Opening
I am sitting in an airport shuttle outside my motel awaiting transport to Detroit Metro and a flight bound for Tokyo. It’s cold, and there is still snow on the ground.
A blonde boy and girl, siblings here, are bundled in front of their own room playing a modified version of baseball with a small white ball and a foot-long orange plastic bat. There appears to be one understood base close to where second should be, the strike zone has been extended to no known limits, and pegging the runner in the flat of the back with the ball is the norm.
Though I cannot hear, through the van’s windows I can see their laughter. After one play, sister wraps her arm lovingly around the neck of brother and says something in his ear. They exchange equipment and scamper back to their respective positions. Play resumes, and this brings laughter to my own heart. Changing batters in this manner after every play, they swing ferociously at each pitch and scramble for home plate only—nothing less could be worth the bounding life within their young bodies.
Song of Childhood
By Peter Handke
When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.
When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.
When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.
When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?
When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.
When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.
It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.
When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.
When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.
When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.
When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.
Almost a week ago I was perched atop a tall wooden stool in front of a large group of young artists and partakers of art in NY, most of who are professing Christians. My heart was ragged that evening and it was the first thing I shared when it came time for me to speak.
One of my heroes for many years, Frederick Buechner, has always reminded me to speak the truth when before others– when confronted with the great mystery of lives that are not my own, that I may never pass by again, and in this truth, my truth, some truth, any truth, perhaps we all are afforded the opportunity to be in some ways more fully human as well.
So I begin this blog now in similar fashion, to speak some kind of truth as best I know how. Anyone who knows me at all will recognize the absurd lopsidedness of it all, which is a kinder way to say that I am as much a liar as a truthteller— but if you will see me in these words as I was that night, just a man perched atop a piece of wood, not to bring something to you, but to be something with you, perhaps you can forgive the fragmented remembrances and selected optimism and instead sense us all being in the room together for a time… being together in order to create something in this little moment, this breath between us, this life we have been given.
