Songs of the Dead (26 page)

That's the barest start.

I see a white crab spider sit motionless on a white flower, waiting to bring death to some bee who lands here, waiting to feed. I see two ants carry a dead grub presumably toward their home. I see a leaf fall from a bush, and I see another bush bright and bulbous with galls. I see wood dust from boring beetles, and somewhere in the distance I hear the rapid rapping of a woodpecker searching for a meal.

I'm as surrounded by death as I am by life, and suddenly I'm having trouble seeing where one begins and the other ends. I even start to think that one may not be so different from the other, but then I reach to scratch a tickling on my leg and accidentally come away with a dead spider on my hand. This brings me right back to knowing that there
is
a stark difference between life and death: moments before, the spider was alive, and now she is irrevocably dead.

To be a forest, I think—or feel, or am told—is to realize, to be, that contradiction: of life and death melting together on one hand, and separated by a chasm on the other. And of course it's not just life and death that are both miscible and immiscible. The same is true for everything: where does the bee start and the wind end? Where does the tree start and the boring beetle end? Where do the bush, the gall wasp, and the gall each begin and end? To be a bee, or spider, or tree, or woodpecker, or wild human being, is to have entirely different relationships with life and death and each other than all of those relationships I have learned. Life and death—and all others—are partners with whom we dance from beginning to end and back to beginning.

It suddenly seems clear to me—and I'm embarrassed it took a bumblebee, or anyone, really, to point this out to me—that if you don't fear life, and instead are present to life, as it's clear that bumblebees, spiders, sweet clovers, ponderosa pine don't fear life and are present to life; if you don't perceive yourself as living in a cage, because you're not living in a cage, you'll feel more intensely, you'll
be
more intensely, you'll be more alive. There's a reason we call them wild, and there's a reason the ground squirrel chewed her way out of the cage when I was young. Most of us, I think, would have sat down and tried to minimize our discomfort—through drugs, alcohol, relationships, television, sex, jobs, buying, religion, power, and most of all rationalization—and soon would have told ourselves and anyone who would listen that our cage is no cage, that in fact there is no cage at all. And we would attempt to kill all those who try to show us otherwise. Thus the murder of the wild.

It suddenly seems equally clear to me that if you don't fear death in the same way we fear death—that is, call death an enemy to be defeated or transcended, rather than someone who walks beside us to the very end and with whom we converse one way or another (and who has much to teach us) for our entire lives—then you will both live and die radically differently. I don't mean you will never feel terror, never run away, never lose your nerve. But if death is simply (and complexly) death, and if all of your life is an ecstatic (and mundane) adventure, and if all of your life has the significance and vividness of a long and splendid (and sometimes mundane) dream, then you will not spend your precious days and nights in a state of anxiety, but will perceive your own approaching death as a continuation of that lifelong conversation. That doesn't mean, of course, that you won't fight or run from those who would kill you, but the fight or flight is transformed from the grim desperation of refugees fleeing some implacable oppressor to a free and wild and willing being encountering a new (and old) challenge, whether that challenge is to fight off and kill (or avoid, or placate) a grizzly bear with your hands, feet, and wits; or to die with the grace and dignity with which you have lived. To encounter a grizzly—or the infirmity of old age— under these circumstances would be not merely terrifying, but now also an exhilarating adventure.

The question becomes: Can I do it?

I get up, put on my clothes. I start to leave. I hear a voice. “All that,” it says, “is the barest start.”

I tell all this to Allison. She smiles big.

I say, “I kept thinking about that Lakota phrase, ‘It's a good day to die.' Until today I always pictured that said with a sort of desperate resolve, but now I can see how that could be said almost with a jubilance. Yesterday was a good day to live. This morning was a good morning to make love. This afternoon is a good day to die. A fabulous day to die. Whether it's said—and felt—with desperation or jubilation makes all the difference in the world.”

She's still smiling.

I say, “I have no idea how the Lakota mean that phrase, but I do know that's how the bumblebees live it. They taught me that today.”

We both sit.

I say, “But there's something I don't understand. What's the difference between death, and death?”

She doesn't say anything.

“Between a bear, or me, killing a fish to eat, and the Starkist or Unilever corporations killing fish to amass a fortune? The fish are just as dead.”

“One individual fish, maybe, but not the ocean. One difference is that in the former case it serves the community.”

It's true. I've written about that. A few years ago a radio interviewer said to me that Indians exploited salmon, too. I said, “No, they didn't. They ate them.”

“What's the difference?” he asked.

I said they give them respect for the spirit in exchange for the flesh, but I knew that wasn't the whole answer. That afternoon I went to the forest near my home and asked a tree, what is the fundamental predator-prey agreement? The tree gave me the answer immediately: when you consume the flesh of another, you now take responsibility for the continuation and dignity of the other's community.

“But there's another difference,” Allison says, “between a wolf killing a moose or a moose killing a plant, and the U.S. bombing some group of people or a man raping a woman.”

I don't say anything.

“In the former cases the death serves life. In the latter cases it's not about death or life at all. It's about control.”

I nod.

“What's the difference,” she asks, “between making love and rape?”

“There are lots of differences.”

“Right now I'm thinking of one. Making love serves life. It makes love. It's about life. Rape is about power. They share the same form, but the meaning and the process—I don't mean a man moving in and out, but the emotional and spiritual processes, and the memories made—are radically different.”

I nod again. She can tell that I still don't quite understand.

She gets up, walks to the bookshelf, pulls down a book, goes to another bookshelf, pulls down a magazine, pulls down another, brings them back, sits down. She says, “This is from a United States pilot who was dropping napalm on Vietnamese in 1966: ‘We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot—if the gooks were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene—now it stuck like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter,'” she pauses, looks at me, says, “Willie Peter means white phosphorous,” and then she continues reading, “so's to make it burn better. It'll even burn under water now. And just one drop is enough, it'll keep burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorous poisoning.'”

She puts down that magazine, picks up another, thumbs through it, says, “This is what Canadian Minister of Natural Resources John Efford says to those who wish to stop the slaughter of seals by Canadian sealers, ‘I would like to see the six million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed and sold, or destroyed or burned. I do not care what happens to them. The more they kill, the better I will love it.' Or in the US invasion of the Philippines, soldiers were sent into the field ‘for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley, and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I [found] outside of towns . . . all able-bodied men [were to] be killed or captured.'” Allison pauses, says, “Now here is the point, and remember what the man said about seals. General Jacob H. Smith gave orders that, ‘I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.' When a subordinate requested clarification, Smith said he wanted all persons killed who were either hostile toward the United States or who were capable of bearing arms. This latter category explicitly included children down to the age of ten.'”

Neither of us says anything.

She says again: “‘The more they kill, the better I will love it.' And, ‘The more you kill and burn the better you will please me.'”

The more you kill and “My God,” I say.

“Of course,” she responds. “Who else?”

“That's everything,” I say, “isn't it?”

“That's the culture in a nutshell, yes.”

“The
wétiko
disease.”

“Yes.”

“We're reaching the end, aren't we?”

“It can't go on much longer.”

“No.”

“It can't.”

I understand, but I don't. I want to understand better the difference between death and death. And I want to know more what it's like to be a forest, not just anytime, but now, faced with this culture.

Allison says, “You can ask me, and I'm glad to make up an answer, but if you want to know, why don't you ask the forest?”

Allison comes with me. We're in the forest. She's lying on the ground and I'm on top of her, pushing into her as she pushes against the soil and the soil pushes against her. She wraps around me as the roots of trees reach from beneath the ground to wrap around us both. She comes, and so do I. The earth beneath us comes, as do the stones and trees.

nine teen

to be a forest

I sit, back against a tree. I ask, “What is it like to be you, facing this culture? And what is the difference between death and death?”

The answer comes immediately, and so clearly I have to look at Allison to see if she heard it too.

Her face is blank.

I say, “I'm supposed to go to the river.”

“Do you know why?”

“I'll find out when I get there.”

There are a bunch of reasons I don't talk much with Allison about my previous romantic relationships, not the least of which is that I've found that to talk very much about exes almost never helps the current relationship, or more specifically, the current partner. I can still hear my mother say to me when I was very young, “Help each person—whether grocery clerk or best friend—feel good about themselves, help them to feel like the only person in the world.” I remember her encouraging—even enforcing—this behavior when I was six, seven, eight. This must have been something my entire family learned, because I remember years later asking my sister if she thought I should discuss with my current girlfriend some problems I'd had with an ex, and I remember her saying, “Why would you want to do that? If you need to work through those issues, do it with someone not involved, with
anyone
other than your new girlfriend. Trust me on this. The questions to ask yourself before you bring up things like this are: How will talking about this make her feel about herself? Will it make her feel special? How will talking about this make her feel about you? How will talking about this make her feel about your current relationship? How will talking about this help the relationship itself? Are there other ways you can get across the same points without planting unnecessary memories?”

Memories are alive, and once planted they grow. Allison re- members every detail, no matter how trivial, I've ever told her about anyone I've ever dated. The same is true for me, and the same is true for more or less everyone I've ever known. Mention that you once had sex on a train—and just for the record, I'm speaking theoretically— and I can guarantee what your partner will think about when she next hears that lonesome whistle blow. Talk about your hot weekend in Vegas where you were lucky both in cards and in love— once again, I'm making this up—and I'm guessing your partner's enthusiasm for hearing you talk about poker might dim just a little.

Several years ago I knew a woman whose boyfriend talked incessantly about previous girlfriends. All roads, she said, led to exes. There was no place they could go without him saying, “Oh, I brought Samantha here on our first date,” or “I used to come here all the time with Hope,” or “I used to date a Vietnamese woman whose favorite soup was pho, and she taught me how to pronounce it. She's the only Asian woman I've ever had sex with.”

She told me she'd gotten tired of never being alone with him, because he always brought along these ghosts. “It got so I was afraid to talk about anything,” my friend said, “because I was always waiting for him to conjure another woman into every conversation. I should have known something was wrong when right after the first time we were together, even still in bed, he started talking about old lovers.”

I asked her what happened.

“I got him to stop.”

“How?”

“We were housesitting for some friends who had a hot tub, and he and I were going to get in. Just before we did, I told him this reminded me of the time I'd had sex with some guy in a hot tub. I told him how wonderful it was, and I told him all the details, every last one, blow by blow, thrust by thrust.”

“Was that true?”

“Are you kidding me? I'd never even been in a hot tub, much less had sex in one. But my details were evidently convincing because he got very quiet and remembered there was a movie he wanted to watch instead. After a while I went inside and asked him if he liked how that felt.

“And it worked?”