Gong the Rat

from Dancing on the Brink of the World, Tuber Creations Publishing, 2008

Once upon a time, in the back alleys and sewers of a booming twenty-first century metropolis, there lived a group of rats that was tired of being shunned as disease-carrying parasites. Hard-working and well-intentioned, they had had enough of being trapped and poisoned in their own homes, made the scapegoats of modern man's wasteful ways. They reached the end of their rope when one day, in the name of sanitation and progress, the city council passed an ordinance calling for the "relocation" of all rats.

Thus began their search for a safer and more hospitable place to settle. At first, a group of pioneering rats set out to look for other, friendlier cities to call home. They traveled far, only to find that conditions were equally squalid and people just as unwelcoming elsewhere. As their search yielded no satisfactory results, the mood among the pack began to turn desperate. Realizing that they wouldn't be welcome anywhere above ground the rats discussed the possibility of living underground.

In a backbreaking effort the pioneers dug down into the rugged and uncharted territories below the surface of the earth. Once they had passed below the deepest building foundations and sewers their arduous journey took them through a dark and dense mass of loam. Farther down they went, through tangled roots and stifling layers of mud. Finally, battered and famished, they came to an aquifer whose caves, rocks and water supply were vaster than anything they had ever seen before. Mesmerized by its seemingly endless resources, they decided that this would be the perfect place to settle.

Word of the new underworld spread quickly, and soon a rapid influx of rats who smelled wealth and security led to the creation of a new society. It was the first time in history that rats of all backgrounds could crawl about freely throughout an established territory, with unprecedented opportunities of sideways and downward mobility. The Rodent Republic of Ratland quickly became a model civilization envied in sewers and drains above.

Like any civilization, the Rodent Republic had rules and laws that served to keep peace and order among its ratizens and to protect the freedom of each individual rat. Most of them were commonsense laws, like bans on stealing, lying and discriminating against one another. However, they were all dwarfed by one guiding principle, the mother of all Ratland laws: the Ratriot Act. The Ratriot Act had been drafted by the founders to keep ratizens from going above ground and seeing the light, as well as to keep unwanted intruders from coming in; they figured that this would prevent disorder and disease caused by unnecessary exchanges with a filthy, degenerate outside world.

Over many generations, the Ratriot Act had become so ingrained in Ratland culture that no one ever questioned it. The thought of leaving Ratland never occurred to anyone. Sure, there were grim folk tales of rats who had accidentally slipped out of the ground and immediately gone blind—bedside stories for baby rats about the dire consequences of seeing the light. But leaving the rat hole was never really an issue, not because it was the law, but because rats were quite content to stay underground.

Of course, every society has its malcontents and troublemakers, and every now and then an unruly little rat would come along, wondering what was going on above Ratland. Gong was one such rat. He had been raised in a small Pack Rat family, the Rodent Republic's middle class. Pack Rats believed strongly in hard work and downward mobility. Their dream was to dig a deeper hole for themselves.

However, the ultimate goal for a Pack Rat was to become a Sack Rat. Sack Rats owned most rat holes and made their living by renting them to Pack Rats. Some of the more successful Sack Rats owned parts of the underground infrastructure, like water supply and tunnels. They also managed rat-poop removal crews, which were staffed mostly by Snack Rats, a large class of food scavengers and working rats.

The first time Gong brought up the subject of life above ground, his parents discarded it as childish nonsense. However, it didn't take long for them to become seriously concerned when one night little Gong was delivered to them at the front door, dangling by his tail from the incisors of a huge Whack Rat. He had been caught wandering too close to the light. After dropping little Gong in the dirt, his towering captor issued a stern warning in a deep, sonorous voice that echoed through the darkness: "Wee willl nahhht tahhlerate thiss beehaavioor mahhr thaan wahhnce!"

Whack Rats were the special police force of Ratland, sworn to defend the Republic against intruders and to protect law-abiding ratizens from rodent mischief. They were usually inconspicuous to Pack Rats since there wasn't much crime in their neck of the roots, and as mentioned earlier, there was no reason or desire for Pack Rats to crawl close to the surface. Getting picked off by a Whack Rat was usually reserved for Slack Rats, holeless rats with little ambition whose transient lifestyle at times led them dangerously close to the edge. It was no surprise then that Gong's brush with the law caused a major ruckus at dinner.

"What the Bright Sky were you thinking?" His father hissed through his jagged teeth. "Have you lost your mind? I'm not working my ratass off so you can stick your nosy little whiskers where they don't belong!"

His mother added peevishly, "Gong, your father and I are just so worried about your future. You know we once were young, too. We understand you want to look around a bit before settling down, but you have to be smart and know your limits—there's nothing worth seeing up there anyway. We're working so hard to enable you to live a better life and become a Sack Rat or even a Mack Rat some day." (Mack Rats were the leaders of Ratland.) "And we've been around the rat hole long enough to know that just a few wrong steps will leave you a dirty little Slack Rat."

These last words just sounded mean. Gong had heard it all. He hated the wimpy pleas for him to be like everyone else and began to question whether life in the light was really as harmful as advertised. Judging by his past experience with adult ratitude he had to assume that his parents had no idea what they were talking about. Could it be that they were just trying to scare the living daylights out of him because they themselves were full of fear and ignorance? How could they know about a place they had never even been to?

Gong's continued defiance got him into nothing but trouble. Pretty soon he found himself in mandatory therapy sessions with a Quack Rat. Quack Rats were the psychologists, doctors, and intellectuals of the Rodent Republic. Once a rat had been admitted into the Quack Care System it was extremely difficult to get out of it again. Since the Quacks were accountable to the Macks, it was in their personal interest to not let any little Packs fall through the cracks.

One morning, after a three-hour intensive Quack session, Gong dragged his beleaguered self up a crag overlooking Ratland that had been his hideaway since he'd first been diagnosed with Adaptation Deficit Disorder. To Gong's surprise, a gray and scraggly old rat was perched on his favorite rock, casually picking little dirt balls from under his claws. "Hi," the old fellow said in a warm and unusually gentle tone of voice. "My name's Jack. I been trav'lin' all over and thought I'd get a li'l breather and catch some zzz's in yer comfy little cave."

Jack's funny drawl and the way he was just sitting there, smiling at all the busy rats whizzing by below, appealed to Gong. Jack had an air of calm and wisdom that Gong had never felt before in any of the other, twitchy rats. Gong immediately forgot all about his annoying visit with the Quack and nestled up right next to Jack.

"Where are you from, Jack?"

"Aw, I' been all over—trees, fields, mountains—I even spent a coupla years sailin’ on the ocean."

Gong was utterly perplexed at how nonchalantly Jack was recalling what seemed to be obvious transgressions of the Ratriot Act. Jack went on to tell a story about the first time he saw a cactus, decided it was a nice and protected place to take a nap, and woke up looking like a porcupine. "I'm tellin' ya, the whole habitat there was laughin' when they saw me!" He chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"You mean you've been leaving Ratland to do all this?" Gong dropped his voice to a whisper, afraid anyone hearing this conversation would call in the Whacks.

"Well that's fer sure." Jack grinned. "Ya certainly ain't gonna see nuthin' interesting in this rat hole."

As though anticipating Gong's next question, Jack continued: "Ya know, my friend, it's really not that hard to get outta here, but the longer you stay, the tougher it gets. What gets me is that rats think they're stuck down here 'cuza some stupid rat riot law or 'causa coupla Whacks standin' there lookin' all buffed up. But see, that's just in our heads, the same story we keep tellin' ourselves so we can keep bein' afraid. And ya know, it's pretty darn convenient to be afraid, 'cause it gives ya a perfect excuse never to take a chance, never to try somethin' new. Ya know the Macks and Whacks and Quacks and whatever else they call themselves, they sure like it when yer fulla fear and wantin' to fit in—it keeps their system goin', and it gives them more power and comfort. But it's not them who's keepin' ya down, it's yer own fear that tells ya to keep yerself small and insignificant. I'm tellin' ya, Ratland is no more than a state of mind!"

"...no more than a state of mind..." The words rang in Gong's head like bells on a clock-tower.

"You mean, I could just get up and walk out of here?" Gong inquired timidly.

"It's not that easy," Jack replied, "'cuz just as fear creeps into yer system slowly and over time, you gotta unravel it layer by layer. Problem is, most rats don't even know they're afraid anymore 'cuz they've removed themselves from anything that shakes 'em up. Ratland's a perfect place for that, 'cuz it don't ask ya to look at anything besides wantin' to be a Sack Rat or a Mack Rat."

"But fer you, Gong," Jack went on, sounding a bit more serious, "it's important to get started unravelin' yerself right away. I'm tellin' ya, ya just gotta put your mind to it."

"But what do I do, Jack? How could I ever get past those Whack Rats?" Gong felt overwhelmed—the images of vicious Whack Rats and patronizing Quack Rats were fresh in his mind.

"Urgh!" Jack let out a strange choking sound, expressing his disdain for authority. "Forgit about them Whacks and Quacks for a second. First, and most importantly, you gotta sit down, quiet the rat race in yer head and find the Gong Truth—ya know, that part of yerself that makes ya laugh and jump outta yer nest in the mornin', the part that is truly Gong and not a character in someone else's script. But it ain't gonna happen overnight. Ya know how hard it is to keep an empty head when everyone's tryin' to fill y'up with advice. Ya just keep doin' that, no matter where yer at—even at the Quack's—always stay connected to the Gong Truth, and things are gonna change around ya. When yer ready to see the light, it'll come to you."

That night Gong went home, exhausted but happy to have found at least one other rat who didn't think he'd gone mad. The following weeks he met Jack regularly at the crag. Gong usually bubbled over with questions that Jack would answer patiently. Most of Jack's stories were about his travels, about how change and unpredictability were the road markers of a successful journey. Whenever Gong became fidgety and wanted to bolt out of Ratland, Jack reminded him that a true rebel did not run away. Not yet.

Then, one night, as they were sitting silently on the rock, Jack suddenly got up and grabbed Gong by the tail: "C'mon, rat, time to see the sun!" Shocked by the unexpected announcement, Gong almost hit his head on a shelf in the rock. When he looked up, Jack had already jumped up and was dangling from loose roots that lay exposed at the top of the aquifer. Gong raced to catch up.

"Jack, Jack, wait for me—I don't know where to go!"

"I dunno either. We all have to find our own path outta here. I'll see ya in the light." Jack's voice echoed from the distance...

Gong got to his feet, took a leap, and clutched a root. On his way up he passed a number of lavish hillside Mack Rat holes, where he overheard muted dinner conversations and the occasional scavenging sounds of a Snack Rat. He jumped off the root and climbed into a dark tunnel. The farther away he got, the lighter his body felt. At one point he saw the shadow of what appeared to be a Whack Rat. Without hesitation he moved toward it. It turned out to be a tulip bulb. Gong knew he was almost there. Digging up through grassroots, he could smell the fresh air now. Finally his head popped out of the ground. Gong was blinded by a sea of twinkling lights, by a thousand shades of green and red, by an endless dance of seeds and leaves.

One last thrust, and Gong plopped into a wheat grass field. The sudden exposure to broad daylight forced him into a squint. Dizzied, he almost fell back into the tunnel but managed to keep his balance. Once his eyes had adjusted, he took a look around. Over in the distance lay the ruins of an ancient city. Instinctively, Gong rushed the opposite way, skipping across the open field toward a canopy of foliage. When he reached a group of cedar trees, he heard a familiar voice from high above, "Heya, li'l rebel rat, how was the ride to freedom?" There, up in a tree top, sitting cross-legged and resting his back against the smooth bark, was Jack, the wise old rat. "What are you doing up there, Jack?" Gong asked.

"Aw, just takin' a rest, watchin' the world go by! I s'pose I'll be sittin' here for a while, just lettin' the sunshine be sunshine! How 'bout yerself, Gong, watcha gonna do now that yer free to be?" "I think I'll dance with the wind," Gong shouted, and he caught the first gust into the open field.

Swimming with Turtles

from Dancing on the Brink of the World, Tuber Creations Publishing, 2008

Lena's home is the sidewalk at the corner of Shotwell and 21st Streets. There, in the doorway of an abandoned bike shop in San Francisco's Mission District, she finds shelter between cardboard padding on the concrete and the faded golden awning that says "M ke's Bik s." All her belongings are neatly tucked into an old blue stroller she found in the dumpster behind the nearby grocery store. There's the brown hand-knit scarf she's had since she was just a little girl; a paper bag with odds and ends like yarn, tissues, and three bottles of Advil; a basket of fresh vegetables from the woman at the farmers market; and the ripped sleeping bag that she got from the friendly folks at the outdoors store. Sitting on top of it all is a velvet sea turtle stuffed with rice.

As a child, Lena had always dreamed of being a sea turtle. At night, after reading bedtime stories to her younger sisters, she would go to her room, light a candle, and — comfortably tucked into bed — imagine herself in tropical waters, diving through endless tunnels of coral reef. It was in these dream-waters that she felt alive and safe, and had it been up to her she would have stayed down there permanently, coming out only to dry her turtle shell on the sunny shore.

How do we get to where we are? Is it all a grand lottery with random directions drawn for each soul? Or did our deep yearning to belong somewhere propel us exactly to where we are right now? Do you feel like you have arrived in this story on purpose?

Lena has become a friend and caretaker to many wandering souls. Take Carlos, a migrant worker from Nicaragua. He moved to the city after chronic back pain from seventeen straight years of harvesting grapes in the Central Valley kept him from going back in the field. Carlos can still do minor day labor like interior painting, but the competition is tough; the better paying jobs that would enable him to afford rent require heavy lifting and have fallen out of his reach.

Lena helps Carlos with chores like visits to the doctor or social service office, mundane tasks for native city dwellers, but monumental challenges for an illiterate foreigner like Carlos. Most importantly, Lena listens to Carlos' stories about his wife, children, and extended family back home, about their parcel of land that was taken away by the Contras in the early '80s, leaving him without any means to provide for his family.

Herding sheep and growing vegetables was the only thing he knew how to do. When Carlos finally embarked on his epic journey North he was convinced that he would be able to earn enough money to buy a small piece of land upon his return home. But fate took a different course, and now that he has lost all contact with his family and is without means to go look for them. The only ray of light left in his life are the comforting words of the gentle gringa on the Shotwell sidewalk.

What is home? Is it a nice house at the end of the block? A cozy trailer along the roadside? Is it the town you grew up in with its distinct tastes and smells, or the meadow where you used to chase after balls and Frisbees with your friends? Is it an actual physical location or more of a feeling? Does it always stay the same or does it shift depending on your mood? Can you be at home without a roof over your head? Do you ever look up at the stars and feel at home?

Lena had baby twin sisters whom she loved like nobody else in the world. Lisa and Lucy shone like precious stars from the day they were born. It wasn't just that she was nine years older than the twins that pushed Lena into a maternal role, but a deep, nurturing love and kinship she naturally felt toward them. Then there was Mom, whose glaucoma had been getting worse since Lena's birth. By the time the twins were born she had almost completely lost her sight and was struggling with severe bouts of depression. There were days when Mom wouldn't even come out of her room and Lena would have to scrape together whatever she could find in the fridge to feed her sisters.

Dad was trying to help out as much as he could, but after long and exhausting days at work it was hard for him to take care of his daughters and his wife. His instinctive response was to spend the little free time he had with Lena and the twins, or going out for drinks with his friends, which left Mom even more isolated and the fridge empty. This situation went on well into Lena's teenage years, and the only thing that kept the appearance of a functioning family was Dad's paycheck, covering their mortgage and bills. Lena's visits with the turtles became more and more frequent, the tropical waters the only place offering warmth and shelter.

When Dad finally left, Lena was by most standards already the primary caretaker of the family. Grocery shopping after school. Cooking meals for the whole family. Ordering and picking up medication for her deteriorating mother who was now bedridden and depressed most of the time. Reading bedtime stories to the twins. Faking signatures on her report cards. In a superhuman act, Lena kept alive the face of a struggling yet functioning and loving family. She might have been able to finish and win this unlikely marathon, had it not been for a simple but significant hurdle: she was only fifteen.

The Department of Family and Protective Services took away from her everything she had ever held dear. The twins went to foster parents, Mom to a mental institution, and she, pried away from the only home she'd ever known, was sent to boarding school. It was impossible to find any solace in the social worker's plea for her to embrace this as a new opportunity simply to live a child's life, and if nothing else, to be patient for another three years, at which point she'd be able to do whatever she wanted. The wounds of her heart were too big and painful to heed the voice of reason. After only four months in boarding school, Lena ran away for the first time.

Life is a carousel, a grand wheel on the cosmic fairgrounds. Every now and then, the carousel slows down, just enough for us to catch a glimpse of what it must be like to have arrived. In these moments there seems to be an air of calmness, as if the operator of the carousel were giving us a chance to hop off. Do you ever wish you could get off and take a break? Find a soft place to rest your tired bones? Maybe even get to the end of the ride and finally discover your destination, the feeling of being home?

On the fateful night Lena hopped off the campus wall to go searching for her beloved baby sisters, she had no idea that she was also jumping over barriers of perception. Her deep longing to go home struck her new guardians as a betrayal of trust. With just one leap she set in motion a cat-and-mouse game that eventually brought her right to her spot under the faded golden awning on Shotwell Street.

By the time Lena turned eighteen she had run away from boarding school fourteen times, endearing her neither to teachers nor the DFPS. Worst of all, her sisters' foster parents had become so fed up with her fly-by-night appearances on their doorstep that they forbade the twins to let her in the house. Four years later, after incessant pleas for her to go back to school and stop being such a horrible influence on the twins, they sold their house and moved, leaving no forwarding address.

While the door shuts safely behind a home owner or an apartment resident, there are no locks to secure the sidewalk dweller. There is the constant fear of harassment and mugging, being cold and lonely on a rainy night. With physical walls removed the heart is exposed, yet its tender core longs to be protected. Will you still show your tender core even after it's been hurt?

On a cold and rainy afternoon Carlos shows up under the faded golden awning with a haggard olive-skinned woman and her wide-eyed 5-year old twin daughters. Her name is Orlanda, and the girls' names are Izarra and Ursulina. Carlos won't say what happened to them, how they got from the Andean mountains to the corner of Shotwell and 21st. Yet the slightly upward curved lines around his eyes and a previously unseen peach color on his stubbly face attest to the magic powers of the human heart that make explanations fall by the wayside.

Hungry and tired, they all huddle around Lena's stroller, and to the soothing sound of raindrops bouncing off the awning, Izarra and Ursulina begin to sing a Quechuan song about the children of the moon. Lena is cooking a soup on her little gas stove with potatoes and beets from the friendly woman at the farmers market, warming up their tent-like encampment. After filling their bellies with the hot and hearty stew, Orlanda and the twins teach Carlos and Lena more songs from their native land, songs about the most beautiful place on earth. As nighttime falls, they huddle together and watch the full moon rise over the city's rooftops.

"Quieren ustedes unas dulces?" Lena asks the twins in broken Spanish if they would like some candy. Izarra and Ursulina look at their mother with pleading eyes. Orlanda leans over to Carlos, asking if it is OK to accept such generosity from a stranger. Carlos puts his arm around her, and gently assures her that Lena is an angel sent from heaven to take care of them. After sharing two bags of M&M's and a piece of leftover chocolate cake, there is nothing else that could keep this unlikely family of strangers awake. Carlos and Orlanda sink into the corner, giving each other a warmth and intimacy neither one of them has experienced for a long time. The twins cuddle up to Lena, breathing calmly to the slow rhythm of her heartbeat. For the first time since she left home Lena is swimming with turtles again — only this time she is not alone.

The Charlie Tulip Show

A Sneak-Peak Interview with the Messiah

Garlic & Grass, issue 9, Winter 2007

The year was 78 ASC (After the Second Coming). Jesus Christ, on his second visit to Earth, was about to turn seventy-eight, and since humans had stopped using technology to prolong physical life by any means necessary, seventy-eight was considered a ripe old age. Although most of Christ's teachings had been recorded in large data fields accessible through the Auranet (a fireless medium that had replaced the antiquated Internet and its wasteful plastic and fossil fuels), there were still those who dreaded what was to come. Hadn't his sage words become twisted and his name slandered once before? Would humankind be able to represent him better this time, after his second passing? The thought of losing the ultimate peacemaker — the one who had managed to stop his fellow human beings from dropping bombs on each other — was frankly a bit overwhelming. Thus it was that on the eve of another illustrious incarnation Jesus Christ was a sought-after heavyweight on cosmic talk shows.

It was considered a coup when Charlie Tulip, host of the cosmically syndicated Charlie Tulip Show, landed the ultimate prize interview.

Tonight on The Charlie Tulip Show: Jesus Christ

"Tell me, Jesus," Charlie Tulip began, turning to the Messiah. "When you got your first big break, back in the days of television, how were you able to capture the imagination of an audience so spiritually drained and politically polarized?"

"Well, Charlie," Jesus said, his calm voice and scintillating image resonating on the cosmocast. "From when I was a little boy growing up in Ramallah I always had the gut feeling that no matter how badly people treated each other, they all were kindred spirits imprisoned by circumstance. After my parents moved my sisters and I to East L.A. when I was thirteen, this impression was only confirmed: so many great people back then had just been forgotten by their own society, trapped in a vicious cycle of crime and punishment. On the other side, there were souls who had lost track of their natural, caring hearts, who had become distracted by the temptations of wealth and numbed into deep apathy. In my early adult years, as the world was enveloped in wars of greed and an incessant thirst for consumption, the urge to ponder these conditions and to do something about it only became stronger. Since I had just been on a two-thousand year retreat from Earth, I thought my mind and heart were refreshed enough to give it another try."

What was great about the post-television and computer era was that corporate programming had become obsolete, making it impossible for mental clutter to pollute the soul waves. In fact, a kind of revolutionary software that Jesus himself had helped to develop had grown widespread: silence. Like any new software in the post-hardware world, it took a while to come up with the most user-friendly version, especially since "doing nothing" had been eliminated from the prehistoric tech-age vocabulary. However, once meditation had been resurrected from its ancient slumber to become the default operating system, people were once again able to distinguish propaganda from meaningful dialog. As a result, they needed much less memory to build their knowledge base.

"Jesus," Charlie Tulip now leaned toward his venerable guest, his eyebrows raised in the heartfelt sincerity of his question. "There were a lot of folks back then who were frustrated with the status quo, but who felt paralyzed to say or do anything for fear of having their words spun around and ridiculed by the sound-bite masters of the old media. When did you realize that you had something special to say? How were you able to get your message past the spiritual editors and religious spinmeisters?"

"An excellent question, Charlie." Jesus smiled, running his hand through his ballooning gray afro. "You may be too young to remember this, but when I was in my mid-twenties there was a public debate on whether life was the result of evolution or intelligent design. The proponents of each theory were very adamant about the exclusive validity of their respective theories, to a point where things got pretty nasty. At the time I was a substitute teacher at an inner-city middle school, and we were struggling to keep our neglected kids from killing each other. After the politicians had spent millions of dollars of taxpayers' money legislating new language into science textbooks, they sent us a letter ordering us to use the new books. The irony was that we were in no position to buy any new books. 'Jesus,' our principal said, 'we haven't had enough funding to buy new books in ten years — for all I know they could be writing about frogs in bible school.' You know, Charlie, something clicked in me that day. Something blew my heart open. It dawned on me that everyone has a piece of truth, but as soon as our minds become possessive of it or we try to impose it on others, it begins to run away from us. Like a beautiful mountain stream: you can marvel at it, but you can't take it with you."

Charlie's face lit up with recognition. "Is this when you had your first out-of-body experience?"

"Yes," Jesus nodded. "That was the first time. I was simply not equipped to deal with the paradoxical ways of the mind, and how they affected human relationships. I had to go deeper to understand my own mind without judging it."

"What happened next?" Charlie pried.

"Well," Jesus went on, "I calmed down, breathed steadily, and entered a trance-like state. It felt as if in just a split second the two thousand years between my last two visits flashed in front of me — as if the entire history of time were happening in that single moment. It felt as if I had come home, because I hadn't incarnated for so long. When I say 'long,' of course I mean in human terms; in cosmic time it was just an instant. In that timeless moment that felt so much like home, I suddenly understood why I had spoken of the 'Father' during my last visit — it was a word I found to convey the glory and power of the whole universe from which we come and to which we return. Little did I know back then that my words would be taken so literally and used to intimidate people. But in that moment, as so many things dawned on me at once, my soul traveled into the great heavenly living space and everything came pouring out of me like a giant waterfall. 'Science,' I heard myself say, 'is the physical path to the metaphysical. Intelligent design is the acknowledgment of a higher purpose. Combine the two. We are evolving souls in a meaningful universe.' It is all one and the same, just different paths to the same truth.

"Everybody is learning from every other on the physical plane to evolve spiritually. Well, Charlie, the rest, they say, isn't history. My renderings captured people's imagination and we chose this new level of consciousness that is still with us right now."

The Messiah's aura cooled off a bit so as to give his audience some space on the cosmocast to process what was being said. Millions of people from around the planet and from even farther galaxies were now tuned in, listening as well as releasing their own experiences into the auranet. Not since the infant days of the old internet had there been so much room for meaningful dialog in a public medium. (Of course, what most people remembered from the internet were spam e-mails, search engine manipulations, and rampant commercialism.)

Charlie Tulip's image twinkled and sparkled. "Jesus, looking back over the entirety of your Second Coming, what would you say was your biggest accomplishment? Where, if anywhere, do you think you might have failed?"

For an instant a trace of disappointment flickered across the Savior's face. "Charlie, ask yourself for a moment why you might ask this question. I see that I have not fully completed my mission. Dividing things into failures and accomplishments is what got us into a cosmic doghouse in the first place. Remember that back in the old days all our troubles came from dividing people and things into good and bad. Countries used to invade and bomb other countries under the banner of fighting the bad guys." His voice softened. "Nowadays we don't do that anymore, and for that I am grateful. Ever since we stopped relying so much on sound-bites and learned to trust our own intuition we've been able to choose representatives who are more universally attuned and speak truth to our hearts. These days it's unthinkable that anyone without a charitable mind and divine grace would have any kind of real power. A conscious society knows it cannot neglect its weakest parts. It takes concrete earthly measures to provide a save haven for the downtrodden, but not for political or ideological reasons, but from conviction in the heart. This is enlightened action, something which I have been most honored and humbled to be part of."

Once again there was a long pause, filling the empty space. What used to be consumed by sitcoms, commercials, and weather forecasts during the dark ages of television suffused instead with heavenly introspection. When Charlie Tulip's visage reappeared, everyone joining the cosmocast had had a chance to take a deep breath.

"Now Jesus, you are turning seventy-eight. Your time to leave this planet is once again getting near. What gospel would you like future generations — who will not have a chance to hear you in person — to hear and to live by? How can we as enlightened humanity ensure we steer clear of the spiritual and cultural literalism that has caused us so much pain in the past?"

Since death was commonly considered not just a natural step but a beautiful passage through the gates of infinite consciousness, Charlie's question raised neither the Messiah's nor humanity's eyebrow. Now resonating at full flux, Jesus turned his earth-toned face in an omnidirectional angle.

"Humanity has come a long way since my last visit, particularly within the span of my current lifetime. It hasn't always been easy, and there have been many crucial junctions that we as soul sisters and brothers have come to. However, despite all the inherent complexities, the lessons of life are quite simple: act from your love, not your fear.

"As practical advice, to keep us from choosing corruption or war, I urge you not only to listen to the poets, artists and musicians; I urge you to be one.

"Do not fear fun, creativity, or mystery; stay open to the planets and stars in the great sky, and their movements, for they reflect our own inner movements.

"Never cease to be a child, for curiosity and playfulness preclude judgment.

"Love your mother and your father, and as I alluded to earlier, be careful with the meaning of words. You are birthed not only by your parents, but by the whole earth, which sustains us all and likewise is sustained by us and by the cycles of the universe.

"Make small deeds from a large heart.

"Be here now, for everything else is just a thought.

"And most important. Don't follow a messiah. The meaning of life is within you."

Christ then faded from the auranet's vibrational fields, leaving humans to contemplate his message.

Charlie Tulip went on to welcome the Prophet Mohammed for the show's second segment. Mohammed had incarnated as a painter-turned-statesman and had helped his native Mesopotamia bioregion heal from a brutal civil war at the end of the fossil fuel age. His apparition promised to be a great complement to the first half of the program. Rumors began circulating around the auranet that Jesus would return for a round table discussion. On the eve of Jesus Christ's 78th birthday, the world was at peace with its humans.

The following is an account by a reporter from Planet Fnednus, who was sent by the lifestyle editor of the planet's largest centennial newspaper, the Fnednus Eternity, to do a piece on drug addiction and its effects on distant Planet Earth. Since its inhabitants are known to be some of the most mellow creatures in the universe, there is no such thing as excessive consumption of anything on Fnednus, and...well...any society that publishes their main newspaper only once every 100 years is certainly not drowning in information, so the idea of running a story about fiending earthlings seemed like a pretty dynamite piece of exotic entertainment. The average life expectancy of Fnednutians is about 9500 years, give or take a few centuries, making this 50 year study a relatively low priority, Page 87 assignment. It must be mentioned that in the basic philosophy training that every person on Fnednus receives (it lasts about 3000 years), concepts like "war is peace" or "god wants revenge" are empirically not acceptable, leading to the reporter's premature departure right when things on Earth were getting really messy. He is now back on Fnednus, where people's egos have to last for 9500 years and are thus spread much thinner.

Junkies on Earth

by Fnesnuft Finmuf, special to the Fnednus Eternity

The junkie lives in a self-fabricated world driven by the acquisition and consumption of drugs. He starts with a small dose to turn him on to a more interesting and glamorous reality, and soon finds himself hustling for a quickly increasing demand just to reach comfort level. During these ever shortening periods of comfort the junkie is king, a special and unique individual anointed by the power of suggestion, by the drones of repetition.

In the progressed stages of addiction it becomes harder and harder to locate and exploit supplies, leading the junkie to become quite resourceful in his schemes to attain the drugs. No road is too long or dangerous to get a fix - theft, prostitution and dealing pass through the high court in his head, always justified by the reassuring vote that life without this next fix cannot possibly go on.

Junkies always stick together. No matter how low they've sunk, it is easier to surround themselves with those who understand their pain and yearning because this way their motivations won't ever be questioned. In this mental landscape of instant gratification everyone is free to do as they please because in order to get to the stuff everything is fair game and nobody else on the planet matters. Then, when the dose kicks in, the junkies relax and make big plans for how to save the planet from its evil ways. They can be heroes just for one day!

In the meantime, the people surrounding the junkie become very affected by his actions. The ones closest to him, like family and friends, start to wonder about the inconsistency in his behavior. They are being lied to and then given generous gifts. The disappearance of their money and valuables is followed by confessions of love and care. Slowly they too become entangled in the web of self-deceit and empty promises and often end up as accomplices for the sake of false harmony. This network is very powerful, for it is based on the concept of "Us versus Them" and makes it very difficult for individuals to break out of, for fear of being shunned, outcast and left empty-handed.

Even though the driving force behind this network is the junkie's unquenchable thirst for his smack, the statement to the outside world is that "we just really love each other, we're only protecting our family, and besides, we're free to do as we please." Particularly endangered are the children, dependents and those in debt (from former deals) of the junkie, because they are always reminded of their dependence and the dire consequences should they decide to speak up. They learn to adjust their behavior to suit the junkie's needs, and after sufficient time become experts in this mind game and pass it on to their own dependents. In fact, living the junkie lifestyle becomes so normal and unquestioned that any challenge of one's own addiction seems completely absurd.

Then there are those who are too far away to be caught in the twisted power schemes of the junkie but still feel its wide-ranging effects. Since the junkie's modus operandi is to consume more and more in ever decreasing intervals, he is inevitably forced to step out of his loyal familiar environment to look for money, resources and ultimately drugs in more remote places. However, the people in these places, without the same bond of family and common history, have their brains not yet spun in that same direction. Some of them, quite business savvy though, start producing and selling whatever drugs the junkie desires, knowing that if they don't he will probably come and get them for free. They pity the junkie, but will take his money. There is no love lost between the two.

The others are shocked and disgusted not only at the junkie, but also at their own people for getting involved with this puffed up, degenerate creature that is so blatantly and arrogantly feeding his nasty habit at the expense of everyone around him. The excess of the junkie's lifestyle coupled with his denial of any wrongdoing lead to frustration. Communication is only possible on the junkie's terms whose premise is always and only the production of more drugs and the maintenance and expansion of his network, but never the feelings of those who question his motivations. In fact, what makes the dynamics between the junkie and the world around him so confusing is that he talks incessantly about feelings and compassion while acting rather uncompassionately and obliviously toward others.

By now the physical effects of the junkie's rampage are quite evident: All resources that aid in the sustenance of his addiction have been extracted, often leaving barren landscapes and polluted streams. Land has been rezoned, language has been redefined, even entire countries renamed, all for the sake of bringing joy and happiness to the junkie and his associates. And while those who have joined and now benefit from his tremendous economic and political power keep feeding his fantasy world with positive reinforcement, the ones who either refused or had nothing to offer to begin with are left in the dust.

Frustration then turns into anger. What to do when someone who wasn't invited invades your space not only physically but mentally? What to do when your own children are turned on to the alleged glamour of the drug in your own home while you're struggling to put food on the table? It must feel like you are being assaulted from all sides, and no street corner is safe anymore. There have been too many broken promises to trust another word like freedom or prosperity, and what is being presented as entertainment actually feels like a crime. In your eyes the junkie is a criminal, and justice must be done, and since it is impossible to bring him to court (because all courts are now run by his network) you get a few people together, wait till after dark, and when he least expects it, hit him over the head with a big, heavy object. Ouch!!

Now the junkie and his dealers are really ticked off. Didn't he give everyone the chance to become part of his loving network, dangling big bags of dope in front of them all, promising a better life filled with wealth and opportunity? Didn't he bust his butt, day in and day out, doing all the dirty work so that he wouldn't be the only one who could experience the real highs of life? So when asked by his own network why anyone would do such a thing he proclaims in all honesty that he has no idea why somebody would attack his peace and justice loving self, that it must have been pure irrational, misguided evil. That, of course, resonates with the network, because who could resist an enemy that's pure evil. So off they go, in their drug-induced unity, hunting down pure evil, and if a few deals can be made along the way, the better! In fact, the junkie pleads with his network that in order to eradicate pure evil it is necessary to consume as many drugs as possible, as it will give them strength in their mission.

The ensuing conflict is a bizarre entanglement of words and violence that seems like a completely unrealistic science fiction movie. As the junkie is furiously striking out all around him in his frantic search for pure evil, his network has now completely anesthetized itself with paroles of war impermeable to any kind of self-analysis. War is just! God wants revenge! War is peace! Bombs are flying and people are dying, both good and evil, depending on who's defining.

We're now back at the beginning of the story, seemingly running around in circles, and I am thinking to myself, if only he could kick his habit nobody would have to be so angry and helpless on that planet. If only he could kick his habit he wouldn't have to pursue happiness but he could actually experience it. If only he could kick his habit the people around him would be willing to accept and understand his quirkiness and respect him as an imperfect earthling just like the rest of them. The pillar of the junkie's identity is to never be helped or advised by anyone not part of his own reality, to never show his weakness, to never give in, so in the end it is up to him to break out of this dopey haze and find a place of humility. We can only hope it'll happen before the next issue of the Fnednus Eternity appears...

Percy's Health

Percy Friends was prepared to take it all. Leukemia, kidney failure, colon cancer - hell, even Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's or Lou Gehrig's disease. The last three days had been the worst of his life, yet somehow it had brought him closer to the light, to heaven's gate where the forces of the universe point out the unimportance of the flesh and rejoice in the power of spirit. He had read Lance Armstrong's book earlier this year about the bicyclist's amazing comeback from testicle and brain cancer and closely followed Michael J. Fox's story on Entertainment Tonight, and was now picturing himself slouched into a chair next to Oprah Winfrey, bald and haggard, solemnly recounting the tale of his remarkable recovery. Percy was a survivor, a fighter, and he was going to stare death in the face, triumphant and iron-willed, coming out on top in the end.

The emergency room was a tea party of pain. When not sticking IV-needles into patients' veins nurses were chatting about vacation time and bed arrangements. Percy had been wheeled between a pale old woman hooked to a heart monitor and a middle-aged guy with a British accent laying sideways on a gurney, squealing in regular intervals like a medieval prisoner in the torture chamber. "I'm gonna die," he heard the old lady wincing, as a slightly annoyed looking nurse whizzed by his bed to shoot another load of morphine into the Brit's exposed left butt cheek. Percy tried to roll to his side, but a wave of pain surged through his kidneys and up his spine, a sensation so utterly excruciating that he didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Was there no doctor in this god-forsaken place? Couldn't these people see that his body was tormented by demons of disease whose odious reign expanded with each wasted minute of non-treatment? Did anyone care?

Percy had first felt the pain four days earlier, seemingly out of nowhere. He now remembered how he'd been shifting back and forth on the wooden kitchen chair in his San Francisco apartment during a going-away spaghetti feast with Bo, his room mate and friend. Bo, or Bola, as he lovingly called her, had made plans to visit her parents in South Dakota for the first time since her transformation from cowgirl to purple-haired, tongue-pierced urban hipster three years ago, and Percy had been too focused on offering her mental support to pay much attention to his own impending doom. "You'll be fine," he'd heard himself murmuring, "I mean your parents might freak out a little when they see you walking off the plane, but you know they'll come around once they're turned on to the fantastic adventures of the great Bo Rasmussen. Plus, it's Memorial Day weekend, you know they're gonna be in a great mood, completely enamored by the sheer presence of their little princess..." "...Enamored my ass," her indignant hiss cut through Percy's lower intestine like a pair of scissors, "this happy family reception of the long lost Bohemian, college drop-out e-queen raver daughter is gonna be like Watergate without the lawyers, a Salem for the 21st century. I mean, do you really think I'll score points with my Dad for being able to name every fucking DJ between Ko Samui and San Francisco, for spending his mutual fund on designing the tactile tent for Burning Man?"

"At least you have a Dad," Percy had thought to himself while wiping the last glob of Newman's Own Basil & Mushroom sauce off his plate with a shred of multi-seed sourdough baguette. Percy's father, Lyndon Friends, had left the planet in 1986 at the tender age of 47 after a long and drawn-out battle with lung cancer, or emphysema, or whichever the hell it was that finally got to his shriveled and decrepit body, and Bo's paranoia all of a sudden seemed trivial and self-indulgent to him. Percy had learned how fragile life could be the minute he dropped into it, losing his mother to a birth complication and then watching his father decay when he was just 18. The nine months from when the doctors first detected the little white spots on his father's chest x-ray till the moment he took his last breath had seemed like a lifetime in itself, and Percy had a hard time controlling his temper around people who constantly whined about their petty little problems. But this was no time to garner resentment; Bo was his best friend in the whole world and he couldn't remember the last time they had been apart for more than two days. Maybe their bond was so strong because their struggles were so similar. After all, wasn't the constant silence she had to endure from her parents in regards to her lifestyle just like having no parents at all?

"Uuuhhh," Percy groaned, as the doctor ordered him to turn to his side. He could barely breathe, and with each additional move his torso contracted as if squeezed by a Boa Constrictor. The badge on the doctor's garb said "Dr. Liu," and Percy could now feel this man massage his kidneys like a wad of play dough, never losing the smile that seemed to be glued to his face.
"Hmmm," Dr. Liu opened his mouth for the first time, "so you have pain in the kidneys, right?"
"U-hu," Percy heard himself whispering as he tried to slide on his back, "and in my back, my stomach and down in my groin."
"Hmmm," the doctor continued, "you have a history of problems? Appendicitis? Kidney stones? Gall bladder infections? How about your family, any history there?"
"Family" and "History" were the keywords Percy had been waiting for. Dr. Liu had managed to shoot straight to the center of his fear, tearing into his Achilles with razor-sharp precision. Percy's family and history weren't exactly like a happy couple growing old together; in fact, it seemed like his family was a magnet for disease of all kinds as far back as anyone that he'd been lucky enough to meet was able to remember. All but one of his grandparents had died before he was born, and from what he knew none of his great grandparents had peacefully slipped out the backdoor either. The list read like a who's who of premature death: Heart attacks, Crohn's disease, cystic fibrosis, lymphoma, leukemia, thyroid -, brain - and lung cancer, not to mention bacterial diseases like pneumonia and TB, and if it wasn't their own bodies that got to them it was shrapnel and bullets for three great-uncles lost in World War 2 or a mosquito bite and subsequent Dengue Fever that left his mother's brother waste away in the Vietnamese jungle. The only close relative who made it past the age of 60 was his grandmother on his father's side who'd been residing in a mental institution in Frostburg, Maryland since his father passed away.

"How's that for a family history, Doc?," Percy thought to himself while uttering "No Doctor, I've never had any health problems in my life."

"Well, we're still waiting for the results from the blood tests, but let's get some x-rays of you just to make sure," Dr. Liu went on, still sporting an almost giggly smile. Percy had spent enough time around the men and women in white jackets during his father's fight with cancer to know that the doctor's facial expression meant absolutely nothing. They all had to be poker players by vocation, because to become emotionally involved in their patients' struggle would almost certainly lead to a short career, with insanity as the retirement option. And while most of them chose to always appear stoic, Dr. Liu's seeming cheerfulness meant absolutely nothing as far as reading anything into the state of Percy's health. He could be telling him that little poisonous spiders from South America were hatching in his prostate and it would not wipe the grin off his face.

One of the nurses was rolling an empty wheelchair into the room and parked it right next to Percy. "Here we go, Mr. Friends, and now you and I are going to take a ride to the X-ray room."

The pain had really hit him hard on his way back from dropping Bo off at the airport on Saturday. By the time he returned he was barely able to walk up the stairs to their apartment. What had felt like a strained back the night before had turned into a sensation to be classified somewhere between a broken back and being run over by a truck. He'd managed to get himself into a semi-comfortable position on the living room couch and spent the afternoon lying through an entire broadcast of the PGA Senior Classic golf tournament, indication enough that things were taking a turn for the worse. Yet as the evening came around he started to feel a little better and dragged his battered body to Thanasi's corner store to get himself some Advil, a bag of salted pretzels and a six-pack of Rolling Rock. "If I can't make it to any of the countless Memorial weekend parties," he thought to himself, "I might as well have a little fun while recovering from whatever the hell is bugging me." "Come to think of it," and now his face lit up with a mischievous grin, "wasn't there a bag of pot in Bo's treasure chest under her desk?" Not that he wouldn't have sucked down bongload after bongload at the various barbecues anyway, but the thought of actually engaging in a legitimate medicinal marijuana smoking activity in support and honor of California State Proposition 215 now really left him amused.

It was the last time that weekend Percy was amused.

After drifting into a haze of booze, dope, Advil and TV, Percy awoke at four thirty to the sound of sledgehammers pounding rhythmic shocks of galling torment up his spine and into his brain. Completely incapacitated, unable to move his body to either side or even take a deep breath, he closed his eyes for a second, hoping that this was all just a dream. He had no idea what had come over him, but for all he knew this was the end of the world. There were no words in the English dictionary that could describe what he was feeling. Although Percy's immediate reaction was to blame his condition on the Rolling Rock, he knew this wasn't a hangover. However, whether it was denial, personal pride or just plain fear, he decided to lay in bed like a brick and wait this one out. He didn't want to worry anybody, including himself, not to mention that he was unable to get to the living room to pick up the phone. He didn't even want to know what was ailing him, for he was too afraid of the answer. There was nothing on this spring Sunday that could lift the dark cloud that had invaded the body and spirit of Percy Friends. Squished in his bed like a ripe peach fallen off a tree, he was left to rot in his own paralysis.

The x-ray room looked like the set of a B-grade SCI-Fi movie. Gray tiled walls highlighted by glaring neon-lights made for an atmosphere welcoming of anything but life-forms, and the only occupant in this chamber of no tomorrow was a bench-press type of apparatus flanked by a white metal arch that looked like a post-modern torture device. The big challenge was to get from the wheel chair to the CAT Scan bench, a thought less terrifying for its painful implications than for the shock value it placed on a healthy 33 year old's mind. The nurse, who had most likely seen it all in her time, showed much less sympathy for Percy's predicament. She locked her arms under his elbows, and calmly pulled her squealing and whimpering patient out of the chair and onto the bench. "Well done, Mr. Friends," she said in a slightly triumphant tone, " and now all you have to do is take a deep breath when I tell you to and hold it until I say so." She disappeared into the control room and the next thing he noticed was the arched scanner above buzzing down toward him. "O.K., Mr. Friends," he heard her tinny voice croaking over the intercom, "take a deep breath now."

His entire life rolled by him while the machine went "clickedeclack - clickedeclack - clickedeclack." From his earliest memories of complete strangers pitying the boy for having to grow up without a mother, to the first rock concert that his dad took him to way before any of his friends were ever allowed to partake in such madness (it was, after all, a Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne double bill), to his Dad's funeral, the move to San Francisco, the birth of his own zine ("Stand" - covering the underground punk scene), to meeting Bo at a rave in Angel's Camp, his whole roller coaster ride had now gotten compressed into five minutes of high-tech disease detecting. "You can exhale now, Mr. Friends, but don't move!" the nurse's voice suddenly interrupted Percy's breathless zone, and seconds later she stood beside him, this time in a complete anti-radioactive space suit, repositioning the protection vest down toward his extremities.

The phone was ringing.

Percy had been in bed all day, but his back hadn't gotten any better. In fact, he could now feel the pain ripping through his groin while what seemed to be his kidneys were visited by intense spasms that felt like someone had inserted an ice-crusher into his body and was making margaritas out of his organs. It was then that it really hit him hard. The fortress of denial he had built around himself began to crumble under the weight of naked fear. The boy who had learned to protect himself from the brutal realities of life from the day he was born all of a sudden found himself directly exposed to them. All the lost lives, loves and opportunities loomed crystal clear in front of him, and they were only magnified by what had been determined in his mind as a fact that this couldn't possibly be just some pinched nerve anymore. For all he knew he was dead in the water. In his hubris of infallible health he had failed to follow the cardinal rule of disease prevention and recovery: Early detection. He was now sure that whatever it was he had must have been growing inside of him for a while, slowly fermenting like a good batch of beer, triumphantly bathing in his drunken ignorance. Percy had never felt so alone in his life.

"Oh Percy, I should have never gone, do you know what my Dad said to me this morning....," Bo's voice on the answering machine rang through the hallway like a distant island of hope. Percy knew he had to pick up the phone, if not for any physical advice or betterment, but for his quickly dwindling sanity.

"....worked so hard all my life so you could have it better...."

Percy was hanging on the edge of his bed frame, slowly lowering himself to the floor. The two foot descent felt like two thousand, but when he finally plunged to the safety of his worn-out salvation army rug, heaving like a locomotive, he had found new motivation to live. A trip to the telephone had become the only remaining goal in the life of Percy Friends.

"...what do you think your mother's been telling her friends.....the kindest person in the world.....never says anything.....such a disappointment....this degenerate behavior.....causing so much pain..."

Crawling on all fours Percy was silently praying for Bo to keep on venting. It seemed like with every worm-like gyration the hallway became longer and longer, while spasms now charged through his entire body like high voltage bursts.

"...you know what I told the neo-bourgeois toad..."

Looking at the wall socket and a flying hairball, Percy had a momentary vision of what life must be like for ground-dwelling creatures.

"...I told him to take his patronizing, reactionary, socio-hegemonic morals and stuff it in a safe along with the loot of his corporate exploitations..."

He'd almost made it to the living room, now sliding down the hardwood floor on his back.

"...who the hell does he think he is..? Julius Caesar...? Jesus Christ...? Jesse fuckin' Helms...? Fuck him, and fuck him again! F-U-C-K HIM!!! FUUUUUUUUUCK HEEEEEEEEEEEEM!!!

As Bo's voice changed from furious to helpless, Percy was inching his way toward the phone on the coffee table. He could hear her sobbing now, and he didn't know who to feel more sorry for.

"Bo...? Bola...?" Nothing but dial-tone..........

Percy lay on the floor, the phone in his left hand, like the winner of a marathon who'd just found out he got disqualified, staring at the ceiling, utterly incredulous, a man who'd failed his ultimate test.

"If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.........if you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help......"

Percy opened his eyes. He had no idea how long he'd been lying there, but judging by the darkness in the living room he had checked out for a long time. The phone still clutched in his left hand, he dialed the number for the time announcement: It was four thirty in the morning. Could this all just have been a dream? Had he been night walking and then just crashed on the living room floor? A simple move to the side quickly brought him back to reality. There it was, the suffocating pain, as present as a loyal disciple, growing on him like the currents of faith that only get stronger and more undying with the passing of time. There it was, the nagging uncertainty about what to do, a stifling inertia that steered every move, every single thought even, into a spiral with no direction, doomed to resurface not until reaching its original source of desperation, again and again.

At six thirty on Memorial Day morning Percy Friends finally snapped out of his kafkaesque state of entrapment and realized what year it was.

He dialed 911.

Percy could see the short but stocky frame of Dr. Liu approaching from far down the aisle, clipboard and folder wedged under his right arm. He had returned to the ER from his visit to the X-Ray room two hours earlier and had plenty of time to think about his situation. It had been nearly twelve hours since the ambulance had dropped him off that morning. Percy Friends was prepared to take it all. Leukemia, kidney failure, colon cancer - hell, even Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's or Lou Gehrig's disease. The last three days had been the worst of his life, yet somehow it had brought him closer to the light, to heaven's gate where the forces of the universe point out the unimportance of the flesh and rejoice in the power of spirit.

Dr. Liu stopped next to the Brit's gurney, giving him a codeine prescription for his migraine, then moved on to the old woman to inform her that nothing was wrong with her heart and that she couldn't possibly spend the night at the hospital, pointing out his humanitarian empathy but emphasizing the fact that this wasn't a hotel. When he finally got to Percy - there was that smile again - he shuffled through his files, pulled out an X-Ray and bubbled: "...And you, Mr. Friends, you've got a cracked rib and should rest for a few days. Now don't be playing any football for a while - at least not without pads," he chuckled, and disappeared into the next room where seemingly bigger and more grave medical cases were awaiting him.

At seven thirty that evening, Percy made his third phone call of the day, dialing up a cab to take him home.

The Human Race

from Dancing on the Brink of the World, Tuber Creations Publishing, 2008

Anna gets up from the ground and takes a deep breath. The spring air is thick with the sounds and smells of the land. Bumblebees buzz through lavender bushes in their mission to pollinate the world. A lazy breeze generates just enough motion for a quiet concerto of creaking branches and rustling leaves. Hummingbirds careen over treetops and moles poke their heads out of the ground. Organic fumes from a mix of food scraps and horse manure rise from the ripe and ready compost pile. Ahead lies nothing but fertile earth.

With bare hands covered in mud Anna wipes a pearl of sweat from her face, leaving earth-toned smears on her rosy cheeks. She leans on her shovel and squints into three open rows of German Butterball potatoes waiting to be tucked in like sleeping children. Behind the budding raspberry bushes the tomato seedlings stretch their burgeoning stems toward the sunlight, in steady anticipation of turning from tender flowers to crisp green fruit, then to juicy red tomatoes ready for picking. Double rows of soybean pods twinkle in the sunlight, as if to announce their high fiber and protein content and their suitability to be made into biodiesel fuel. Hidden in the shadows of a walnut tree a group of dormant wild tulips patiently await their turn to blossom. Life is simple.

Exhaling slowly, she can feel the steady pulse of the earth, connecting her body to the source and inviting her thoughts to abandon the race...

The race wasn't just between the runners. It was an event that had to be carefully planned years in advance. Accommodations and food for 35,000 runners from all around the world. Negotiations with Seattle City Hall to close streets, provide security, and set up facilities. Changing insurance policies, reflecting the race's growing popularity and associated risks. Courting potential sponsors and keeping in touch with existing advertisers. Trademark issues. Poster design and printing. Merchandise. Health Department. Entertainment. Cleanup. It was all Anna's baby.

From the humble beginnings of jogging through town with her college freshman friends every first Saturday of the month to the first time she hired outposts providing lunch and Gatorade, Anna was the rock that held it all together. She had turned her passion for health and working out into her bread and butter. In the process she had shaped the lives of countless people whose feedback gave testimony to how their negative body images had been transformed by the race. Indeed, drawing from her own childhood experience of constant teasing for being chubby and slow (the neighborhood kids in her native El Paso called her "Gordo," the Fat One; her last name was Gordon), she was determined to build an event in which everyone would come out a winner. Crossing all age, weight, economic, and cultural lines gave the race such widespread appeal—distinguishing it from other cities' marathons populated by skinny-legged professional athletes—that its name was a cinch from the get-go: The Human Race.

Deep inside something else tickled her soul; all she wanted to do was stick her hands in the dirt and watch potatoes grow...

When the race entered its third year Anna, only twenty-one, noticed a significant shift from its initial down-home character to a more growth-oriented business structure. While a permit from the city, a few volunteers on the day of the race, and a less than full-time effort on Anna's end had initially sufficed to keep everyone happy, the growing buzz attracted not only more runners but also those who saw a cash cow in the event. As advertising dollars began to roll in over the next few years, voices calling for fairgrounds grew louder. The race would finish at these new fairgrounds which could also be used for many other recreational and commercial uses. Word of Peterson Ranch as the perfect site began to circulate.

Elevated on a ridge southeast of Seattle, Peterson Ranch covered 800 acres of lush green meadow with vast forest stands along its periphery, making up about twenty percent of the entire ridge. Due to population influx and an increasing need for housing and services, and not without persistent lobbying by business interests, the city had recently rezoned the ridge from agricultural to residential and commercial, making it irresistible for the remaining ranchers to sell their farm land to developers. By the fifth year Anna was working day and night just to keep up with the race's essentials, like accommodating 20,000 runners from fifty-four countries. Although she had assembled a loyal and hard-working staff of twelve (three of them were old college friends), her own schedule seemed to be getting busier and busier. Not only was she hurrying from photo-ops and interviews to television shows and charity events, but she had also become a regular at planning committee meetings and public hearings on new development. However, when the investors, who had urged her to buy and develop private land, took her on a drive to Peterson Ranch, her heart sent out a completely different signal.

Just a gut feeling—the calm joy and plain contentment of gazing into the mountainous grasslands surrounding a small plot.

The winter after the seventh Human Race, the pressure of selling the rights to the event to investors had come to a head. The Liberty Group Inc. was offering Anna, now twenty-five, $30 million to buy her out of the race once and for all. Their strategy included four races each year that would terminate in a state-of-the-art stadium to be built on Jim Peterson's land. The purchase of the ridge real estate was considered a formality, tied in with the development of family homes and a mall in the surrounding areas. Rumor had it that negotiations had been set in motion with Major League Soccer interests regarding a possible expansion team as another tenant of the new stadium. The buzz around town ranged from Hollywood picking up the race as the world's greatest reality show to the possibility of Seattle playing host to the Olympics.

One day during that winter, two years after the investors had first driven her by the for-sale signs stapled to the ranch's weathered picket fence along the main road, Anna decided to hike up to the ridge on her own. Leaving at sunrise and determined to stay off the road, she bushwhacked up the steep and densely forested hill, her path through the thicket only occasionally aided by deer trails. Around noon, she came to a meadow on the ranch's northwestern side, her warm breath drawing white clouds in the frosty winter air. The absence of fences on this side of the property indicated that no cattle had grazed here in years. Anna waded farther uphill through waist-high grass, bathing in this sea of untouched lushness, when finally she saw smoke rising from a stone chimney.

Going back to basics is the only sensible path. Everything else is like spinning in circles, never able to get off the wheel of illusory fortunes...

Jim Peterson opened his door with the kind of unamicable look that could be expected from a seventy-three year-old retired rancher turned reclusive widower, unable to afford his own land in a booming real estate market. His disposition changed slightly when he saw the stocky, mud-covered woman with the big brown eyes and rosy cheeks standing in his doorway. She certainly didn't seem to be one of those coifed brokers who had been chasing him down like a wounded raccoon, dangling scraps in front of him while going for the kill. He had sworn on his beloved wife's grave that he would rather rot to death up here than let any of these bloodsuckers build a golf course on his land.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Peterson, my name is Anna, Anna Gordon. I am the organizer of the Human Race down in Seattle and aware of all the bidding that is going on for your ranch. May I please come in? I have a proposition I think you will like."

They spent the afternoon talking about chickens and foxes, coyotes and goats. Jim Peterson made tea and told stories about growing up on the ridge in the 1930s.

"You know, Anna, my dad took me deer hunting up here when I was barely big enough to hold a rifle. They didn't even pave the road until the late '50s. I remember hunkering down in the farmhouse during long winter rains, just living off the venison and goat's milk. When me and Ellie took over in '72 there were still elk up here. But it's changed now. The new subdivisions are moving farther and farther up the ridge, and those new people couldn't tell an elk from a Labrador anyway."He sighed.

Anna thought she could tell that he hadn't had a meaningful conversation in a while. She listened attentively to the old rancher, sipping hot tea. When Jim Peterson got up to make more hot water, she shared her own story about how her mother's family had been sheep herders in Nicaragua and how her father had worked on a farm in West Texas when they first met. Mama had left her land and family in Nicaragua together with her brother—Anna's uncle Carlos— in the early '80s to escape the imminent civil war and find work in the States. While she got married to a gringo and had Anna, Carlos had gone on to seek farm work in California, where he went missing and was never heard from again.

Anna recalled how she had to help out when she was little, feeding chickens and watering the potato fields. Then her parents moved to El Paso where Dad had accepted a clerical job. They told her it was all for her sake, the only way she could go to college and live a better life, away from the dirt and poverty of the farm. She always understood her mother's resentment toward living off the land. After all, in her mind it was not only the reason for losing her brother but for having had to leave her native land in the first place. When Anna was accepted by the University of Washington's School of Business it felt as if she had finally completed her mother's race.

"You know, Mr. Peterson, that's when I knew I had to start my own race, though I had no idea it would turn out to be so literal." She paused and took a deep breath. "The Human Race has been wonderful, a great way to connect my body to the earth, and I've become a wealthy woman in the process, not just materially. But somehow, deep down, I've always yearned to be on the land again, not because I have to, but because I want to. I want my parents to retire on a piece of land of their own, to enjoy the sweet tastes of the earth the way they were always supposed to. And I want to show the city of Seattle that investing in small farms can profit the whole community. If you let me buy you out, Mr. Peterson, I promise there will never be a stadium on this ridge. And you will always be welcome here." A week later, Jim Peterson signed the title over to Anna.

Life on the farm feels too slow to be measured. Subtle changes in light and temperature resonate with the heart and give meaning to the mind. Though within a stone's throw of the restless city, the farm seems light-years away from everything...

The farmhouse has no running water or plumbing, but there is a big wood stove in the middle of the main room where Jim Peterson used to boil water for tea. Anna spends her evenings cooking fresh vegetables from the farm and watching the sunset from her window. She listens to the evening breeze and watches it lift the native red-tailed hawks into the air before they swoop down on their prey. The shapes and colors up here seem as if they are created for the occasion of each perfect day. On one such day the shape of a runner comes into view on the distant horizon. Then another. Then three more. Then the whole field.

Burying potatoes and chard seeds in the ground bears the same rhythm as planting one foot after another on the track. As the wind, rain and temperature dictate the timing of a successful crop, so do consistent breath intervals, hydration and body heat determine the outcome of a race.

When word got out that Anna had bought Peterson Ranch, people assumed that she had bought the land to develop it, and accused her of being greedy. The investors and developers—feeling betrayed—filed a lawsuit. However, once it became clear that the only tools used on this patch of land were going to be hoes and weed-whackers, people became more sympathetic to Anna's odd decision to go from fitness mogul to farm girl. After all, wasn't it she who had brought so much joy and recognition to their city and shouldn't she thus be able to determine the further course of The Human Race?

Soon, all charges were dropped, and with it all the hoopla, billboards, and important people in suits surrounding the race disappeared. The day after the case was dismissed she made an announcement on public radio. The Human Race would go on, albeit on a smaller, more local scale, organized by members of the community. In fact, she proposed that if everyone agreed, the race could happen twice a year, first in the spring during planting season, then in the fall for harvest. The final destination of the race would be Anna's farm, set up with benches and picnic tables. There would be food for everyone, freshly prepared by the best of Seattle's chefs. And so the Human Race would continue.

Though the dark and moist soil is breathing with life, its inhabitants' rhythms are deliberately slow, their sole purpose to sustain a fragile habitat.

On this sunny spring day the Human Race turns the corner to enter the soft grounds of juicy meadow and fertile farmland. About two thousand exhausted runners gather to enjoy the stunning views and peaceful quiet. From the farmhouse, the smells of lentils and steamed greens waft through the mild air, whetting everyone's appetite. Some of the runners are picking the season's first cherries from the tree by the well. In the makeshift farm plaza, decorated with beautiful flower arrangements, Jim Peterson is seen talking with the Gordons. No one remembers who won the race. Just as Anna had planned it.