Appendix C Thesis Report TITLE OF THE MASTER'S THESIS NIGHT ON THE INVISIBLE SUN by Alec Bryan Full Name of Student A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah April 22. 2008 Month Date, Year *Be sure to ask committee members how they would like their names typed. Master's Thesis Alec Bryan May, 2008 Weber State University English Department Brief Synopsis of Literary influences and Devices This novel is my Bildungsroman. The main character is a moth. I chose a moth for numerous reasons. A moth undergoes a transformation which sees it go from an earth- bound creature to a heavenward creature. After the transformation, a moth seeks out the sources of light. The relationship of a moth to light is very symbolic. The very thing that the moth loves most is the source of its demise, and yet, the moth cannot live without it. This symbolism signifies man's (and my) relationship with the higher power that governs life. It is in trying to seek out meaning in life when man becomes despondent, and yet, without that meaning, life is useless anyways. Such a predicament is very similar to a moth seeking light. I also chose a moth because it undergoes for stages of life. I play with the stages and use them to represent the four stages that our mind undergoes when we face new situations. The four stages, represented in each chapter and by a certain style are: the idyllic(or ideal) or Edenic state, the death of the ideal state, the fear to act because of consequences for actions and beliefs state, and the realization that life is a joke state which leads to the restructuring of the personal myth state which is usually a return to the way things were in stage one. Chapter one begins with the creature awaking. What it was before and what it did before is never mentioned. I chose this approach for two reasons. One was to mimic Adam's awakening in the Garden of Eden, and the second was to show that the moth had lived up unto this point in its life without being consciously aware of it. Much in the same way Dante's Divine Comedy starts in a dark wood with a person lost. The chapter is written very didactically and without too much trauma. The moth meets the old man who seeks to show him the way into life. The old man crushes some of the naivety of the creature in an attempt to prepare it for its fall into the world. The chapter has nine sections to illustrate that the creature is about to enter the field of time. In chapter one, the old man uses two sources to extract the creature from its cocoon. Those two sources are the writings of Paul, who tries to explain that suffering is necessary to be worthy of Christ, and Voltaire, who tries to explain how useless all suffering is and mocks those who attribute it to a higher power. The old man's hope is that the creature will choose a middle ground and try to figure out what path one must take. This chapter deals mainly with suffering and looks at how it applies to man. If the man is to prepare the creature for the world, what better lesson could he try to teach it? The chapter ends unresolved on purpose. One does not find out, at least not in this life, if there is meaning to suffering. Chapter two is the creature's entrance into the world. I used the old Greek motif of someone shuttling the creature across the river, only this time, instead of going to the underworld, the creature is coming into the current world. The symbolism being that this world is worse than death's underworld. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part is the creature's time with the unkempt man. In this part, I use two pairs of opposites again, much like Voltaire and Paul in chapter one, and much like the yin and yang in philosophy. Here I pit Wordsworth's ode "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" where he says we "came here trailing clouds of glory," against T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," where he tries to find belief in something beyond this life but cannot. The second part of the chapter is the crushing of the ideal. I used a style particular to this story because it adds to the intensity and was the proper style. This chapter is fraught with tragedy and the loss of love. Chapter three is what I refer to as my Hamlet chapter. It begs the question "to be or not to be," and it looks at two specific problems within that question. It looks at the awful consequences of not acting and how we are acted upon, and then it looks at the awful consequences of what happens when we do act. Either decision causes a stasis within a person and leads them to sit and let life pass them by. The literary devices used for this chapter are a chapter from the Book of Mormon Where the followers of Christ went and picked fruit from the tree of life, only I have altered the vision and made it more consequential. I have also used Dante's inferno to help describe hell. This chapter is written in a style that jumps all over the place for a certain effect. The man cannot make up his mind and therefore he. thinks about things in random orders and according to need. Chapter four is a play. I chose this style to illustrate what life becomes when we find no meaning within it. The format of the chapter continues even after the play is done because it illustrates how once life becomes such, we rarely see it as anything else. The play itself deals with issues that have been brought up from time to time with the literati. Chapter four ends with the creature never making it back across the river. It sits like a Moses and watches the symbolic sun set and then it dies. The four men watching the sunset with the creature are Biblical figures. I will not say which ones. The old one, however, is John. John, who according to the Bible, still roams the earth today. At the end of the novel I change the emphasis from the creature towards the man. The man, who through so many days of bleakness, is waiting for the better days and can think of nothing but the dream (almost millennial in essence). This novel required me to study Joseph Campbell, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and numerous religious texts. I would say that over three to five thousands pages were read in preparation for this novel. It was not an easy task, but it has been worth it. Alec Bryan Night on the Invisible Sun Contents Tugs and Pulls of the Modern World - 4 When Stars Die -26 All Over a Bowl of Bitter Beans - 50 Swiss Cheese and the Never-Ending Math Equation - 70 2 Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. -Sir Thomas Browne The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become. -Wallace Stevens 3 The Tugs and Pulls of the Modern World 4 The creature awoke. The shadowy remains of the late afternoon's nightmare still formed a faint and incomprehensible outline in its mind. It tried to focus on the outline but lost even the slightest trace of what was once there. Crouched in its enveloped darkness, shaky, wondering what this recurring dream might mean, it began by recollecting, in order, those things it knew with a certainty. It only knew, for sure, that it was still alone, that it was still trapped, and that night was fast descending upon it, and in twilight's utter and solemn emptiness, and in its nocturnal silence, it was then that a strange voice penetrated the cocoon's outer wall and fell upon the prickly ears of the creature. "Is anyone in there," said the voice. The small creature responded as resoundingly as a trapped thing can and as loud as something dares when it is not sure the voice—especially after its recurrent daydream—is a reality beyond the constructs of its own inventive thinking. "Yes I am in here," said the creature, the echo reverberated about the cocoon. "I have walked this forest many days this summer, and I noticed early on this cocoon, fully built, and yet, nothing has ever emerged from it. Why have you stay locked in for such a long time, little creature?" With its feeble comprehension, the little creature was not able to let the man know that being in a cocoon is somewhat like being in a coma; one does not realize how long one has been comatose until summoned from it, and then, the passage of time is only recognizable through exterior indicators. The creature replied with candor, "I apologize, but I do not have the power to break the casing that I have constructed." The man laughed. "As a traveler, I have seen many predicaments like this before, little creature. Let me guess, you have developed your wings, and in so doing, grown too big for your cocoon. It would be ideal if your strength had developed commensurate with your wings, then you could burst through the thin walls." The little creature replied, "If I just had a little room to move around, with the slightest momentum I could force myself through these thin walls, but it appears my rapid growth has come with a terrible cost. It has hindered my escape. Is there anything I can do to get out? If you could condescend to help, I would be forever in your debt." The honest and humble reply of the little creature appealed to the man's altruistic nature. He knew exactly how to help the trapped creature escape from its cocoon, but his method was neither painless nor conventional—as escapes rarely are. He explained to the trapped creature that the escape would come at a great and inevitably painful cost. But the creature was unable to think about or measure costs, and only desiring the simple freedoms allotted to others, told the man it did not worry about the price of freedom. "Okay," said the man. "It's dark now. I will be back tomorrow morning. Think about what I have told you, and if you still wish for your freedom when you wake, then I will help you achieve it in the morning. Until tomorrow, my trapped, little creature." With that, the man walked off through the forest, but before going, he turned once to mark the place the cocoon hanged, even though he had passed it numerous times, and went on his way. T he creature pressed its ear against the cocoon and strained to hear each retreating step of the old man, until even the sound of the quiet footfall was finally inaudible. 5 Aside from a random cricket that chirped now and again, the creature was left once more to the utter and empty solitude of night. The dark night did nothing to impede the creature from feeling excitement and anxiety over what had just happened. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect upon the creature. As it pondered its pending freedom, the creature could not help but think that its abode of darkness had never felt so alone and so dark, and yet, that shroud of darkness never felt so much like a warm blanket as it did that very night. The creature experienced the same reluctance that a bird has when it leaves the warmth and security of incubation for the ferocity of a cold birth. In life, only the moribund, roused, and yet, frightened by the clarion call from the unknown, could comprehend such peaceful and all-encompassing warmth and security of the already known. II The next morning the man was true to his word, and his arrival coordinated with the earliest light bursting through the rheumy walls of the creature's cocoon. "Good morning little creature," said the man. "How did you sleep?" The creature admitted that it slept heavy but soundly, until morning, when it started to wonder whether the man would reappear. "Ah, a natural reaction, little creature. When we think we are to pass on to something new, anxiety then doubt are the first uninvited guests that come knocking upon the confines of our frenzied mind's door. Luckily, anticipation resides deep within us all and is a vigilant guardian of that door. It will not let these transients stay long before it scurries them on their way. And did you, little one, think about the proposition put before you?" The creature replied with exuberance, "I have, and I have decided that a little pain caused presently is worth the end result of freedom." "Ah yes, present pain, but you misunderstood me, little one. Proximate pain oftentimes leads to a future fraught with constant suffering, it is the augmenting, not the assuaging thereof. Are you sure, and I mean absolutely positive, you want to be freed?" The creature thought about its current situation and the lack of movement, and the darkness, and the silence, and decided that freedom at any cost would be better than living as it now did. "I want to be freed, good sir, and I would be forever grateful towards you if you could accommodate my desire." With shrugged shoulders and a slight gasp of air, the old man responded to the little creature's importuning with a somber and somehow optimistic, "So be it. Let us begin." Having the little creature retreat to the furthest corner (albeit not much because of the creature's size) of the cocoon, and with the precision of a surgeon operating on his miniature child, the old man pulled slowly on the one loose-silk fiber that was pinched between his fingernails. As the fiber unwound about a foot or two, the man placed it into the center of a book and then closed the thick book, trapping the string-like fiber tight along the inner spine. The man then had the creature retreat to the other side of the cocoon, and he repeated the process as gingerly as possible; this time trapping the silk string along the spine of a thinner book. Once accomplished, the man sat down near the cocoon so his head was right below the swaying branch. "Now little creature, I want to read you a small passage from each of the two books; seeing as I have employed their 6 integral service in the process, I find it only fair to speak something of what lies in each book." The old man began his odd discourse ill medias res without any explanation: "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience, and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." So began the peculiar talk of the old man. Talk the creature had never fathomed nor heard spoken, but somehow the words appealed to an innate part of the creature's abdomen that had lied latent for so long that now, as it acted up, it stung sharp as it burnt within. The man continued reading from what he called the big book. "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers..." And on and on he discoursed. But the creature did not consciously comprehend anything else, for the part it remembered was sufficient to make its mind reel to and fro and unravel, creating a dreamlike state of consciousness within it. The words were too much for the little creature to take at one sitting. The creature was full, and it was baffled by both the logic and illogic of the statements, at the same time, it wondered what such things might signify. The man suddenly stopped reading, then after a pause he addressed the creature. "Well, little creature, what think ye of such sayings?" Another pause and lingering silence pervaded. "Do not answer little one. I know. I know. Such things take time to develop into concrete thought. Ideas are born in liquid. While you sit there thinking, let me read to you from the smaller book." He grabbed the other book, and the fibrous silk wedge caught within it caused the branch to sway to and fro for a few moments. Opening the book, the man began on another strange, poignant discourse. The creature did not remember all the man read, but certain passages caused the same burning sensation within its abdomen, only more visceral and accompanied with a caustic tinge creating a singular pain. The lines the man read to the creature unfurled thus: "I know it; why not try this diversion? Ask every passenger on this ship to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who has not often cursed the day of his birth, who has not often told himself that he is the most miserable of men, then you may throw me overboard head first." The discourse gathered impetus, and around it seemed to spin in the opposite direction of the man's first readings, all the while weaving, in vicious counterrevolutions, with each word, what the other book had unwoven. "When his highness sends a ship to a foreign land, does he worry whether the mice on board are comfortable or not?" And the strange discourse continued, but like before, the creature's capacity to comprehend had already been reached, and the mind was wandering down distant labyrinthine paths and running into constricting walls no matter which way it turned. And when the man stopped reading and the creature heard nothing but his rhythmic breathing below, the creature must admit it felt a weight that it had never felt before, and it began to question whether it had made a mistake by employing the man's services, for the woe of being was so attenuated by the discoursing, that the creature 7 thought freedom perhaps a mistake altogether. Perhaps a life of lethargic stillness had its advantages. The creature's eyes were clinched tight; a spectral silence enclosed it. It must have sat like that for a long moment of time. When finally the creature opened its eyes, expecting to see the same silky and soft envelope around it, it was shocked to discover that its cocoon had completely unraveled and lay disheveled upon the branch, drooping hopelessly towards the forest floor. The creature was afraid, and its natural reaction was a shudder that ran from the tip of its ciliate antennae down through the base of its abdomen. It did not know what to do. Through dilated eyes it saw that the forest lay to each side of it, the sky above, and below it, it saw the ashen grey hair of the man who had set it free. It closed its eyes again. The reality of what the extrinsic scene presented to it in comparison with the imagined outer world it had envisioned caused such a dichotomy within the creature that all it now viewed possessed a vague sense of unreality. With a rudimentary sense of fear creeping into its abdomen also came a sinister concern that what it had just done would cause a pain much more distinct and sharp than the joy of the freedom now allotted unto it. At this moment, and discerning the creature's predicament, the man spoke to it. "Oh no, little one, closing your eyes won't help now. You cannot go back into the dark lair you have inhabited. It is gone forever. Shudder if you must, but this is life in its entire, awful and irreversible splendor." The man's words, as harsh as they were, quelled the anxiety the creature was then feeling, and sensing the adroitness in all the man had said and done thus far, the creature thought it prudent to ask him what it should do now that he had afforded it with freedom. But without giving the man time to respond to the question, the creature was curious to see the books that had been the instrument in unraveling the silk casing of the small cocoon and asked where they were. The man explained that the process had taken longer than the creature may have then surmised and as he had thrown each book in opposite directions, with the stringy silk bedded deep into the spine of the book, the cocoon unwound itself and parted on either side of the creature, leaving the creature precariously alone on the branch; much the way a sleeping fish would look if upon waking, it were to find that the lake it roved and prowled for so long had dried up over night. "I will gather my books now, they are not too far from here, and then I will be on my way. It is almost the season for me to begin my work again. I will not be able to return to the forest, therefore, I wish you luck, creature, in your endeavors." The man, using the tree as a brace, hobbled to his legs and peered at the creature askance and with imploring eyes that spoke of a sadness the creature could not yet surmise. The man wished the creature well one last time. The creature, in the throes of anxiety and fear tried to stall the man, not wanting to see him leave just yet, for the indecision as to what to do next still vexed the creature. How was it to act? "But wait kind sir, do not leave me yet, I do not know what to do, where to go, or for that matter, even if I am able to move!" The old man paused, and whispered to the creature: "There is but one thing for you to do little one—you attempt to fly now." The creature looked perplexed, and the man shuffled off a few feet and then turned once more towards the small creature and in an exhortatory tone gave his final advice to the creature this day, "One favor, I ask of you, little one. When you do fly, for fly you will, before you go on any predisposed flight of fancy be sure to fly straight up, not teeter 8 tottering to the left or to the right, not vacillating forward or backwards, but straight up until you have a wonderful view of all that surrounds you, and as you hover there, fluttering so high above us down here, take in the immaculate view, see what it is that lies all around you, contemplate where you would like to go, and then begin your trek into whatever foreign region it is you wish to venture. That is all I ask." The man looked one more time at the creature and then ambled off into the forest. Meanwhile, the creature hollered a parting thanks to the back of the man whom had afforded it its freedom and then sat dejectedly upon its branch. The old man vanished into the stifling wall of black that the trees constituted, and as he did, the poor creature thought to itself, What will I do now, and then the creature realized that it had not even asked the man what it was, nor had the man gathered any books before he hobbled off. After composing itself for a period of time, and allowing its eyes to adjust to the unfiltered light, the creature fluttered and flapped its brittle wings to verify they worked, and in so doing, the creature scuttled forward on the branch—the wings had worked. The flapping motion was as natural as breathing for the creature; it was the physical exertion it was unaccustomed to. Resting for a moment, it decided it was ready to attempt flight. It flapped its wings in furious beats and letting go of the branch, it began its ascent. Unaccustomed to such levity, and with slight atrophic strokes, the creature accidentally veered right and left, then forward and backward as it climbed skyward. Barring such accidental and miniscule movements from the path the man had set the creature on, it continued to climb higher and higher, rising with each rhythmic beat, slowly gaining the cadence of flight, passing the canopy of black trees in glowing optimism for its heights. The creature noticed the lightness of the air, and with it came an easier ascent. Rapturously, the creature continued its climb, as the fibrillations of its heart pounded unceasing. Nearing the giant cumulus mediocris clouds, the creature decided it had achieved the heights it needed to view its surroundings, any further up and the clouds would obscure its view altogether. It looked down upon the terrestrial earth. Much to its dismay, the anticipation of reaching such atmospheric heights had prepared it for a view that would be congruent with the ecstasy of the climb and the proud fibrillations that coursed through its entire abdomen. What it saw instead was how small, distant and foreign everything appeared. The heights distorted everything. The forest ran for miles, but it was just that, a simple forest. Homes and hamlets were scattered throughout, but there was nothing unique about them. Off in the distance rose a jagged but common mountain range, and off in the other distance, a large and typical river meandered through a valley, but the creature saw nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing that resembled life. From its height, the entire scene resembled a cheap, one dimensional painting drawn by an artist that could not fathom the disparate depths of the incongruous peaks and valleys, crags and crevices any more than a stick figure drawing of a family could capture the intricacies that take place within each members mind, moreover, the delicate and subtle nuances that made that family peculiar. The creature had expected something more from such soaring heights, and all it had found up there was a groping kind of solitude, and a fractured view of flight, and an indomitable longing to be back among the multi¬dimensional world it knew so little about. It grew suddenly sick of the heights it had climbed, and the space in its breast, once filled with rapture towards the climb, first turned hollow, then quickly began to fill again, only this time, it filled with what felt like 9 lead weights and was accompanied with a nausea that caused the creature's head to swirl and fill faint. The enervated creature decided it had seen enough of its surroundings and immediately began its descent, and much like the climb straight up, the creature descended straight down, veering very little either to the left or right or backwards or forward. It quickly fell back through the canopy of trees and then maneuvered its way through the branches and leaves that protruded outwards in an intricate web of green and brown limbs. In the heavier air, the creature glided effortlessly, alighting on the exact branch it had left. The creature perched itself upon the branch and waited for the nauseating effects of its flight to depart. The creature sat there for hours with its head pounding and its heart filled with a new pang similar to those it had felt earlier in the day, only throbbing louder, the pang did not seem to stop in the center of the abdomen, but ventured its way into every extremity, including the head and antennae. As the creature sat there frightened, it felt the cold depressing wind begin to crash upon its back, and the creature, for the first time, remembered the warmth of its cocoon and the melodious sound the wind had made as it beat upon that once immutable shell. While it sat there pondering such things, the creature felt a loneliness that it had never experienced; so real and so powerful was the new melancholy that possessed the creature that in its stupefied state, the creature tried to reconstruct its cocoon with the remains of the strung-out silk that still clung to the branch in shambles. But its efforts were futile, for the string was all unraveled, and try as it might, it could not cover its Hanks from the incessant wind. The creature sat upon the branch paralyzed and quasi-catatonic throughout the day. It stayed sitting there, cold and disheartened as night descended upon it. With the advent of night, each new gust of haunting wind sounded like the howl of some nefarious demon come to wreak havoc upon the exposed and vulnerable creature. What had its freedom brought it? The night was long and cold. The creature did not sleep. Ill As the warmth and light from the nascent sun began to extend the breath of vitality through the wall of trees, the forest yawned to life; simultaneously the wind and the strange noises from the night before began their recession, and for all the force that the dominion of dark carried with it during the night, its retreat marked a hushed and acquiescent farewell. When a child closes his eyes to receive the poke of the needle penetrating the epidermal, the child keeps his or her eyes closed and his or her muscles tensed in expectation that the retraction of the needle from the flesh will be just as sharp and painful as the entry, and only upon opening the eyes does the child realize the needle has already been withdrawn. This painless withdraw of the needle from the flesh emboldens the child to express, "It was not that bad." Day arrives in similar fashion and with similar results. In hindsight, it would be ridiculous for the child to call the needle evil just because it inflicted a temporary pain upon it, so too, the night deserved no derision from the creature. The creature, ecstatic that it had made it through the frightful night and still clung to life, arrived at the conclusion that perhaps its freedom might prove worthwhile. Nevertheless, it did not wish to suffer through another night like the previous. It decided on a rapid course of action—find the man who had set it free. What it would do once it 10 found the man never crossed its callow mind. And so, judging by the direction the man had hobbled off, the creature, heading east, took to the sky for the second time. After a week of fruitless searching, sleeping near windowsills—the light and afterglow of warmth escaping the homes seemed pleasant to the creature in contrast to the bleak darkness the forest had presented to it that first night—the creature began to think its journey hopeless. In the fits of hopeless despair, however, near the outskirts of town, it espied a man, carrying a shovel caked with dirt. Even from a distance, the creature recognized the slight hobble. The creature immediately fluttered in the old man's direction, and upon closer inspection and to its heart content, realized it had indeed found the man it had been searching for. Not knowing how to broach a conversation and feeling awkward in its hovering silence, the creature asked the first thing that entered its head, "Where are you going?" "From where I came, eventually," replied the perambulating old man. The creature thought about the old man's comment, and after a pause of consternation, caught up to the old man and asked if it could come along with him. The man suffered the creature to tag along, and so the creature, not knowing where the man would take it and exhausted from flight, settled on the man's dirty shoulder. "So this is what you have decided to do with your freedom, eh? Tag along with an old man." The creature did not know how to respond. For the time being it let silence prevail. The old man ambled on through the town, giving nods of affirmation to the passersby but receiving little or no response from them in return. Once the old man left the bustle of the town behind, the creature asked what it was he planned to do with the shovel. The old man did not respond to the question, but rather continued to amble on in silence. The creature mistook the old man's silence as evidence that he had not heard it. It repeated the question. "What will you do with the shovel you carry?" The old man's aberrant response stunned the creature. "I will do with the shovel what the shovel was made to do. I will dig. I will dig a hole—a hole so deep, that I will either come out on the other side, creating a tunnel of light through the hollow earth, or I will strike fire at the center, and thus, travel no further." The creature laughed a little at the man's odd response until the old man's discerning and serious eyes rested their penetrating gaze upon it, and only then did the creature stop its chortling and realize with reproach that the man was serious. It is a strange embarrassment evoked when a thing of extreme seriousness is mistaken for a thing of naught. The embarrassment is not felt because of an oversight on the perpetrators part, but rather it is felt for the complacency with which the offended views the thing in question. How could the old man not know that such a response was preposterous? "Why? asked the perplexed creature. "Why a hole?" "I see I must explain everything to you. Very well then." The man explained that when he was a young boy, he used to help his father dig holes. But the holes were only six feet deep and once the old man (then a young boy) reached the six feet, he always had this unsatisfied, itching feeling that perhaps he should go deeper. Six feet is where the dead lay, he wanted to go beneath the shallow surface and to the bottom of it all. 11 "You see, little creature, when I was young, I did not know what compelled me to such strange desires. Now I know. And what was taken for a child's whim back then has become the driving force in my old age." "What have you found out with age that has changed your perspective on digging holes?" asked the creature. "It is not easy to explain to you, little one, but I will try." With that humble introduction, the old man began his first attempt of many to recapitulate the past, and capture, with veracity, the essence of it, all the while failing to avoid the temptation of extracting didacticism from those moments. IV "My father was a gravedigger. Once I was old enough to wield a shovel, I began working with my father. One day, after digging holes for a year or so, I asked him why he had become a gravedigger in the first place, and my father replied that he did not choose such a morose profession but stumbled upon it happenstance when my mother became pregnant and he was unemployed. 'Simply to make ends meet,' said my father. 'We were in a bind, and I needed to make sure your mother was provided for during her pregnancy. But,' he continued, 'I have since learned a valuable lesson because of this job. I have learned that to have a finger on the pulse of humanity requires that you also must have one foot in the grave, son.' He went back to work and did not speak another word to me that afternoon. I did not put much stock into that saying at the time. I guess it just sort of slipped into my unconscious and harbored there until I needed to recall it. Anyways, my father and I used to come home from a hard day's work and my father would not say much about the day, but my mother knew that someone had died and someone needed to be buried; they always did and such was the nature of our job. And it was my father and I who would go and do the digging for the town, and we would stand off in the distance as the procession would come to the hole, and we could not help but overhear someone still living saying all these nice things about the deceased who was to be buried, and it didn't matter if the person deserved such praise when he was living, he got it when he was dead. Then the person doing the eulogizing would move on to all the regrets the family had due to lack of time spent with the now deceased. A son would say how there was no time to throw a ball with him. A daughter would lament over the lack of time to take her to the fair or to help her on her schoolwork. The wife would sob over the lost time to take her on all those promised trips, all those sights they had always wanted to see together, if she could just hold off a few more years until he retired, but now he was eternally retired and the gulf between the living and the dead was impassable. And my father would sit and listen to this, and he could not help but think of the finality of death, like a cord that was cut and never could be strung back together because once cut, the tension in the cords caused them to fly in separate directions. My father and I would wait for the family to leave and then we would bury that man, covering him forever with the smattering of earth's abundant dirt, allowing the man to decompose in peace. My father and I would not wash our hands when we got home. He used to say to me, 'You leave that dirt on those hands. It is time to eat.' He would sit down at the table and eat like he had never eaten before. He would scarf down his food with about as much 12 refinement as a pack of wolves around a dead animal. As if even mastication was a burden for him. He would breathe loud while he would eat, and food would spill out the sides of his mouth, and he would grab his water and gulp it down and let it run down his face. Then he would set the cup down and wipe his face with his dirty hands. He ate like it was his first and last meal. The family would watch this atypical communion in profound silence. Hardly was a word spoken during those meals. After this ritual, he would take a bucket of clean water and the lye soap, and he would clean off the dirt and grime that had worked its way underneath his fingernails, behind his ears, in his hair, and any other place dirt manages to hide (he always made me wash up first). After that he would come back downstairs, cleansed, like a new man, and he would play with the younger kids, and he had this look in his eye like it was the first time he had ever played with them, as if they had just been handed over from a midwife and he was so happy to see that we were alive and breathing. That wonderment in his eye, creature, you should have seen it. It was as if each day he watched the procession of death, it resurrected my father, and his resurrection was this life; he didn't want to wait for the next. He feared that irrevocability of death he saw in the drawn out faces, in the eyes of the living, at those funerals." The now old man, looked at the creature and replied, "That statement of my father's about one foot in the grave helping him keep a finger on the pulse of humanity has not left me. It has grown in importance over the years. In fact, it made me realize that I, too, loved to dig. What my father got duped into as a profession because of my birth, I have willfully inherited as his son." And with that being said, the man abruptly stopped walking, swung his shovel head around and began digging. Although the creature enjoyed hearing the old man reminisce about his past, it remained aggravated that the man had not really answered its question, but had skirted around it. It was about to ask him more on the relevancy of digging holes, but perplexed as to why the man chose such a spot, asked him instead the latter thought. "Why have you chosen this spot?" "Because, my prying little one, since the world is round, it does not matter where one starts digging a hole. They are the axis, they are the auger, and so long as they keep at it, they will either reach the fiery center that lights the earth and gives it life, or they will tunnel through the center and breakthrough to light on the other side." The creature sat on the man's shoulder and stewed over the strange course of action the man had taken. It was perplexed. It wondered just how stable the old man was, and it wondered if it was safe to stay by his side. But it could not abandon the man. The man had been its source of freedom, and the creature felt a kindred spirit with him that went beyond the boundaries of its comprehension. The man, taking a brief respite from his digging, leaned upon his shovel and once again with that intuitive nature of his, ascertained what the creature was thinking about. "You question the validity of such a quest, do you little creature? Well, let me tell you another story of my youth." And again, in an attempt to recapitulate the past, the man delved into another story while the creature sat in silence. V 13 "When I was a boy, I had a bird. The bird loved to sing. Our house would resound with the immaculate chirps and warbles each morning and on through the day. I would listen to it for hours as I read or studied in my room. It was to me, the most sonorous, comforting and joyful of sounds. One day, however, the bird stopped chirping. This befuddled me. I knew that it was not because it had grown old, for purchased when a fledgling, the bird still had five or six years to live. I thought it might be its health, and then decided, 'No, it's not its health because the bird still eats.' I knew it was not the wings because they never were clipped. I then realized it must be the blasted cage; the cage is stifling the bird's spirit. I rationalized that if I were locked in a cage and were able to behold, nay grasp with my hands through the bars that kept me in, that very freedom that was denied me, it would quash my spirit as well. The next day, the bird still refused to sing. Much to my chagrin, I decided to let the bird go free. So with bitter resentment, I opened the cage to let the bird go. The bird stood statuesque on its little perch and would not fly away. I tried coaxing it, letting it know it was free; saying the things a kid would say, 'come on little birdie, you are free now.' The bird would not go. Finally, I tried shooing it to freedom by putting my hand into its cage and forcing it towards the open door, to which action the bird committed its only act of aggression towards me—it bit me. It reached down with its tiny beak, and pecked me hard enough to draw a small pebble of blood where the skin meets the thumbnail. I felt the simultaneous emotions of shame and anger towards the bird's act of aggression. I slammed the cage door shut and stormed from the room. After bandaging my wound, and letting my anger subside, I realized that it was I who should be ashamed for having fallaciously surmised that I could grant the bird its freedom by compulsory means. I rationalized that if my parents, through compulsion, goaded me towards some objective, even if the objective was an outcome I had hoped for, I would not be please once it was obtained because my free will would have been manipulated and compromised in the process. The bird did not leave because I was forcing it. I decided that if the bird wanted to leave, it would leave of its own volition and on its own terms. The bird would wait for the opportune time when I left the room, and then it would fly away. So, I left the cage door open and stayed away from the room for a couple of hours, giving the bird its opportunity to leave without coaxing. I returned later that day and discovered that the cage door had been shut and the bird was still locked in. I figured that a gust of wind must have jarred the cage door closed. I moved the cage away from the current of wind that circulated from window to window and opened the cage door again. This time I tied the cage door open with a small piece of yarn and then left the room. I returned again a few hours later only to find that the door had been shut. The yarn lay on the ground in tatters, pecked to shreds. The bird sat silently upon its perch, staring at me. That was the last time I tried to open the cage for the bird. I never heard the bird sing again. Two weeks after these incidents, the bird quietly died during the night. In the morning, I found it lying stiff at the bottom of its cage in its own excrement. We never knew for sure what caused its death. Now creature, I have thought long and hard about that bird's tragic demise, and although, as a boy I was enthralled by its singing, as an old man it is the bird's last days that fill me with wonder. I sit up late at night and marvel, what drove the bird to such madness; what possessed it to stay locked up rather than enjoy its final fleeting hours; why would it silently suffer in its self-imposed cage and die?" 14 The man paused from his reflections, and leaning on the shovel, seemed lost in a maze of reverie. The creature reflected as well. It still thought that this, the only man it had ever known intimately, was the strangest it would ever meet, but the question that occupied the creature's anxious mind had nothing to do with the bird. The preoccupation was simply this: The creature thought about the hollowness of its cocoon and it wondered what the old man would do if the center of the earth was also hollow? The creature pictured the man breaking through the crust of the final inner layer of earth and plummeting to his death. The poor old man, thought the creature. What a meaningless journey he will be on if the center of the earth is hollow or if it the earth is so obdurate and compacted as he gets deeper down that it renders his shovel useless. The man came out of his stupor and looked at the creature sitting perfunctorily on his shoulder. "Give it time creature. You will come not only to grasp my senseless journey, but you will come to wish that you could do more to help. It is in your nature." The creature did not respond. It sat and wondered why it felt so drawn to a man who was so destined to waste away his life. The man began digging again, making first a giant swath, methodically circling like a field sprinkler, then with slow and calculated steps he maneuvered inwards to the center of the hole. Once he reached the center, he would bury the shovel head into the earth at a steep gradient and make a small hole, resembling the center mark of a protracted circle. Then the man would reverse the process of digging and work towards the outer wall in expanding spirals. While the man worked thus, the creature brooded. It was not satisfied with the responses of the old man, and as it brooded over what the man had told it, it continued to harp upon the man's ridiculous journey. "Why, again, are you digging a hole? Isn't there something else you could do?" The man laughed, and as he piled shovelful after shovelful of excavated dirt to the side of the hole. He figured it was time he should probe the depths of the poor creature's understanding. "Let me attempt to explain myself in an abstract way. Perhaps, creature, it is simply this: It is easy to understand life when it goes well. I have yet to hear the happy person complain of their happiness. True, they will complain of the transitory nature of happiness, but at the bottom of their lament is the wish for more of that elusive happiness. However, when life goes sour, and it is a matter of when, not if, and when that sourness is needlessly brought about, it is more difficult to understand the irony of suffering. Now I am still under the impression that most suffering is needless. You will be hard pressed to find a man who has survived the brutality of a war, the depravation of a prison cell, the pangs of unrequited or adulterous love, and on it goes, you will be hard pressed to find one who claims they are the better for having gone through the furnace of such affliction. In each of these cases, an argument can be made that man is at the root of and is the fundamental cause of the needlessness of suffering. I think it would be safe to say that the causality of most wars stem from either the petty disagreement of men who spout off prideful denunciations of the diverging party's beliefs or the irreconcilable differences between them, or the jockeying for geographical supremacy for the rights to natural resources. Oftentimes, war is nothing more than an extenuation of a neighborhood bully's charade of lashing out just to prove he can. And the prisons of war are an extended function of those same men's disagreement that caused the war. Now these other prisons, the ones used to punish or rehabilitate the common criminal, if you believe such a word, 15 are filled with men who are there because of their own vile actions. Love as well is a choice. True, you do not choose who you love, that seems to be biologically or geographically determined, and oftentimes goes against our rationale, but a lover does decide whether or not they will pursue that love and what the possible costs of that affection might be, if they did not wager in advance all the heartache and turmoil that love would cost, it is safe to say that was an ill advised provision for the future on their part. Does all I have said thus far ring true to you, creature?" "I suppose it is true," mumbled the creature, keeping its misgivings locked within. "Then let us continue. Only now, I must leave the summer suppositions and venture into the wintry weather of the subject. This is what concerns me. I hope you have the capacity to follow me." "However, there is another kind of suffering that is not brought on by mans' relations to man, or nature, but rather it is self-imposed by the irrationality of man's own mind. We produce this atypical type of suffering and we manipulate our lives to have it at times—like the bird I had as a child. We say to ourselves, 'I suffer because I am good and will not give in.' Or we say to ourselves, 'I suffer because I am not good enough and I deserve to suffer because I have chosen erroneously and must make penance.' Why, why do we do such things? It is this type of unnecessary suffering that I believe we must grapple with. Somehow we must come to understand it, creature. Life seems to be a balancing act between two opposing weights, and the final resting place of the voluntary carrier of the cross or the one dragged down by the chains of hell is way down deep into the dirt; the only difference being in how one arrives at such depths. And if we view life in these terms, life, to a degree, becomes a quest of discerning which weight is dragging us down. Is it the chains of hell or the cross of burden that brings us here, or are both a sham? Either way, it is into the dirt, the ground that one must go to understand such things; one must dig. One must exhume the answers out of the earth's very bowels. And below it all, is it simply this creature, is this what we will find: the truth of dirt weighs more than the truth of air? Is sorrow simply a taskmaster that demands more than frivolity? Does the lash of agony leave a deeper scar than the tickle of flippancy? And since the obvious answer is yes in all cases, we must then ask "Why? It is easy, creature, to find meaning in the lightness of love and happiness, but compressed underneath the rock of oppression, depression, lamentation, such meaning is hard to find; yet, these are the depths in which man works out his life. To understand and fathom the reasons why sorrow exists and why man pursues it, this creature, is a worthy quest. To be able to pull a strand, exhume a grain of light or truth out of the pit of darkness, this, little one, is a quest worth losing one's life for. I now understand my father's proverbial saying 'the story is in the soil.' All that has lived and died, and all that will yet live is right here in the dirt. All that live now and seek to find meaning in life must dig past the brittle crust of suffering and arrive deep down where the clay is always hard and speaks of the ironic nature of the true sufferer. Only then, in reverence, will life offer up any of its mystery." Once the man rested his head on the shovel handle and the creature was sure he was finished with his story, the creature told the man that he was crazy, that he had lost touch with reality; that the bird had something wrong with it, that that is why it did not fly away. The creature spoke in haste those things that pressed upon its mind. But once it spoke, it realized it had not spoken with discretion and the man was offended. The man 16 looked at the creature with disgusted eyes, and with a slight inflection of tone that added vehemence, he responded, "Did the bird have something wrong with it? Did it really? Well let me ask you something creature," his tone now reaching that ironic and mild state of agitation. "During that first day of freedom, why did you try to go back to your cocoon?" The creature was a little abashed by the man's response. It had not told him that it returned to its cocoon. "Why did you not openly embrace and relish your newfound freedom when it was granted you?" The man continued to lightly deride the poor creature, "Why have you not flown above the tree line since that first day? Did the lightness feel inhumane? Did the easiness of the ascent, make you sick, make you feel detached from life?" The creature sat there dejected. It did not know how to answer a man who had so easily discerned its actions. The man did not give the creature much time to answer, but rather delved into another one of his childhood stories that the creature was beginning to like less and less each time it heard one. VI "I had a neighbor that I knew very well. We had grown up together. We got into the same kinds of trouble, laughed at the same kind of ribald jokes, struggled through the same horrible lessons of arithmetic and grammar. Indeed, one could say that we were quite similar, as most boys are. The boy was well-liked, good in sports, of a healthy disposition, and a jovial spirit. These qualities endeared him to all that knew him. Well, one day our two families and some other families from our small town went to the beach to enjoy the blissful August sun. The boy decided he would go for a swim. Mind you, we weren't very old then, maybe six or seven or at the most eight, and therefore, the maternal instinct in a mother is still constantly on alert. The boy swam out past the usual marker that we swam to, and instantly the mother, concerned, yelled at the boy, 'Son, son, don't you go out any further, you hear me! You'll drown.' The boy, treading water, head bobbing up and down with each wave, turned back to the shore, looked at us, then looked towards the middle of the lake, looked back towards us again and yelled out, 'How do I know I will drown unless I keep going.' The families at the shore lightly chuckled. The parents of the other families were glad that their sons weren't quite as stubborn or brash as this child. The boy looked towards the shore again, and then repeated his turn towards the middle of the lake, like the middle was luring him in, like some immense magnetic force lay at the center of it and his heart was a metal ball. He turned back around and with his head still bobbing slightly from the somber waves, he yelled back to the shore, 'I want to swim in deep waters, Mother.' He turned his head, and with his back towards us, facing the deeper waters he longed for, he swam on now possessed with purpose. Those on shore, especially his mother, began yelling, begging him to get back, 'Get back here.' 'Get back here right now.' 'Come back to your family,' someone chimed in, but the boy would not heed such calls, he kept on swimming as if it were his destiny to reach whatever it was that lay in those deep waters. The calls became more earnest but to no avail. When they finally realized the boy would not heed their call, two older men, strong swimmers in their own right, plunged into the cool waters of the 17 lake and swam after him. But there was no catching him. By the time they got to where he was when he yelled back to the shore, he had become a speck on the horizon to the spectators. We grew worried. We wondered why he would disobey his mother, why he would keep swimming even though he knew the dangers that such a swim would entail. As he went further and further out, our anxiety and worry increased. Finally, we lost sight of him altogether. He must have gone under. We searched and searched the distant horizon hoping to find any disruption along the plumb line, wishing that perhaps it was him, but our hopes were in vain. By the time three small rowboats were employed to aid the dismal search team, no hope lingered in our breasts that the boy would be found alive. And he wasn't. Weeks later his bloated body was found floating face down with the flotsam near the outlet of the lake. It was a tragic end to a tragic couple of weeks, and the weeks to find him didn't soften the brunt of the blow for that family when they finally received the calamitous but expectant news. The family would not be consoled of their loss. Our condolences seemed trite to them, and they did to us too, but what can one do to help the bereavement of others when they do not suffer from the same hollow pang? Compassion does cause, to a degree, even the one who has not suffered to take on some of the pain for that family, but still an arbitrary gulf between the town, who still had their children, and the family, who had lost their only child, existed. The family moved away several months after; claiming the sight of our faces acted as a vigilant reminder of their constant loss. Now little creature, what possibly could have consumed that boy so? That he would abandon all rationale and plunge headlong into the depths of death itself? Why would he seek such a miserable lot, or was it miserable? And why is it that when people know they are going to die they get such satisfaction from the simple rote of everyday life? Why don't they go somewhere, see the world, and fulfill last wishes before they die? Did the bird suffer more because it chose to stay, or was it some innate stimuli, the workings of which lie within us, that cause us, rather the impetus carries us, against common sense and the own goodness of our being, to seek out such experiences in our extremities? Is the bird living a life of deflection because it chooses to face whatever it is one faces before death, or is everyone else living deflected, masked lives? Lives that hide from pain and pretend sorrow does not exist." The man faced the destitute creature and with a sardonic expression restated the question that the creature had asked him so many times, "Why do I dig? Why do I dig? Why do I dig?" He regained a semblance of composure, but continued unloading his tongue of the massive weight of words that it had procured through so many years of solitude: "I ask you creature, the same question differently. Why isn't the world digging? Why doesn't the world attempt to come to terms with the human experience? So many walk around as brain-dead zombies, wrapped up in mummified visions of a false reality presented to them from their daily fix of vanity or any other of this centuries anesthesia; each zombie willing to try anything that deadens the senses, and each as unwilling to dig up the dirt, to unbury the sorrow, that as painful as it might be, lets us know we are alive. Sure creature, my life might be miserable, but at least at the bottom of my misery, I am beginning to realize that I am alive, and it is here, in the midst of my pit, that I find life most unadulterated and livable. And no matter how painful that is, I would not trade it 18 for the entire anesthetic this world is capable of producing. No false ambrosia can erase the " The old man paused mid-sentence. He looked again at the creature as it sat silent. A type of empathy now revealed itself on the man's face. No longer haranguing the creature, and in amicable tones, the man now spoke the calm way a guru speaks to a guileless disciple. "I suppose creature, there are degrees to suffering or different types of suffering, and some of those seem to serve a purpose. It appears as if suffering is the great teacher, and the lessons vary upon the person. Suffering is the litmus test of mortality, and when applied, some grow calloused, bitter, angry at their lot in life; others grow humble, patient, full of faith; yet, others experience both poles but they walk the middle ground, neither hot nor cold, just indifferent. I do not know exactly what that lesson or test is, and I do not claim to understand the purpose of suffering, so, I keep digging, looking for light on the other side of all this darkness or hoping to strike it at the core, hoping beyond hope that a Tight might shine in darkness, and the darkness will comprehend it not'; praying with a heavy heart that I am not that darkness, thinking lately that I am both the darkness and the light." The man's lecture was not over, but his energy had fizzled out, therefore, he stopped speaking even though the unfinished words still lay heavy on his heart and mind. The man could do nothing for the moment but look melancholic and tired. The creature was saddened by the man's melancholy demeanor and hoped to console him but did not know what to say. With neither of them knowing what to say to console each other, the man began digging again, and the creature perched itself upon his shoulder to watch him work. VII After weeks of digging (much had been accomplished due to the porosity of the soil and the help of a wheelbarrow which the man obtained the third day), the man, invigorated by his progress, deigned it necessary to impart his philosophy to the creature on how to dig a hole. He explained that the cardinal rule in proper hole digging was to always leave a way out. "I learned a valuable and unforgettable lesson early 011 in my career," the old man acknowledged. "Let me tell you one more story from my youth." "Here we go again," muttered the creature under its breath. "In the vivacity of my youth, without forethought or method, overcome by my urge to dig, I began digging a hole willy-nilly. I dug and dug with the voraciousness and single-mindedness only youth or the obsessed can employ. Before long, I realized I could only get so deep without running into problems. I heaved the shovelfuls up and out of the pit, but rapidly the distance became too far even for me, with my youthful virility, to muster, and eventually the dirt just came crashing back down upon my head. I had dug about twenty feet deep before I realized the predicament I was in. I had reached an impasse. I could dig no further, and now as the light of day was fading, I began to fear lest I could not climb out of the pit. So I tried to climb the walls of the pit, but the gradient was too steep, and the edges were too far apart for me to shimmy my way up, 19 and when I tried, the dirt began to crumble under the weight of my hands and feet, causing me to slide back down. After twenty minutes worth of my futile attempts to scale the pit walls, the waning light shone dimmer, and the darkness of the pit grew eerie. I began to fear in the way little boys do—absolute, and thought no perceivable light would reach me in the pit, and I would be forced to live out the night in utter darkness. Such fear gripped me and instead of causing a resourcefulness within, which would have allowed me to take my shovel and collapse one of the walls around me and pile up the caved in dirt, the onslaught of darkness caused me such anxiety and fear that my mind ceased to function in a rational manner. The final light from the fading day went out, and on a starless night, I thought how awful that I sent myself to my own oblivion. I began to wail and gnash my teeth in anger at what a foolish boy I was, and pulling at the ends of my hair, and screaming to myself 'Why, Why did I do this,' I pictured myself, soul and all, disintegrating into the cloak of darkness that surrounded me. It was at this moment of excruciating anguish and despair that I thought I heard a voice from up above. Two villagers, having worked later than expected in a nearby field, just so happened to be passing by the hole and heard the whimpers of a young child. Shining their light towards the vicinity of the pit, the men saw the hole that had been dug and the pile of discarded dirt around it. They walked towards the pit, and casting the light over the lip of the pit they looked down. To me, that light shone as a sentinel, and the outline of the two villagers could not have been more welcome had it been two heavenly hosts. The men looked at each other askance, wondering if they had stumbled upon some modern biblical outcast thrown into the pit by jealous brothers, but there was no coat, and they knew by the pile of dirt and by the shovel I had with me that the pit was probably of my own making. Rather than asking me what had happened, the older of the two men told me to hold on while he ran to town to retrieve a ladder to help me out. I kindly thanked him and as the man left, the other man sat down with his feet and the lantern hanging over the edge of the pit. The man asked me what I was doing down in a pit. I was abashed due to my stupidity, but so overcome by the reality that I was safe, I grew bold and told the man about my urge to dig. You see, back then I had the urge to dig and the inherent need to dig, but I did not know why it was I dug. I knew I had no answer that would satisfy the man's curiosity, so I told the truth. I told him that I did not know why I was digging other than the urge. No sooner had the words left my mouth, than I realized how ridiculous I sounded. But the man did not admonish me, rather he told me that if I were to venture to dig such a hole, next time leave a way out. The other man returned and lowered the ladder down to the bottom of the pit. I clung to each rung tightly as I ascended my pit. Upon reaching the top, the younger man extended his arm and helped me out of the pit. He then patted me on the back and commented on how silly of a boy I had been. I graciously thanked each man for helping me to safety, and as the night was growing late, they told me I had better return to my family who would be worried about my whereabouts by now, and the three of us parted company as abruptly as we had met. And now, creature, that I am an old man, no longer shackled with the impulsiveness of youth, I have my wheelbarrow and I proceed to make a small spiral walkway along the outer edge of the hole. I always leave a way out. This, little one, is how a hole is properly dug." 20 The creature laughed. The infectiousness of the old man's energy on this day was affecting it in a positive way. VIII