. Thing was, as he looked over the parts and pieces of his life, he was dismayed by the raw material he had to work with. It simply wasn’t good enough for what he wanted to do.
The Writer’s pad and pen that he’d been carrying around with him all fall were still empty. The lone artist on a mission, had become the same old party animal in a circle of misfits and funky friends that had gathered like dryer lint in the tumble of days. It was the same old Amos in a new setting.
He had hoped to re-create himself. He saw qualities that he honoured in people all around him. But those qualities seemed beyond his reach. He wanted to find a new way of being. He wanted to shed the old skin and – no not just skin – he was hoping to transform from caterpillar to butterfly. He ached to let his inner writer fly above all the suburban Scarborough mediocrity – especially his own mediocrity - that had suffocated all attempts - but not the desire - for this little worm to soar.
It snowed Christmas day in Vancouver that year. Many Vancouverites were not impressed by their White Christmas. Anyone trying to travel around the city without the aid of snow tires – not to mention skid-control skills – was in for some stress. Amos couldn’t have been more happy with the snow. He’d booked a cab for the day and there were more calls to keep a cabbie busy than cabs to meet the demand. Talk about a kid in a candy store.
The whole day was filled with ferrying merrymakers around the city. While driving was slow going, the generous tips made up for the lost time. It was a good thing that there weren’t too many cars on the road. He slid through more than one stop sign and only narrowly avoided several fender benders with a little gas on the pedal and counter-spin techniques learned in Ontario parking lots. His usually nasty Christmas mood was kept occupied by mostly happy drunks.
He did his share of skid row runs that day too. These were trips to the bootlegger for lonely turkeys trying to kill the day with a quart – lucky if they had friend to share it with. Unless, of course, their friend’s mood was as ugly as the one Amos was nursing.
He put in a shift and a half. By 3 am the calls had finally slowed down to a trickle. Sixteen hours behind the wheel was enough. With a good wad of cash in his jacket pocket, he dropped off the cab and flagged a ride from another cabbie back to his Kitsilano basement. Danny was asleep. Helen was away home for Christmas. He cracked open a beer and put a quiet album on sat on the floor back against the wall beside the stereo.
His parents had mailed out a care package that was still unopened sitting in the corner of his room. He hadn’t opened it partly because he didn’t want to expose himself to Danny’s scorn over his soft and happy family’s past, and partly because he was afraid that the comforts of that family would lull him back to sleep. Amos had gone to great lengths to get his miserable self out here all alone. He was determined to turn his angst into art. Falling back into the arms of his family would spoil his misery for sure.
How does it feelHow does it feelTo be without a homeLike a complete unknownLike a rolling stone?
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss LonelyBut you know you only used to get juiced in itAnd nobody has ever taught you how to live on the streetAnd now you find out you're gonna have to get used to itYou said you'd never compromiseWith the mystery tramp, but now you realizeHe's not selling any alibisAs you stare into the vacuum of his eyesAnd ask him do you want to make a deal?
Bob Dylan
Still, it was Christmas – or no, it wasn’t any more – he’d made it through Christmas without family comforts and now it was Boxing Day. Okay, he thought, time to open the box. He sat on the floor of the basement beside the stereo and opened up the box. The box was filled with smaller packages wrapped up in colourful paper. There was a card with care-full notes written by his Mom and Dad telling him of their love and faith in him.
When he’d finished opening up all the gifts, he sat for a time in the midst of presents and strewn paper and felt – how did he feel? He tried to feel beneath the anger and cynicism – down there – how did he feel?
Just as empty as the boxes lying all around him. Not sad or lonely or miserable – just empty. Amos felt kind of like you feel after a good cry. After the tears - the way your mind goes through all the reasons you’re crying until you run out of reasons, and the tears slow and you blow your nose and then there’s a final big sigh. Amos didn’t know it then, but the tears that had started flowing ten years before - had finally run out.
He decided to go for a walk. This feeling was too real to waste on sleep. He put on his black Kodiak boots and leather jacket – his urban defiance gear - and walked up into the alley and out to the street. The clouds had cleared finally and there was a full moon shining on the snow covered streets. He walked down the few blocks to the little park at the ocean’s edge. The moon over the English Bay harbour drew him like a moth. Without hesitation he jumped the steel fencing that ran along the little cliff’s edge and scrambled his way down onto the beach. The tide was out and the ocean floor was black and shiny like an oil slick.
Amos stumbled along the stony shore beneath the wealthy homes that lined the million dollar view. In most places the ten to twelve foot cliff provided enough protection for these homes. But when he came across a concrete wall built all the way down to the shore, he truly felt like an intruder in this city. He looked across the bay to the city skyline and knew that there was no place for him here. He would always be an outsider to the people who lived behind such walls. The moon put his shadow against that wall and he stood tall to see his height and breadth. The wall could have his shadow - he thought - but it couldn’t have him. He turned his back to it and began to walk out towards the water.
It was a long walk out across the stony tidal flats. With each stony step it slowly began to sink into his head that he had literally reached the bottom. He was out among the very dregs of the city. These stones were like coffee grains at the bottom of the cup. All his travels, all his searching, all his hopes, all his mistakes, all his ego-driven desires had been sucked out to sea by the pull of the moon – the world’s biggest mirror.
He stopped and looked up at that moon. The light it shared was not its own. It had no fire of its own. It was a rock that became a beacon only because it was in the right place at the right time to reflect the one and only light of the world.
That was when he felt the Presence there just behind and beside him. It was like someone was standing there letting him know, without words, that he had a friend. He felt that the Presence knew him inside and out – maybe even better than he knew himself – definitely knew the real him – without the masks and the lies and the bravado. He knew, somehow, that this friend would never judge or fail him. Amos felt this as truly as a bell sounding somewhere deep in his bowels. The Presence knew him inside and out and – and – and loved him as surely as the sun shone. Amos felt as deeply loved as he knew how to love – and more.
And yet, Amos felt - somehow got the feeling - that it was a meeting of friends – that even though he was in the Presence of an amazing, timeless, source of knowing and love – that Source had chosen to be his friend. For Amos, the only adequate response to such a gift – a response from the heart and the guts and not the polite conniving head – was to choose to call the Presence “LORD”.
The moon was dropping down behind the mountains now. It told Amos that the journey wasn’t over. He still didn’t know what was to come or where he was heading but he had found what he was looking for out here.
He had thought he was looking for a new self. Instead, he discovered that he was looking for someone to serve. Only after he’d emptied out all the possibilities that he’d filled his life with, did he find his Lord and Leader there at the bottom of it all.
You find me
and offer…
grace to forgive
to begin again
spirit to guide steps through self-love’s confusion
receiving as mine the power of Your sacrifice
senseless service as the road to
no tomorrow’s
grace to forgive
to begin again…
Jesus had been patiently waiting for him. The Father’s son. God’s chosen one. The only one who really didn’t give a shit what people thought of him, or did to him, but lived for one purpose only – to reflect the light and love of the only power that mattered. The power of life that turned forever – forgetting the day gone by and always welcoming the new beginning so full of growing, changing, creative possibilities….
Amos baptized himself five days later skinning dipping from Wreck Beach on New Year’s Day. Danny was there to laugh and bless his crazy white ass with hoots from the shore. Amos had tried to explain the experience on the tidal flats to Danny in the best words he could find - but knew were failing him. For once, Dan didn’t argue. He just listened and looked at Amos with a tilted head and quiet smile and nodded. His silence acknowledging that Amos had found something worthy.
The gift he’d received was the message that it wasn’t in changing that Amos would find his purpose. What the Christ had taught him with his friendship was that it was only by becoming more of who he already was that Amos would find his path to follow. He’d been given a touchstone experience that he could return to time and again. It reminded him that his choices, his efforts, his mistakes, his life is not really about “Amos”. He was in service to a far greater power than his small sense of well-being. What Amos would do from that day on is try to reflect - in his own moon-rock way - the light of the world.
Mediocre, silly, selfish, lustful, lazy-ass that he was, God could use even a dull rock like him to shed light in a dark world. Creative, imaginative, intelligent, funny - God can mine and refine what’s good in anyone. And anyone can do their small part to add some food to the table in hungry places.
No matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will find a way to return
to the Lord
I was heading for a fall
and I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale
I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again
by the Lord
Van Morrison
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Trying to slow the fall was as difficult as escaping a schoolyard circle of scorn. Once the circle is formed and the target identified, the anger of the crowd is a contagious fever that infects every child. Whatever the accusation, how it started, and whether it’s true, becomes unimportant. Once a self-righteous momentum of condemnation has begun, the smell of blood pulls back the screen of adult civility and a vein where shame and anger run is opened. Friends and allies are swept up in the blood sport and as you turn, looking for support, their scorn pierces the skin and hits bone deep. The flesh of trust is rent open and self love, love of the other, love of life bleeds out.
But Amos had left all that behind. Out here on the coast he’d cast off the effects of a fearful past, claimed a fresh start – wounds healed - and vowed to reinvent himself. So why was he still haunted by this circle of demons? It was as if all his minor faults and insecurities had got together and conspired to tear him down. Every time he tried to build himself up with memories of accomplishments, they’d turn sour on him. He’d see that what he was trying to take pride in was really just another selfish grabbing for ego-glory. The good that he’d done was really only all about Amos proving once again what a good boy he was. It was all an act.
Where was the backbone? What held his skeleton together? What mattered so deeply to Amos that without it – he’d puddle like jello in his bed – his muscle and will only resulting in a jiggle.
When he’d try to go to his comfort places of imagination, He found a self-absorbed little boy whimpering and complaining in the midst of comfort and wealth. His enemy was stabbing at his newly exposed flesh and he knew that the knives were of his own design – forged in the bowels of deep mountain memories.
You might say that Amos was feeling a little depressed. The Christmas season had descended like a low cloud over Vancouver. As the year’s days were running out, so it seemed, was his sense of humour. This was not a new thing for Amos. Christmas wasn’t spoiled when he found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. (That was a relief. Knowing that it was only his parents judging whether he’d been good enough for gifts instead of some fat fairy elf made it an even game again. There were only four eyes between them and, if his siblings didn’t turn him in, he could keep his best side facing them most days.) No, his loss of Christmas innocence was more like an unrequested exchange for pubic hair.
It was early December and he’d been flipping through a Life magazine’s review of the year 1972. Along with the heroes of industry and politics and culture, there , in full colour, were the horrors of the year. The pages stopped flipping at a full page colour photo of a Viet Cong soldier holding two severed heads like dead chickens at his side. The heads - upon closer examination - were not American soldiers – that would seem like a horrible, bloodythirsty revenge – ugly but somehow rational. No, the heads were clearly Vietnamese. To Amos that was just crazed. It was an evil hatred turned in upon itself. To hate one’s enemy was a dark and ugly human trait. But to hate one’s self – one’s kin - was a black despair driven from a place even darker than the human soul.
If anyone had asked that twelve year old boy how the photo had affected him, Amos couldn’t have put it into words. But it went deep. It struck a chord in him that had never been struck before. It drummed a last vestige of childhood out of him and a shadow entered where an innocence had dwelt.
He was stung by the false hopes of a Christmas that celebrated “goodwill to all men”. Faced with the stark evil truth of war - naked without a Hollywood good guys/bad guys story – hope for the triumph of the good guys - hope for the redemption of the bad guys - slipped through his grasp like water in cupped hands. He lost a faith in human beings that he didn’t even know he had. He’d taken it for granted that good and bad were different worlds and not two sides of the same street. The bright lights of Christmas now only accentuated just how dark the human soul could be.
For the first time in his life, he wept tears that were not for himself. Those first tears of compassion were for the misery of his brothers and sisters. Sunday school had taught him well that on this small green planet we were all God’s children. The Apollo missions had captured a God’s eye view of our small round home. He’d grown up on the wave of Hippies’ songs of love and peace that were everywhere battling - and overcoming ignorance and fear and war. He’d been to the world Expo ’67 in Montreal and seen with his own eyes how happily all the world’s cultures could come together. He believed. He was a believer.
And then, a single photo had exposed the ugly truth that changed everything. He saw how human beings are their own worst enemy. The photo stayed with him as if he’d clipped it out and carried it around in his wallet.
A Christmas that claimed we were all happy, generous, people was now like eating too much cotton candy before the Wicked Whirlwind ride. Once he’d puked it up - he was off it for life. The sweet smells of Christmas now turned his stomach. Those tears of compassion he’d wept had a few sobs in there for himself too. He cried - knowing it without naming it - for what he’d lost. He was a child no longer.
For the next decade he managed to deal with this unnamed grief over the death of his childhood in a variety of ways. Christmas presents were still welcome. He began the practice of last-minute shopping –delaying the pain as long as possible. He gave presents always fearful that they weren’t good enough because no present he received was ever good enough. It could never fill, or even touch, that dark empty place inside. Nothing out of a box could convince him that he was a “good and deserving” boy.
He now knew the truth. He was a piece of shit just like everyone else. Some were just better at pretending it wasn’t so. It’s only other people’s shit that stinks isn’t it? Christmas – he noticed - really seemed to bring out the bullshit in the culture. Charlie Brown’s sad and unloved Christmas tree came close to naming it. But Amos’ loss went deeper. Cynically pulling the tinsel off of consumer’s spiritual hyprocrisy was fun - but it wasn’t enough. It helped to be “above it all”. But it never took away the shadow left where hope had once lived.
Amos became a fan of whatever could cut through the phony and expose the ugly, or laughable, truth. He was in good company of course. In many ways, Amos was only riding his generation’s wave. From Mad magazines to Monty Python, the Seventies youth culture developed a cynical, mocking sense of humour that slammed into sacred cows at every opportunity. From the Black Panthers to the Sex Pistols cultural tastes turned angry. It was cool to be angry and show it in all kinds of creative, destructive ways.
Self-destruction was Amos’ favourite method. His creativity went into living out a double-life. While maintaining a thick veneer of socially acceptable behaviours (school grades, after school jobs, even volunteer leadership work) he spent the rest of his waking hours destroying brain cells in suburban basements and risking his life in cars tearing around streetlit suburban corners.
After a decade of honing this attitude, Amos had declared himself bored by his cynical self-destruction. It was now time for a change. The power and authority of manhood hung like tools on a basement wall. It was up to him to pick them up and use them to make something of his life. Thing was, as he looked over the parts and pieces of his life, he was dismayed by the raw material he had to work with. It simply wasn’t good enough for what he wanted to do.
The Writer’s pad and pen that he’d been carrying around with him all fall were still empty. The lone artist on a mission, had become the same old party animal in a circle of misfits and funky friends that had gathered like dryer lint in the tumble of days. It was the same old Amos in a new setting.
He had hoped to re-create himself. He saw qualities that he honoured in people all around him. But those qualities seemed beyond his reach. He wanted to find a new way of being. He wanted to shed the old skin and – no not just skin – he was hoping to transform from caterpillar to butterfly. He ached to let his inner writer fly above all the suburban Scarborough mediocrity – especially his own mediocrity - that had suffocated all attempts - but not the desire - for this little worm to soar.
It snowed Christmas day in Vancouver that year. Many Vancouverites were not impressed by their White Christmas. Anyone trying to travel around the city without the aid of snow tires – not to mention skid-control skills – was in for some stress. Amos couldn’t have been more happy with the snow. He’d booked a cab for the day and there were more calls to keep a cabbie busy than cabs to meet the demand. Talk about a kid in a candy store.
The whole day was filled with ferrying merrymakers around the city. While driving was slow going, the generous tips made up for the lost time. It was a good thing that there weren’t too many cars on the road. He slid through more than one stop sign and only narrowly avoided several fender benders with a little gas on the pedal and counter-spin techniques learned in Ontario parking lots. His usually nasty Christmas mood was kept occupied by mostly happy drunks.
He did his share of skid row runs that day too. These were trips to the bootlegger for lonely turkeys trying to kill the day with a quart – lucky if they had friend to share it with. Unless, of course, their friend’s mood was as ugly as the one Amos was nursing.
He put in a shift and a half. By 3 am the calls had finally slowed down to a trickle. Sixteen hours behind the wheel was enough. With a good wad of cash in his jacket pocket, he dropped off the cab and flagged a ride from another cabbie back to his Kitsilano basement. Danny was asleep. Helen was away home for Christmas. He cracked open a beer and put a quiet album on sat on the floor back against the wall beside the stereo.
His parents had mailed out a care package that was still unopened sitting in the corner of his room. He hadn’t opened it partly because he didn’t want to expose himself to Danny’s scorn over his soft and happy family’s past, and partly because he was afraid that the comforts of that family would lull him back to sleep. Amos had gone to great lengths to get his miserable self out here all alone. He was determined to turn his angst into art. Falling back into the arms of his family would spoil his misery for sure.
How does it feelHow does it feelTo be without a homeLike a complete unknownLike a rolling stone?
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss LonelyBut you know you only used to get juiced in itAnd nobody has ever taught you how to live on the streetAnd now you find out you're gonna have to get used to itYou said you'd never compromiseWith the mystery tramp, but now you realizeHe's not selling any alibisAs you stare into the vacuum of his eyesAnd ask him do you want to make a deal?
Bob Dylan
Still, it was Christmas – or no, it wasn’t any more – he’d made it through Christmas without family comforts and now it was Boxing Day. Okay, he thought, time to open the box. He sat on the floor of the basement beside the stereo and opened up the box. The box was filled with smaller packages wrapped up in colourful paper. There was a card with care-full notes written by his Mom and Dad telling him of their love and faith in him.
When he’d finished opening up all the gifts, he sat for a time in the midst of presents and strewn paper and felt – how did he feel? He tried to feel beneath the anger and cynicism – down there – how did he feel?
Just as empty as the boxes lying all around him. Not sad or lonely or miserable – just empty. Amos felt kind of like you feel after a good cry. After the tears - the way your mind goes through all the reasons you’re crying until you run out of reasons, and the tears slow and you blow your nose and then there’s a final big sigh. Amos didn’t know it then, but the tears that had started flowing ten years before - had finally run out.
He decided to go for a walk. This feeling was too real to waste on sleep. He put on his black Kodiak boots and leather jacket – his urban defiance gear - and walked up into the alley and out to the street. The clouds had cleared finally and there was a full moon shining on the snow covered streets. He walked down the few blocks to the little park at the ocean’s edge. The moon over the English Bay harbour drew him like a moth. Without hesitation he jumped the steel fencing that ran along the little cliff’s edge and scrambled his way down onto the beach. The tide was out and the ocean floor was black and shiny like an oil slick.
Amos stumbled along the stony shore beneath the wealthy homes that lined the million dollar view. In most places the ten to twelve foot cliff provided enough protection for these homes. But when he came across a concrete wall built all the way down to the shore, he truly felt like an intruder in this city. He looked across the bay to the city skyline and knew that there was no place for him here. He would always be an outsider to the people who lived behind such walls. The moon put his shadow against that wall and he stood tall to see his height and breadth. The wall could have his shadow - he thought - but it couldn’t have him. He turned his back to it and began to walk out towards the water.
It was a long walk out across the stony tidal flats. With each stony step it slowly began to sink into his head that he had literally reached the bottom. He was out among the very dregs of the city. These stones were like coffee grains at the bottom of the cup. All his travels, all his searching, all his hopes, all his mistakes, all his ego-driven desires had been sucked out to sea by the pull of the moon – the world’s biggest mirror.
He stopped and looked up at that moon. The light it shared was not its own. It had no fire of its own. It was a rock that became a beacon only because it was in the right place at the right time to reflect the one and only light of the world.
That was when he felt the Presence there just behind and beside him. It was like someone was standing there letting him know, without words, that he had a friend. He felt that the Presence knew him inside and out – maybe even better than he knew himself – definitely knew the real him – without the masks and the lies and the bravado. He knew, somehow, that this friend would never judge or fail him. Amos felt this as truly as a bell sounding somewhere deep in his bowels. The Presence knew him inside and out and – and – and loved him as surely as the sun shone. Amos felt as deeply loved as he knew how to love – and more.
And yet, Amos felt - somehow got the feeling - that it was a meeting of friends – that even though he was in the Presence of an amazing, timeless, source of knowing and love – that Source had chosen to be his friend. For Amos, the only adequate response to such a gift – a response from the heart and the guts and not the polite conniving head – was to choose to call the Presence “LORD”.
The moon was dropping down behind the mountains now. It told Amos that the journey wasn’t over. He still didn’t know what was to come or where he was heading but he had found what he was looking for out here.
He had thought he was looking for a new self. Instead, he discovered that he was looking for someone to serve. Only after he’d emptied out all the possibilities that he’d filled his life with, did he find his Lord and Leader there at the bottom of it all.
You find me
and offer…
grace to forgive
to begin again
spirit to guide steps through self-love’s confusion
receiving as mine the power of Your sacrifice
senseless service as the road to
no tomorrow’s
grace to forgive
to begin again…
Jesus had been patiently waiting for him. The Father’s son. God’s chosen one. The only one who really didn’t give a shit what people thought of him, or did to him, but lived for one purpose only – to reflect the light and love of the only power that mattered. The power of life that turned forever – forgetting the day gone by and always welcoming the new beginning so full of growing, changing, creative possibilities….
Amos baptized himself five days later skinning dipping from Wreck Beach on New Year’s Day. Danny was there to laugh and bless his crazy white ass with hoots from the shore. Amos had tried to explain the experience on the tidal flats to Danny in the best words he could find - but knew were failing him. For once, Dan didn’t argue. He just listened and looked at Amos with a tilted head and quiet smile and nodded. His silence acknowledging that Amos had found something worthy.
The gift he’d received was the message that it wasn’t in changing that Amos would find his purpose. What the Christ had taught him with his friendship was that it was only by becoming more of who he already was that Amos would find his path to follow. He’d been given a touchstone experience that he could return to time and again. It reminded him that his choices, his efforts, his mistakes, his life is not really about “Amos”. He was in service to a far greater power than his small sense of well-being. What Amos would do from that day on is try to reflect - in his own moon-rock way - the light of the world.
Mediocre, silly, selfish, lustful, lazy-ass that he was, God could use even a dull rock like him to shed light in a dark world. Creative, imaginative, intelligent, funny - God can mine and refine what’s good in anyone. And anyone can do their small part to add some food to the table in hungry places.
No matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will find a way to return
to the Lord
I was heading for a fall
and I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale
I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again
by the Lord
Van Morrison
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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