I was hiking on a lakeshore trail in a nearby state park. Ahead was a small wooden bridge across a stream. Several good steps and you would be across this bridge. But crossing it on this early morning, I noticed something that brought me to a stop. Someone had written something there. I imagined it to be the hand of a young boy. But instead of “fuck you” or “parents suck” it was something strangely different.

“I love you!”

As I walked on, I began pondering this message. It was not addressed to anyone. Usually you would expect a name attached. “I love you, Mary!” Or Jane, or Sally . . . someone with a name.

Was the boy shy? Did he want to leave the message anonymous, so he could point it out to any girl he brought and claim it was to her? Or could his love have been for another boy, and no girl at all? Or was this message more of a wish than a reality? He felt love, but his love had no name to attach to?  Or could he have just been happy on a bright, sunny day and in love with life and with everyone?  I kept wondering because there were all these possibilities, and no way to tell for sure about any of them.

However, I vote for the bright, sunny day.  A day with an exclamation mark beside it.  A day when love was an overwhelming feeling that had to be written down, even on a bridge.  A day when it was free and unbounded, including all the world and the entire human race.

I know this sounds like nonsense.  I know such writing was not placed by the head of the local chamber of commerce, kneeling down on those boards in his business suit and tie.  It is nonsense for sure to him.  This is the work of a child, we assume.  It must have been a child, we assume.  Thus we make it childish and foreign to our practical lives.

Sometimes on televised football games the camera shows a person in the end zone holding a sign saying “John 3:16″–the location of a verse in the Bible.  The person wants us to get a Bible and read that verse.  He believes it will do us some good.  Perhaps it will for, if I recall correctly, this passage begins “God so loved the world . . ..”  So in this theology it is god-like to love the world, but that is in theory.  It seems that the majority of god-fans don’t see it that way.  Their god loves their particular portion of the world–their country or tribe or religion or ethnic group, or whatever.

Speaking before a fundraiser for his political party, Newt Gingrich recently declared: “I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous!”  In this view it is every country for itself, and may the best country win.  Or it is every race or language group for itself.  Or it is every social or religious group for itself.  And so we always at war, one against another.  So it goes, and so it goes.

Human love, if we have any, tends to narrow down, not broaden out.  We love only certain classes, races, political persuasions.  We love children and relatives only if they behave themselves and treat us as they should.  We certainly would never love an enemy.  Our loved ones are the loving ones, meaning those who love us.  Thus does love amount to no better than a practical selfishness.

I know the author of the inscription didn’t have all of this in mind, but it’s what I think about every time I cross his bridge.

Being thus acquainted, you follow this car down the road, observing.  You imagine that he feels your displeasure behind him and is now ashamed of himself for his rude behavior.  Then you scold yourself for having such a stupid thought.  Then you imagine that he is laughing at you and gloating.  You are a poor slob of a driver he has beaten.  But then you know that he does this all the time with little notice of other cars.  He is a superior car, a privileged car among them, and he gives them, gives you, little thought.

But he does give thought to the car in the new merge lane that just passed you and seems bent on passing him as well.  Same situation as before, only the roles are reversed.  The new car wants to do the same thing, pass him and cut in.  But there is no way he will let this happen.  His bumper is almost touching the rear of the car ahead of him, riding it, as we say.  The ambitious car gives up, slows down, and pulls in ahead of you.  Congratulations, you are now two cars down.  Of course, you could have fought off this new car like the guy ahead of you did, but you are not that kind of person.  You are a good person and a courteous driver, although sometimes you hate yourself for this behavior.  Were you to play the aggressive driver you would feel guilty as a result, but now you feel cheated.  Those seem to be your choices, guilty or cheated.

It is strange how the anonymity of driving allows these games to be played.  If they were driving their grocery carts to the check-out station, and you were ahead of them in line, they would not push in ahead of you like this.  The contact is too close and personal for that.

We do things as strangers that we would not do as neighbors.  A few of our family or neighbors wronged is a big deal; thousands of strangers wronged is but a passing concern or thought.  Our dead soldiers are carefully counted and tracked because they are ours and we know them.  The greater number of others dead is not counted or tracked.  They were strangers.

In theory most religions assert that we are fellow human beings and children of the same god.  But the practice is much different.  In theory we would treat each other on the road as we would in the supermarket.  But the practice is different, as we know well.

So how do we handle ourselves in such a world?  Do we “do it unto others before they can do it unto you,” or do we treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves?  And further complicating this choice is the factor of anonymity.  There are a lot of people who will choose to be kind and fair with others when they are in close contact, but will easily support the torture and killing of strangers.  So we behave morally as individuals and immorally as societies.

Living in the South in the 60′s, I had friends who would vote for every segregationist who came along, call Martin Luther King a Communist, and say that civil rights protesters were only getting what they deserved when beaten or killed.  But individually, with known Black people in their community, they were kind and respectful and helping of those in need.  This is the paradox of moral man and immoral society.  This is the hypocrisy of practicing our personal morality while supporting public immorality.

And these were my thoughts while driving down the road.

I suppose I am more of a hill climber than a flatland rider.  I have ridden in biking events on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where the entire route is flat as a tabletop.  And I have ridden in the Colorado Rockies where we crossed the Continental Divide back and forth.  The section from Vail up to Vail Pass, for example, is 18 miles long and entirely uphill.  About the same distance as my entire ride yesterday.  But I still like the variation.  Riding for hours on level ground is boring to me.  I like the ups and downs.

Riding a bicycle, you’re aware of the ups and downs much more.  In order to ride efficiently, you have to look ahead and anticipate them.  One of the most common rookie mistakes is getting caught on a steep hill in the wrong gear.  You learn to look ahead, anticipate what’s coming up, and shift to a climbing gear in plenty of time.

Riding yesterday I was enjoying a fine downhill section: smooth pavement, no cars, lots of speed, nice curves.  But as my adrenalin rose, reality put in a disclaimer.  This will not last, and there will be a price to pay for it soon enough.  Screaming downhills are followed by grinding uphills.  Things tend to even out.

The only bicycling exception to this rule I ever met up with is on Mt. Haleakala on Maui in Hawaii.  A company there will rent you a bicycle at the top of the mountain, let you ride it down, and pick it up and the bottom.  Nothing but downhill.  Coast all the way.  I guess that sounds good to a lot of people.  To me it sounds pretty boring.  The ups and downs are more true to life.

My old professor friend had to play golf every time he came to town.  One day we’d been invited by friends to play at one of the gated retirement communities nearby.  We happened to be walking down the fairway together when chimes began to play.  The chimes were playing “Nearer My God To Thee.”  This struck us both the same way.  He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both restrained the urge to laugh out loud.  And his comment was this:  “You know, Ed, this is okay for some people but not for me.  The last thing I want to do is live all shut up with a bunch of old people waiting to die.  I want to live where there are young people and children and a slice of life.  I think you’re away, go ahead and hit.”

Well, I second that motion.  Riding on the level is okay, but give me some ups and downs.  Some protections are okay, but not when they insulate and isolate and choke us off.

A fellow bicycle commuter was killed in D.C. last week.  Run over by a 5.5 ton army truck leaving the office about 6:00 p.m.  Will I be more careful around the cars and trucks I ride with?  Probably, at least for awhile.  Will I play it safe and give up my bike?  No way.

Accomplishments recede.  Satisfaction recedes.  The more we know, the more we realize what we don’t know.  The more we see, the more we want to see more.  Yesterday’s thrills become today’s boredom and tomorrow’s joke.

I went hunting in the Tennessee mountains with my high school buddy.  Not knowing what to do, I decided I should get to high ground.  There was snow and bitter wind.  I struggled up and up, slipping and sweating, finally seeing ahead a leveling off–the top of the mountain, I thought.  What I saw there took my breath away.  I had only climbed a low ridge and was staring at range after range of towering peaks.  I sat and rested, considered it hunting, and returned the way I’d come.  The mountains had humbled me.

We know this principle is at work, but is it a good thing or a bad thing?  The answer to this can get very confusing.  A young person wishes to be slim and attractive.  Nothing wrong with that, of course.  But how slim is enough?  How much focus on weight and body shape is enough?  An otherwise healthy goal can become an obsessive disorder and even threaten life.

My dear alcoholic friend moaned to me one mid-morning that he had drunk an entire fifth of scotch the night before and “couldn’t even get a buzz on.”  Addictions get us hooked and then keep raising the price. At first, just a little does it.  Before long it’s taking more and more, and even then it’s hard to ever re-create the original experience.  The experience recedes, even as we reach for it.

A picture of contentment

We’ve surely seen this played out in the orgy of greed that brought down once-trusted financial institutions and many of their star performers.  The more they gained in the eyes of others, the less it seemed in their own eyes, and the more they wanted and thought they needed.

This is sadly true of American society in general, is it not?  The more we’ve prospered, the less prosperous we seem to ourselves.  We complain that we need better this and better that, more of this and more of that.  Nothing satisfies us because we’ve grown to expect so much.

When I think of the people I’ve known who were contented and happy in life, they were rarely the striving and the greedy.  They were people who had learned to live life well and within their circumstances.  They were usually people with deep and significant ties to family and friends, and often with the land and with nature.  The friend whose image I picked to go with these thoughts was such a man.

Can’t you see it in his face?  And, trust me, this was his face.

In the eyes of many people, this man sitting on his porch would be seen as lacking in wealth and success.  But he did have wealth, of a sort at least.  His wealth was his contentment.  You can try, but you can’t do better than that.

Swimming pool signs in Montgomery County, MD

But the floor had not been wet.  In all my trips to this familiar pool I have never see that floor wet.  And the sign wasn’t one of those yellow ones they stand in the hall while someone mops.  It is permanently mounted on the wall.

That sign is like a stopped clock.  Most of the time it is dead wrong.  But once every 24 hours it gets to be right.  How effective is a warning as stupid as that?  And how often are we warned of harms that have such a long shot at being actual?  So a family may go to the mall and come home with box after box of stuff with stickers warning of trivial harms.  But nothing warned about the agreement made with the credit card that was used to pay for it all.

Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head.  It seems that she was the excitable type, and nervous as well.  She cried out “Help! Help! The sky is falling.”  And we accept that CL actually believed this, for she had indeed been hit on the head.  But as she runs in fright to tell the king, she tells all her friends that the sky is falling and they believe it too–they who were hit on the head by no acorns at all.  They believe it because CL tells them so, and because she is frightened.  Her fright is catching.

It seems that all fright is catching.  Tell people that things are good and they doubt you.  Tell them that things are bad and they believe you.  Write a story about a good deed done in the city and no one will print it because no one will read it.  Write a story about a bad deed done in the city, whether real or imagined, and they put it on the front page with pictures and people devour it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Write about a plan with factual information about improving society and the result is either apathy or argument.  Write about a threat to society with no basis in fact and people take it for the truth. Fright is catching.

As Chicken Little ran to tell the king about the problem with the sky, she created a procession of friends who had become instant believers in the threat.  Ducky Lucky, Henny Penny, and others.  How convenient for Foxy Loxy!  Here was this crowd of frightened citizens who were ready to believe anything, ready to be manipulated, ready to follow.

“Follow me, and I’ll show you the way to the King” said the fox.  And with that he led them straight into his den.  They would never see the king to tell him the sky was falling.

It seems that fear of imagined threats is distracting.  Those possessed with it become easy prey to harms they never suspect.

the pool was home for them and they
were feeding edibles got dumped into
its upper end by waters churning from
the falls above the morsel he had chased
looked like most any other bug or cricket
tempting tossed bouncing in that swirl
but if he’s so smart why the hell
would he do a thing like that and
what’s the point of a treat most any
fish would go for he quick grabbed it up
and ran away why him who knows he happened
to be there he asked for it he can
have it we’ll not miss him he’s shown
what he thinks of us the pleasure he’d
expected turned to pain and all at once
became a threat a struggle for his life
i wonder how he feels he probably
just laughs then goes right on
ignoring us he’d seen it happen twice
before this thrashing battle leading to
the disappearance of a friend who fought
in every direction then just quit a rotten
shame but really now we’ve done
all we can do the more he tried the more
his pain increased he’s lost as far
as we’re concerned and the line that held him
drawing tighter needn’t ask our help
because as his freedom shrank it’s all
his fault like pools when summer’s drought arrives

it’s very hard for a free fish to understand
what’s happening to a hooked one

A fishing village

The men built their boats by hand, just as they’d been build for generations.  In the off-seasons they worked to replace and repair equipment. And well before daybreak, every morning in fishing season, they rowed out in a fleet to seek their catch.

The women and young girls helped by cleaning and dressing the fish and preparing them for market. Even the older women helped as needed. And the young boys of the village were used as baiters.  They went out with the older men to bait the lines that stretched across the entrance to the harbor, down beneath the gentle waves.

Baiting was no simple task, especially when done expertly.  To choose and cut a piece of bait just right, to place it well on the hook, and to do this with efficient speed, was the object of the craft.  So developed was the skill that the boys who did the baiting were classified on several levels: novice, apprentice, journeyman, and master.  Few boys achieved the level of master.

But, of course, it was the greatest satisfaction of any boy to become a master baiter.

My left hand is getting better all the time.  It used to start the pull too soon.  The timing now is smooth and the stoke constant.  It has taken years of daily swimming to accomplish this.

What a feeling to glide to the wall on the last lap.  Then let the body go.  Let it hang like a sponge while the breathing slows to normal.  While the day begins to form.  And sigh, perhaps, as the arms pull me up and to be in the air once again.  Hands pulling off the goggles and rubing the little creases of the face.  And the feet go under and the legs lift, and I’m back on my feet like we suppose we were meant to be instead of swimming through water like a fish.

I headed for the small pool in the corner where hot water churns at you from all sides.  Good for the circulation, they say.  And I met a woman there, a woman all alone.

She was a friendly woman.  As friendly as you could hope to meet all alone in the hot tub.  Smiling and saying hello and wanting to talk.  Talk I had much difficulty with.

For what held me was the sight of her body.  Her body I tried not to be caught looking at.  But whenever her head turned, or I dared a glance, I did look.  As if I was bound to.

And what I kept seeing was always what I had known at first.  That this was a dying woman.  Of cancer that was somewhere in that body, or everywhere.  A body that looked dead already.  As if nothing was left between bone and skin.

It made me look strangely at the visible parts of myself.  The contrast was disturbing.  I seemed to myself  like someone in the long black limousine passing.  Someone who had it made–a different class of person.  I felt conspicuous, as if I was the one who should hide from view, not her.

And I thought then of whatever trouble had come with me to the pool, then put it away.  As she smiled her bright smile, and chatted about the water, and her friends, and how nice the day was.  Then said goodbye, and rose to leave.  And was painfully beautiful as she made her way.

“Don’t order too much, Grandpa.  You need to have money left over for us, you know.”

His listening friend did not know what to say or do.  He started to laugh, but then stopped.  He looked at his buddy to get some clue as to what was the expected reaction.  His buddy was staring at the floor.  They stood there in awkward silence, finally shaking their heads and turning back to their lockers.  I did the same.

I imagined this occasion afterward and wondered about thoughts around that table.  I wondered if a mother tried to scold this child for saying such a thing?  Did Grandpa try to laugh it off, and maybe even succeed?  Did he give this innocent little girl a pat on the head or a kiss on the cheek?  Or did his face turn solemn, or even pained?  Did he shake his head, as in the locker room at the pool?

And what, pray tell, were the thoughts of a son and daughter-in-law, or daughter and son-in-law, as the case might have been?  What, and how often, were there overheard conversations about the old man’s money and their selfish interest?  Had one of them made direct inquiries about the contents of his will and expressed some expectation in the matter?  How was that taken, if so?  And after the pressure of the moment had passed and he was alone with his thoughts, what were they?

I know nothing of any of this, of course, except that men of age take it seriously and may feel violated by such behavior on the part of so-called loved ones.  At least let the man die in peace before you begin fighting over his mortal belongings.

In a Kentucky farming community, there was an old couple who ran a small dairy.  I think it was 8 children they had.  To see their home or their car or they way they dressed and lived, you’d never have thought this couple was rich, but they were.  They had lived frugally all their lives and saved most of every dollar they ever made.  They’d invested in land when it was cheap and owned a lot of it, including some where an interstate highway was going to be build.

It was not a harmonious family.  Various ones of the children were “on the outs” with their parents and with each other.  So it was an odd situation when the old couple died and their last will and testament was opened and read to the assembled group.  Most of the children were given $25. apiece.  The fortune was divided among the several who remained in favor.

What happened then?  The 25 dollar children took their scornful money and went out to a restaurant together.  The inheriting children quickly sold the farm, the equipment, all the land, everything.

And then began a strange tribute to their parents’ life of toil and sacrifice.  Every luxury that money could buy was sought out and purchased.  Cars, clothing, clubs, homes, trips abroad, cruises on the oceans, all of it. Neighbors who’d known the parents found few words to express their thoughts on the matter.  Some did observe the stark contrast in how the money ended up.  What had taken all those years, and all that effort, to save and accumulate–spent in such a short time afterward.

Mainly wasted, they thought.