Remembering the SAAB 96

SAAB automobile company has died - another victim of the recession. But instead of performing a requiem mass, I prefer to remember Judith's favorite car: The SAAB 96 light gray monster that nearly bankrupted us.

Not our SAAB, but one like it - same color - no roof rack.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the car too and we had many happy trips in New England.  It was the essence of a "touring car", comfortable to ride inside, with a feeling of safety that our previous VW bug "Xenophon" could not provide, and with a reliability that the Oldsmobile F85 station wagon "Hog" failed to deliver.  There were lots of stories associated with each of those other cars, but with the SAAB 96 - which we never named - it felt that we had finally "arrived" in a vehicle that reflected our burgeoning personalities as young, rebellious, serious students of life. It was a car designed by geeky Swedish engineers who seemed to understand that an automobile's personality was a gift to the drivers.

On one trip, down to North Carolina School of the Arts, we picked up Judith's sister Margot and her friend Tommy Hulse - who later earned fame playing the part of Mozart in "Amedeus". Tommy was so impressed with the car as we drove north. He watched me shift the car with its egg-beater gear shift that stuck out of the steering shaft - free wheeling, allowing us to coast down the hills, never using the clutch - and spontaneously proclaimed "What a wonderful car!"  Ah, music to our ears as proud owners, and it was true.  The insides were spartan but with just enough engineering panache' to make one feel like the car was designed for humans.  The front seats were angled slightly towards the center to provide more leg room.  There were little buckets clipped in the foot well for trash. The seats adjusted easily. The floor was absolutely flat.  The rear seats folded down so there was access to the trunk and more cargo room (we slept in the car overnight more than once on long trips - often while one or the other continued to drive). One felt you were driving a flying machine instead of a car.  Everything seemed to have a more reasonable design, including the hood, which opened backwards so that, if covered with snow, the load would fall off in front of the car when inspecting the engine.

And then there was its revolutionary front wheel drive: a novelty at the time.  We lived on a back road in Southern Vermont that was seldom plowed in the winter.  Driving down the mountainside after a snow the car cut a path like a duck through water, waves parting to either side in a spray of white. It's a memory I'll never forget.  Or when we visited a friend who lived in a holler in Kentucky: We had to drive up a creek in the middle of the night that was - in places - about a foot deep to reach her house. We were following penciled directions sent to us in a letter.  Judith was 8 months pregnant with our first child.  We paused, wondering if we'd made a mistake, since there were no signs on the road that now ended at the creek.  We both gulped, then drove on up the creek for several miles.  The SAAB 96 handled it remarkably well, spraying water along the sidewalls, never hesitating, the front wheels finding their track beneath the rushing stream.  Our friend later told us she'd lost a couple of cars in that creek. This knowledge affirmed our faith in our magnificent SAAB 96.

We'd purchased the car for $3700 with the trade-in of the Oldsmobile "Hog", whose transmission had failed and whose floor boards had rusted through in Vermont.   We'd bought the SAAB back in Munster, Indiana from the only SAAB dealer in the state.  (The Hog was still in his used car lot five years later when we passed by.)  It was the car of our dreams and we were convinced that it would be the last car we would ever buy.

Of course, we were naive', both 22, and we thought of cars not as machines but as inventions designed for the ages. We also bought a heavy-duty steel roof-top cargo basket that was our best investment. (Great for hauling firewood). We also ended up carrying twenty feet of logging chain and a ten gauge shotgun (inherited from Judith's father) in the compartment under the back seat.  And some metric wrenches and a couple of screw drivers in the pouch that was designed for the wheel jack.  These were essentials for us during that time living in rural Vermont while we attended college.  And we used them all.

As luck would have it, Indiana also killed the SAAB 96. After college we moved to Washington, DC, and then to Northern Indiana to live on a little farm.  The only mechanic in LaPorte, Indiana who would work on it was employed at the local tractor dealership outside of town.  The odd little problems that a car develops over time started to create serious difficulties for us with a new baby - such as the time that the carburetor float developed a pin hole and would fill with gas and then choke out the engine.  Ah, the humiliation of calling my father in the middle of the night to come haul us home - baby wailing in the back seat. My dad never said a mean word about the car, but there was a sadness in his eyes as he hooked the logging chain to the undercarriage and dragged us back to the farm.  It took the tractor mechanic more than a week to figure out what was causing the problem and he was ecstatic that he'd diagnosed it and fixed it so easily. He was like a kid who had worked on Lionel electric train sets all his life, and had suddenly been promoted to Swedish Rocket Engineer. 

The mechanic was so interested in the car that he special-ordered the factory manual for tuning the engine.  Unfortunately, all the measurements were metric and the manual was in Swedish, so that when he adjusted the valves, he kept tightening them too much, and we went through a series of burned valves before I realized what his problem was.  The SAAB 96 -- our dream car - "The Last Car We Would Ever Own" - was going to achieve its title simply because - if we didn't do something soon -- it would bankrupt us with repairs.

Eventually we were forced to trade it in for a new VW Rabbit - a mistake, but one that we lived with until it rusted out through the floor boards.  It was a sad day to say goodbye to the SAAB 96 in South Bend, Indiana.  Then, about two years later, I remembered that I'd left a 10 gauge shotgun under the rear seat along with the logging chain.  I never forgave myself and I wondered if it were still there, hidden out of sight from its new (imagined) owner.

The SAAB 96 was a great car for a young family: we'd hauled trailers with it, dragged birch logs down the icy roads for firewood, slept in the back during cross-country trips, crashed it at 40 miles per hour without injuring any passengers, and generally learned a lot about owning cars.  Judith still remembers it with fondness and pride.   

We've long ago stopped seeing old SAABs of that era here in California. There were never that many out here anyway.  The later models held no interest for us.  They cost far too much, and seemed to be designed for yuppies.  They were too plush, too artificially "modern".  By comparison, the SAAB 96 was like a car that one wanted to hand down to your children and your children's children.  It wasn't "retro" because it was exactly what it meant to be: basic transportation designed with a utilitarian bent for practical people.

Since the SAAB days we've owned a lot of cars: 3 VW bugs, 2 VW vans, a VW Rabbit, a Datsun station wagon, an old MGB, a Honda CIVIC, a Mercury minivan, an Isuzu Trooper, a couple of Toyto Corollas, two Toyoto Prius, and one leased Subaru Outback. And I've probably missed remembering at least one more.  Just listing out all the cars leaves me with  a sense of guilt for buying so many vehicles (imagine the carbon we've pumped into the air over the years).  But we've always bought "used", and I suppose that's some indication of our environmental consciences and our financial priorities.

Still, I have these dreams - nighttime revelries actually - of returning to my parents' two garage.  In this dream I open the door and discover all the cars that I and my family have ever owned.  They're all jammed in there somehow, as the garage extends mystically back into an ever deepening space.  Every car.  Chryslers, and Dodges, and Oldsmobiles, and Buicks, and more modern vehicles, parked side by side.  The smell of engines, and the feel of cold enameled metal penetrates my senses as I slip sideways between their silent hulks.

And in this dream I always head over to the little light gray SAAB 96.  It's exactly as I remember it, complete with the dented front fender and the rear bumper that is slightly out of alignment from dragging a ten foot long birch log along the ice.

I slip behind the wheel, and somehow manipulate it out of the garage.  I start down the road, convincing myself that the burned out valve that has left the car with such poor acceleration and compression, can be fixed once and for all.

And then, I pull the car over to the side of the road, lower the back seat, and take a nap as the sun beams through the rear bubble windows, with the leaves of trees swaying above my head.  I don't nap long.  Just a little cat nap, the smell of the seats mixing with the smell of autumn that streams through the cantered  back side windows.

And then something occurs to me.  Is the ten gauge shot gun still under the rear compartment?

I wonder.

I get out of the car and start to lift the rear seat to see.

But then I wake up.

RIP SAAB.

Iran and its Elections

About fifteen years ago - maybe longer - I was commuting between Northern California and Southern California every week. It was during this commute that I was first reminded of the dilemma of Iran. Today the current protests over the election there brought this memory back to me.

I was taking a shuttle to a rental car company, and I got into a conversation with the driver, who was from Tehran. He had left Iran during the Iranian Revolution. He wasn't a supporter of the Shah, but found himself under suspicion. He had been a professor in Iran, teaching Physics. Now, here in the U.S., he was driving a rental car shuttle. "They are thugs," he said to me then. "They took power using the pretense of religion, but they are thugs."

What do I know about Iran today? Little or nothing! The revolution happened so long ago. What one reads in the paper about Iran has little to do with the people of that country. Over the years those Iranian friends and colleagues that I have met have said little about their homeland. It seems impolite to ask, which makes the fate of Iran seem as distant as the fate of another planet, in a separate galaxy. And yet that distance didn't always seem so large to me.

When my oldest son, Dagan, was born we were living in Washington, DC. Iran was still under the dictatorship of the Shah, but there was a lively exchange of commerce between our countries. Not just oil, but all sorts of goods. The stores of Washington were inundated with the beautiful arts and crafts that were arriving from Tehran. I bought Judith a beautifully hand embroidered coat in celebration of our first child's birth. She still wears it on special occasions, though after so many years it's starting to show its age.

So many terrible things have happened to Iran since I bought that coat: The U.S. Embargo; The 8 year Iran-Iraq war that killed thousands; the 1990 Manjil-Rudbar earthquake in which 40 thousand died; the 2003 Bam earthquake in which 23 thousand died.

During all these events and tragedies, the U.S. has been disengaged, and has treated Iran as an enemy. And likewise, Iran has treated the U.S. as one too.
Now the election in Iran has caused us to hope, and then -- as the drama continues -- to remain silent in expectation and fear.

I for one would like to see Judith wear her brilliantly embroidered coat once again. I would like our two countries freely exchanging thoughts and views, without this veil of threats. I would like to see that country surface from its sadness.

But maybe it's going to take another 30 years. I sincerely hope not.

I don't think Judith's beautiful coat will last that long.

Removing Bees from an Interior Wall.... A Recollection of What We Did.

Thirty years ago Judith became a bee widow. That is, she lost her husband(me)to the escapades of an Indiana Agricultural Inspector named Bruce who adopted me as a cohort in his beekeeping adventures. Bruce was a wonderful friend, but to Judith -- who was struggling with a newborn baby -- he was a kidnapper who spirited me away on different adventures with wild bee hives colonies.

One of these adventures was the removal of a well-established colony of wild bees that had built a nest in the walls of a rural house. Over a period of about 1 month, Bruce showed me how remove the bees and extract the honey without removing a single nail or board.

I'm remembering this adventure now only because a neighbor has complained of a similar malady of bees. I'm writing down what we did so that, perhaps, I won't be called upon to help. It wasn't that hard, but removing bees from houses is one of those skills that one does not want to publicize. Experience shows that, once known, calls from potential customers come all too frequently, usually just as one is sitting down to dinner.

Here's a description of the house where the bees inhabited:

It was a small single-story cape -- something we used to call a "National Home" -- situated out in the countryside, close to the Michigan/Indiana border. We knocked on the door and were met by a huge man -- well over 300 pounds -- who was gripping a shotgun in his mitt. He didn't seem particularly grateful to see us until Bruce told him that we were there to try to remove the bees. Suddenly he looked at us with a new garrulousness, relaxing his grip on the shotgun and happily asking us to follow him.

The house seemed to have two bedrooms, a kitchen area, and a tiny living room, but the exact configuration was a bit hard to discern because the entire house was filled from floor to waist-height with junked ham radio equipment from the 1950s and 60s. In fact, the only pathway through the house was so cramped that we had to walk sideways through the equipment where we came to the kitchen area. The wall between the kitchen and the living room had been torn down and a huge plywood platform was erected upon which lay functioning ham radio equipment and a disgustingly dirty mattress where the owner must have slept. This was the combined work/home environment of this man. I imagined he ate, slept, and lived on this platform, listening long into the night to other ham radio operators who were strategically stationed around the world. I imagined they too were exchanging news of our arrival as we spoke to the man.

I've got to hand it to Bruce, however, who took in this sight without the slightest expression of perplexity. Bruce was there for the bees, and what ham radio was for this poor benighted radio operator, bees were to Bruce.

"So, where are they getting in?" he asked.

"In?" I wondered to myself. "Is this the place Bruce has brought me? To a crazy den of junk radio equipment, to extract bees from radio tubes and circuit wires?"

"Outside where the electrical service comes in," was the reply. "I wasn't too worried about them last year, although they were kind of noisy. But now they're moving into my receivers, and the other day I got stung."

We wandered outside to where the power line from the Northern Indiana Public Service Company trailed off a pole and arrived at the corner of the house. Sure enough, there was a hole in the wall near the cable through which a steady stream of bees could be seen coming and going. It was clear that this was not a new colony, but one that had built up over years and years of casual neglect. The noise of their coming and going was very loud.

We returned inside and, stepping over the mounds of equipment, made our way to a small closet adjacent to the power service entry. A few bees were confusedly coming out of a couple of small holes in the wall. Bruce knocked on the wall tentatively, and we heard a loud increase in the level of buzzing through the wall. I thought to myself that, had he knocked much harder, the particleboard walls would collapse and there we would be, facing a very large, very angry colony of wild bees, our exit path hindered by the bulk of this huge man and the tons of radio receivers in our way.

Fortunately, the wall held.

"Okay," Bruce smiled. "We'll have these out of here in no time at all!"

"Are you gonna have to tear down the walls? Cause I don't have no place else to go."

"You'll be fine! But it will just take a little time."

Later, on our way back that evening, I asked him what he intended to do to get them out.

"We'll rob them out," Bruce said. "And I think we'll get about 200 pounds of honey at the same time."

The next evening found us back at the house with section of wire screen deftly rolled into a funnel, and an empty hive body with a couple frames of newly capped bee brood. We also had a few nails and some wood. We searched for all the holes in the side of the house where the bees were coming and going, and carefully stuffed them all with rags, except the main entrance.

Here we fitted the screen cone, wide-side in, over the entrance, tacking it up with just enough nails to make it solid. Since it was twilight, the majority of bees were already back in the walls. Bruce and I then jury rigged and attached the empty hive body against the house itself, using a two-by-four and a couple of ropes. We slipped the brood frames into the hive body, closed it up, and headed for home.

The following evening we returned to the scene. The bees had become confused by the reconfiguration of their entrance. The worker bees had found their way out of the colony through the wire cone, but now could not figure out how to get back in. They were amassing on the outside of the screen, and eventually found their way into the empty hive with the brood frames. We had brought a new queen with us, in a queen cage, and now placed it atop the brood frames. This was to attract the bees who could not get back into their own colony.

Over the next week the homeless bees migrated into the new hive body. They released the queen from her cage and took care of the brood that was beginning to emerge. In about two weeks, only a few new bees -- bees emerging from the brood inside the walls of the house -- were exiting the cone. The rest of the colony was now successfully relocated to the new hive body.

Finally, Bruce returned to the house, removed the new colony, with the new queen, and smoked the old colony with a heavy dose of sulfur smoke. This killed the old queen and all the brood that still resided in the house. After a day or two, when he was certain that no bees were coming out, he removed the cone from the side of the house. But there was a problem.

Inside the walls of the house were still the honey and the beeswax comb.

So he returned the colony that had origianlly come from the walls and set it outside the house. The bees found the honey, robbed it completely out over three days, and moved it entirely to the new colony. Then Bruce carefully patched up the side of the house, and took the new colony home.

When I asked him about the old brood and the remaining wax in the walls he said that, over time, wax moths would set up a colony in the walls and consume the wax very rapidly. He didn't think it would be a problem for the radio operator at all.

So that's how we -- actually mostly Bruce -- removed the bees. It was a neat trick. You should try it. Just don't call this bee man. Judith doesn't want to be a bee widow again.

Explosive Tonga -- Volcanos and Riots and Democracy

For about six years now I've been kidded by my friends and family about Tonga. I was depressed with the outcome of the 2000 elections; about the rigged votes; about 9/11; about the lies and missed opportunities leading up to the invasion of Iraq; about the destruction; about the moral hypocrisy that seemed to be coming from an unelected administration bent upon consolidating its power.

I was immersed in books that recorded the world travels of past generations of sailors, actively seeking a safe haven where corruption, where it occurred, was on more on a scale of human failings than institutional decay. Scale, beauty, simplicity, safety, and humanity: These were the goals. More and more, I found my mind turning to descriptions of the island kingdom of Tonga.

I'd complain and quip about what was going on this country, and eventually people would ask: So what are you going to do about it?

"I want to move to Tonga!" became my response.

Tonga! Tonga! The dream of an island kingdom in the South Pacific! Lots of sailing! Beautiful people! Simplicity! Life! Maybe another chance for happiness!

I'd laugh at myself, along with everyone else, but once inoculated with the idea, the dream seemed to take on a life off its own.

"I'm a writer! I can work anywhere!"

"So where do you want to be?"

"Tonga, maybe! I think we should move to Tonga!"

Meanwhile, Tobias came back from Europe and started college in Pennsylvania. Arwen tried Pennsylvania and returned to California with me. Dagan meandered between Northern California, Southern California, and Oregon. Judith was teaching in Pennsylvania. I felt like I was holding down the fort in St. Helena while the world was collapsing around me.

"Tonga, maybe!" I kept saying to myself. "Maybe in Tonga I can figure all this crap out!"

By the time the 2004 elections arrived, my disgust with the direction things were moving here had reached a new low. "When are people going to finally wake up?" I demanded. I had done a little election work in Pennsylvania, acting as an election observer at the polls: Helping to roll in the huge, ancient polling machines; helping people with instructions before they entered into their booths; checking peoples' names off of election rolls; helping to tabulate ballots off the continuous-roll ballot machines; cross-checking the results; talking with the volunteer election officials at the little church where I was stationed.

I began to see the election process in the U.S. as an embodiment of those ancient gray machines with their faded black-velvet curtains and their worn, painted levers -- rows and rows of levers aligned into columns of parties, candidates, issues, and initiatives. And the election volunteers themselves, so happy to have someone new to help them out in the basement of that little brick church. They were lovely elderly people from the neighborhood, gray themselves like the old mechanical machines, and slightly frayed at the edges like the velvet curtains. Blue-haired old ladies directed by an earnest old man. Even I, nearing retirement age, seemed young to them. They were as old as the balloting machines themselves, and it seemed that in their eyes they were looking to me, with a bit of hope, that I might take up their work at the next election.

"Tonga!" my heart murmured in denial. "Tonga!"

One of the balloting machines became stuck. It jammed in the middle of someone's vote-casting. It was stuck solid, and the master lever could not be budged. "No problem!" said the elderly man in charge of the precinct. He moved the voter to another machine, and then -- with my help -- we rolled the broken machine aside, opened the back through a set of shiny polished spring-mounted screws, breaking the metal election seal. He could not do it alone, not because the machine was too heavy, but because I was to act as a sworn witness to what he was about to do.

The back of the machine opened downward to reveal the continuous roll of paper, pre-printed with names of candidates, party affiliations, and ballot initiatives for local and county issues. The recordings of each person's vote had been marked like mechanical chicken marks on the roll as the master lever had been pulled. Each vote, a series of punches permanently imprinted beside each candidate.

As I looked into the mechanism of this machine, with its cogs and levers, I felt as though I were looking into brain of the democracy itself: Heavy, technologically ancient, complex, adequately oiled and cleaned, but worn by sixty years of occasional intense usage. It was an artifact of an industrial age that had long since been surpassed by electronics, but still it persisted to stand. I was faced with the fragility of that democracy, yet chastened by the intensity with which the election official performed his volunteer tasks.

"These machines are older than I am," he said as he drew a line through the spoiled ballot on the machine. "Sometimes they just jam like this, and all you can do is mark where the last ballot ended. He pulled out his clipboard and had me read off the dial of numbers in that indicated how many ballots had been cast on the machine that day. 321 ballots! Then he had me read off the number of ballots that had ever been cast by the machine in its lifetime. I don't remember the number, it was so large. He had me read off these numbers three times, marking them down on his clipboard. Then he signed the clipboard, made a note on the huge roll of paper, signed the roll, had me sign his clipboard, and recorded the date and the time. Then we closed up the massive machine and, together, we rolled it out and down the hallway by the stairs.

"Tonga!" my heart murmured. But the sound of it was a little fainter, a little less intense, a bit like an echo of a desire.

Later, as we closed up the polling place, I thanked the poll workers for the experience. It had been a long night, reading off the numbers off the balloting machine, calling the numbers back and forth, checking and cross-checking each others' work. We had formed a kind of team, and we made little quips about what we were doing as we worked. No one spoke of politics. This was just another job, like raking the leaves or straightening the folding chairs into rows at the end of a church social. We were straightening up after a national election like we were straightening up after a dance. It was a strange sort of dance, indeed. But we were tired. Some of the blue-haired poll workers had been there all day, and they were hungry. I'd been there no more than three hours. I said goodnight and walked out into the rainy darkness and drove to Judith's house.

"Tonga?" my heart now seemed to be questioning me. "Tonga?"

That night my desired Presidential candidate, John Kerry, took the county and ultimately the state of Pennsylvania. I had not voted in that polling place where I worked. I knew I would probably never see those poll workers again. Their looks seemed to be asking for someone new to pass the baton of electioneering, but I knew it would not be me who picked it up. Still, I was humbled by their dedication to an idea about democracy; chastened by their matter-of-fact belief in the process; awed by their persistence to "get it right", "double-check it", "Did you get that number Gladys?" It was like watching my parents do the dishes together so long ago: Doing the dishes of an election.

Tonight I read the news from Tonga on the Internet.

In September, King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV died at the age of 88. The royal family was just completing the traditional period of 100 days of morning. To mark the official ending of the 100 days of mourning period for the Royal Family the Lanu Kilikili ritual or the Washing of the Stones will be held at the Royal Tomb at Mala’ekula, Nuku’alofa to be carried out by the Ha’a Tufunga. The newspaper said that they have just started receiving the fine stones that have been carefully selected from the shores of the volcanic island of Tofua.

But then, last Wednesday a riot broke out as some drunken teenagers got hyped up after a pro-democracy protest that had been going on all week in front of the new king's administration office.

Cars were overturned. Grocery stores were ravaged. Windows were broken. Fires were set. Fortunately, no one was killed.

If you're interested in my double life in Tonga, you should check out this story at Matangi Tonga Online.

It's clearly been a tumultuous time for the Tongan people. In another story on the newspaper, a new volcano is breaking the surface of the ocean in the Kingdom of Tonga. Huge rafts of floating pumice clogged the engines of boat that was the first to actually witness the erupting volcano.

In other news, the electrical utility in Tonga has created a big stir. The electrical utility had been privatized a couple of years ago, but now wanted the government to buy back the assets. The price of diesel fuel to run the generators had ruined the profitability of the company, and it was threatening to sell the assets to Chinese interests. Instead, it was decided to sell the power company to a New Zealand firm. There's still some legal issue about whether the original privatization was constitutional to begin with.

All this is sounding hauntingly familiar.

....my sail boat has been sitting on its trailer for a year. Judith thinks I should sell it and get a smaller boat. I don't know.... (...."Tonga!... Tonga!... Tonga!...)



I miss Tonga, having never ever set foot on the tiny island. I miss the Tongan people, having never met a single one. I miss the ceremonies, the island winds, the coral beaches and the palms. My heart still calls out "Tonga!" and I worry about their riot, their volcano, and their electricity.

But here, in Northern California, the leaves are blowing off the trees and the grape vines. It is time for Thanksgiving, after an important election. Tobias is in Cambodia now, but Arwen and Dagan and Kellie and Judith will all be at the dinner table.

The volcanoes are silent in my heart. The riots have been, for the moment, silenced.

I think I'll pour a glass of wine at the Thanksgiving dinner table and propose a toast.

"To Tobias and Tonga!" I'll say.

And, of course, everyone will kid me.

But I think I'll be okay now.

Sailing: A Meditation on the Wind

This article first appeared in the 2001 Web Journal "Tilting Rock" at Wild Poets dot Com

There is a presumption of insanity whenever friends and family ask me about sailing, because they know that I have become obsessed. It doesn't really bother me at this stage of my life: I think maybe one good obsession is a remedy for many accumulated ills. And besides, before there were friends, there was a wind. Even before there was family, the wind was blowing.

Imagine a liquid place, in darkness or in brilliant light, surrounded by nameless creatures oozing and consuming one another, a place in some remote past before evolution has begun, and up above -- on top of that liquid place -- in the darkness or the sun, there is a wind. To find a means to be swept up by that elemental invisible force, to move through it, to chart some direction by it, and then to circumnavigate a planet .... yes! An obsession. Or a meditation.

I have this memory of a history of dreaming of flying. This memory suddenly arrived, quite unexpectedly, like a dead mouse that the cat had brought proudly to my door. I was 19, in a college dormatory room, sleeping through my first set of classes for the day. I suddenly awoke, frightened, disoriented, and frantic. It was not because I had just missed my World History 101 discussion group.

It was because I had remembered that I had a history of adventures, in dream, in which I had learned to fly. This was not just a single flying dream. This was a history of flying dreams, a set of modulated episodes, one after another, stretching backwards through time to the age of five or six. Each dream was a clear memory, a clear set of milestones, a second life almost entirely separated from the adult life I was now awakening into.

What a revelation, at age 19: Yes! I am this person, but I am also that other person, that person in a dream who can fly. Later, as this memory of this history expanded, some of the most important events of my life occurred during dreams of flying: the birth of my oldest son, the escape from a mind-numbing prison, the loss of my father, on and on. Each episode was self-referential, complete, yet also vaguely connected to this other waking life. And in each of these episodes, it was the wind that propelled my flight.

Things are not as they seem. Nor are they otherwise. How many times will a person awaken into one realm, suddenly fully aware of that separate realm from which he has just escaped? How many realms are there from which to awaken?

In my dorm room my eyes were suddenly drawn to the curtains in my window. It was a spring morning, and the light poured in through the casement. The world was shimmering in light, and there -- invisible to my eyes -- something played, toyed, teased, and tugged at the curtain fabric. This something also was making the new maple leaves on the tree outside vibrate and quiver. It was, of course, a wind. A small wind -- a breeze, you might call it. A beckoning breeze.

Breathe!

Be alive!

Inhale me!

Exhale yourself!

Be me!

They say that a wind is created when the molecules of air absorb the energy of sunlight, causing the molecules to vibrate. This vibration creates an increase in the space between each molecule. This extra space, in essence, makes that body of air lighter than the surrounding air, and so it rises upwards. At a certain height, this body of air cools, the space between the molecules decreases, and the body of air descends once again. Up and down, the pulse goes, wave-like; the heart-beat of an atmosphere. On each rising beat, the rising air pulls cooler air in behind it, and it is this movement of air we have come to recognize as a wind.

Or is it?

Any scientific explanation of the physics of a breeze ignores the most elemental and important vectors: a wind is composed not only of air, but of all the things that exist within it. A foul wind, a pleasant breeze, a wind of change, so many different flavors, colors, intensities, qualities... Are these winds composed merely of atmosphere, or are they formed by the aromas, the sensations, the experiences, the very physical bodies of the creatures that inhabit them.

When the breeze pushes against the skin of your arm, quivering the tiny hairs against your skin, can you sometimes catch the faint scent of your soul mate as it's carried by the breeze across the room to you? Is that person in the wind? Is that breeze the breeze of energy that emanates from this special someone? What does it bring? Desire? Hope? Sadness? Memory?

How many bodies are contained in a single breeze? Microscopic critters, viruses, germs, spores, spirits, memories, esters, aromas, pheromones, angers, sounds, smells, breaths? If all my ancestors have become dust, are they in the wind that I am breathing? Can I seek them out, to ask them questions about how I am or who I am becoming?

Which wind is your wind? Which breeze belongs only to you -- your very own -- composed exclusively of all that you need to be or hope to become?

When I sail, I am searching for that breeze, that wind, that movement of air, that memory. I am searching for the pathway, between where I am and where that other place or person or thing must reside. The sailboat in which I sail is merely a prosthetic. It is only a fiberglass shell with a great wing outstretched to the sky. The sail is my radar, listening for the air. When the wind arrives, it fills the sail and we travel on a knife-like edge of water, balanced against a rudder and a keel. At the right moment, the rigging begins to hum, and I look across to my friends and watch them pass into their own dreams of flying -- a cloudy silence of meditating sleepiness. They are smiling. They can't help themselves. We are the wind.

It no longer matters to me whether anyone else understands my obsession.

Outside my window the leaves of the persimmon tree rustle quietly. The ferny branches of a wild asparagus plant mime and bob at the passing of that same air. We are all caught in the pulse, moved by it, surprised at its power, its invisible speed, its incredible sea of aromas. If this is the realm in which I am to be now awakened, I will find me a sail and learn to fly again.