HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN HERE?

I rarely discover contemporary novels that combine intellectual ideas with intriguing human relationships, written in a readable fashion, but I recently read an intriguing novel by Gary Entsminger and Susan Elliott of Pinyon Publishing which combines science and mysticism with the story of humans struggling to work out their destiny in our mysterious universe. OPHELIA’S GHOST (2008) was written by the publisher and designer of CHANT OF DEATH (a mystery co-authored by me and Isabel Anders, published this year).

I was fascinated from start to finish with this compelling read which features an anthropologist, Eva, who goes missing from her camp in the southwest U.S. while she’s researching the Anasazi, a native American culture that disappeared from the U.S. during the 14th century. Her tracker, Joe Hill, with the aid of a field notebook, takes us on an incredible journey that includes UFO’s, Einstein, parallel universes, Shakespeare, Jung, the lost continent Atlantis, astronomy, and psychic consciousness, woven into a complex mix of disciplines and written by authors who are expert at capturing intellectual ideas without lapsing into pedantic prose. These ideas are presented within the construct of a broken relationship between Joe, the tracker and his former wife, Esperanza, a healer who used native-grown herbs to do her work, and his devotion to their daughter Nina who performs in "Hamlet" ( a fitting enactment by the immortal Shakespeare in this story of eternal ideas).  Nina introduces the reader to ghosts and questions about reality.

The authors use the device of Eva’s field journal to carry us into the world of divine knowledge, astronomy, and memory work, interspersed with speculations about the moon’s control over earth dwellers, and pictographs. Their prose is highly accessible and suspenseful as they convey the abovementioned complex ideas, and the reader is beset with moments of wonder and wondering.  

This is speculative fiction/mystery at its zenith, plunging the reader into other worlds where the physicists are desperate for something to believe in. Their theories have gone haywire since Einstein… The story takes place on Anasazi terrain, the Land of the Ancients, in Hovenweep (deserted valley), and the descriptions are as haunting as the mysterious disappearance of Eva and her search for the unknown: She heard the spring more clearly now and decided to search for the source of this water music. Pack on back, she carefully let herself down into the steep canyon. Violet swallows dived above her, while a fat horny lizard scurried at her feet. She watched the lizard a bit too long and forgot where she was; she lost her footing and slid. Her fingers dug into the ground to break her fall. …Once she was out, Eva rested on a boulder. A small blue butterfly fluttered into the patch of silvery lupines. Although only May, the lupines had already begun to produce hair seedpods. The butterfly flitted nervously around the remaining indigo blooms…

I liked the form of dialogue in OPHELIA’S GHOST – Joycean style, rendered without the impediments of quotation marks and “he saids,” “she saids” that often halt the action of most novels, e.g.:

--You’re saying that the Egyptians believed in spaceships?


--Nope. I’m not saying that exactly, but I’m also pretty sure that no one in our lifetimes, at least in mine, will ever be able to convince everyone about what went on with ancient cultures. Some historians think the Pharaoh journeyed to a launch site. And that’s not my claim, but a prestigious scholar’s who studies these things very seriously.


--Another reliable specialist?


--Yep, he says the Pharaoh would go into subterranean complexes, which seemed to be every which way you looked in that time, somewhere between 3000 and 10,000 B.C. So down he goes into this oddly vented underworld. I’ve seen some of the pictures. And in those recluses for oblivion, lit only by lanterns and reflected sunlight and moonlight, the Pharaoh was treated like the royalty he was and prepared for his trip to the next world…

Tantalizing? Yes, and at the conclusion of OPHELIA’S GHOST, we’re left still wondering about Eva’s disappearance, pondering the idea of ancestral control and just how far the Collective Conscious can take us in this life where we pass from world to world in a breathless spin via “ghosts.” We close the book, asking with the authors, how long have we been here? (p. 94 of OPHELIA’S GHOST).

This is cosmic mystery at its best, and it makes me even prouder that CHANT OF DEATH was published by the two intelligent authors with eclectic interests who created the magic of OPHELIA’S GHOST.

AN ANNIVERSARY

Ten days ago, after leaving Sewanee, Tennessee, I celebrated an auspicious anniversary in my life. On October 16, 2008, following my retirement, I became an associate of the Order of the Sisters of St. Mary, a religious community based at Sewanee that has made a significant difference in my life on The Mountain. It is there that I was given the space to worship and pray freely without worrying about church program and organization and my place in the hierarchal order of ordained clergy. I didn’t become free from responsibility because in order to become an associate, a candidate must follow a discipline created after the example of the Benedictine order, adhering to it for a year before being installed as an associate – regular prayer, attendance at chapel services, participation in the life of the community, charitable giving…a discipline that covered two pages of my personal rule.

I miss Tuesday Morning Prayer and Eucharist (held at 7 a.m.) and the wonderful Sunday services with a community of approximately 30 – 40 people on Sundays, the community breakfasts with eight Sisters who have become my spiritual sisters for life –The Rev. Sr. Lucy, Sr. Miriam, Sr. Elizabeth, Sr. Mary Zita, Sr. Martha Mary, Sr. Madeleine Mary, Sr. Margaret, and The Rev. Sr. Julian. And then there’s the formidable presence of The Rev. Dr. Susanna Metz who delivers Tuesday morning homilies – a tall woman dressed in swirling silk dresses who celebrates Eucharist in her bare feet – and, I am pleased to add, who is a candidate for bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan. Each of these people have influenced me profoundly with their individual ideas about the contemplative life and have challenged me to evaluate how well I’m living my life according to the purpose for which God created me. And they’ve done this, not with false piety, but amid much laughter and table talk, as well as within a silence as deep as that of the gray stones of the chapel walls. Some Sundays I preached and assisted on the altar at St. Mary’s, and I’ve also preached at one of their “missions,” Grace Fellowship Church, which is located near the Convent.

I’ve written a lot of “Sisters and Susanna Poems,” as I call them, some of which appear in my poetry chapbooks, RISING WATER and OLD RIDGES. At present I’m working on another book of poetry, and in reading back over it this morning, I find that the poems reflect a heightened appreciation of the natural world. I attribute this expansion to the deepening of my contemplative life, inspired by the Sisters. Here’s one of the poems in the new book:

UNLESS YOU DO IT FOR THE LEAST OF MINE

In this dry month of August

deer enter the woods of the Cumberland,

foraging among dead branches,

pilfering our berry patch,

brazen creatures following the sound of silver

clinking against china on our porch table.

They are absent of grace

in the shadowy face of hunger,

graze on leavings,

glaring at us across the yard,

eying our full plates,

ears raised at each forkful.

We feel their resentment

curdling a glass of milk,

blueberries withering in the bowl of breakfast,

the admonition “feed my [deer],”

a red-letter line spoken

by the world’s best activist

stirring in the sycamore leaves,

spurring us to shop for corn,

before the cullers come with bow and arrow,

before the autumn deaths,

leaves twisting and falling

into bloodspills of the hungry,

those shuddering hearts

and doe eyes glittering with His message:

“you have done it to the least of mine.”

HUNTING FOR HYDRILLA

After spending several days on house repairs and yard maintenance during resettlement in New Iberia, the urge for a change of scenery overcame us, and my botanist friend Vickie decided to drag me along on a search for a plant that grows in nearby St. Martin Parish. She has included a write-up about this plant in her book WHY WATER PLANTS DON'T DROWN, which Susan Elliott of Pinyon Publishing is now illustrating. After lunch, we boarded the Honda and set out for Lake Martin where she had collected specimens of this plant during her career as a professor of botany at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. I’ve written about Lake Martin in other blogs, but the subject of hydrilla plants has never come up.

The drive through the lowlands in St. Martin Parish in the October sunshine was pleasant, and when we arrived at the lake, we found several trucks parked near the boat landing where fishermen, truant from work, had put in their aluminum Joe boats and pirogues earlier in the day. One returning fisherman, reloading his boat in the 86 degree weather waved me over to see his catch of eight small bass, big enough for a mess, but not large enough to brag about. “I’m staying up here on the dock,” I told him, “because I know how many ‘gators populate this lake.”

“You’re right,” he answered, casting an eye at Vickie standing too close to the edge of the lake, twisting a plant around a stick. “I just ran over one a few minutes ago.”

“It’s a wonder it didn’t turn your boat over,” I said, and he shook his head.

“Lucky, I guess,” he answered. He looked quizzically at me standing there on the dock with the sun turning my white hair even whiter, dressed in pedal pushers and a t-shirt, and asked, “You from around here? “ The question was more like “What are you doing out here?” but I wasn’t offended. I did look out of place.

“For about 45 years,” I told him. He looked relieved that I wasn’t a “come here,” and showed me how his trailer tires had become entangled in “some kind of seaweed” as he pulled it out of the water and onto the boat ramp. At the time I didn’t know that it was hydrilla, the plant for which Vickie had been searching.

Hydrilla is an aggressive water weed that invades water systems and drives away all native and introduced aquatic plants. It survives under lower light conditions than any other species and grows beneath other plants, making it able to live at greater depths. Because it can use low light, it starts photosynthesizing earlier in the day than other plants and captures most of the carbon dioxide that enters the water during the night. The plant is 93-95% water so it can make large volumes of biomass using very few resources. In the summer, it grows rapidly, doubling its biomass. Then it branches as it approaches the water surface and fills the water column up to 20 feet deep, shading out other plants. In California, hydrilla infested an irrigation canal so densely that the water backed up over the banks and ran down a hillside. Hydrilla mats can damage dams and power plants, and interferes with boating and fishing. It can also decrease fishing stocks. In the case of the fisherman to whom I talked, his truck tires spun on the water plants washed up on the boat ramp. Only with the help of another fisherman did he get his boat out.

Among the sights I saw: a mosquito as large as a small dragonfly that landed on the rearview mirror of the Honda; a yellow/gold willow tree glistening in the sunlight, a grove of lotus, and muddy water surfaces covered with duckweed and mats of large yellow flowers called burr marigolds.

As we followed the dusty road to the end of the lake, we saw a long Joe boat filled with eight people who had been cruising on a swamp tour – they’d probably been looking for ‘gators, one of which Vickie spied (and I urged her on) as we sped away with a plastic bag filled with hydrilla specimens.

We got lost on the way home. As a school bus passed, we saw “St. Martin Parish” painted on its yellow side. “Hay la bas,” I hollered, “we’re near St. Martinville. “ And suddenly we emerged in St. Martinville, no thanks to the old Louisiana map I had unearthed that had a hole smack center in the area we were traveling. That’s the way we usually travel – lost – but we find serendipity along the way.

And the hydrilla? It was still green and perky when we reached home; however, I am advising Vickie not to throw it in the coulee behind our house or the drainage ditch will be overcome by this plant, which looks like an ominous caterpillar that lured us outdoors today. Right now, it‘s drifting in a small white cereal bowl in the kitchen. Did I say that it captures most of the carbon dioxide during the night? And what about our oxygen?