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haiku
July 2009 
Dance in a Circle
sarva
"Is it really so simple?" Lynch asked. "Sure, they'll tell you the Sun also rises. So, what? It's four o'clock in the morning. Sunrise seems remote, doesn't it, Walking Hawk?"
"My friends brought me here, and I'll stay here, for now. I don't have anything original to say," Hawk volunteers.
"There is nothing original," Hawk's new acquaintance says with little conviction.
"Okay, I'll offer something, but I don't think you're going to appreciate this much... depression is natural for any creature living in a cage. Granted, the beauty of the cage does make some difference, but the best cage mimics a natural environment. Medicos will call your natural feelings symptoms, and they'll pinpoint your divergence as the cause. In this case, they mean divergence from the course of life crafted for us by property holders, exclusively men, who included human beings among their property. They'll tell you you're fighting the cage. And they'll treat the symptoms, not the disease. Medication masks deep dissatisfaction with life, which in almost all cases is dissatisfactory.
I'm sure you're asking yourself; what does this have to do with me? I'm not living in a cage." Hawk pauses, reconsidering the course of the discourse. He decides to say something he knows his new acquaintance will agree with. "For most, satisfaction with life is far too expensive." He cloaks the next statement in ambiguity, which hides some irony. "The need for the drug stems from people's inability to manipulate themselves into believing, into denying, into accepting unhappiness as an inevitable outcome of self control, which confers great power in the pursuit of happiness. Translate that last word property, and I don't think you will have changed the meaning much, if at all."
Lynch pauses for thought. Accepting unhappiness leads to happiness? This man is confused. He asks Hawk the question, "accepting unhappiness in the pursuit of happiness? That's absurd."
"Accepting unhappiness in the pursuit of property," Hawk answers.
Who said ‘pursuit of happiness' first Hawk, the Iroquois?" Lynch asked, sarcastically. Hardly able to maintain decorum, Lynch takes a breath and a drink; he looks at the hot electric light beside the table. Fossil-fuel-based energy feeds the deceptive light it brings to the moment as it filters through the shade. He considers all the petrochemicals needed for the product to get where it now rests: the fertilizer, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fuel for the tractor used in every step of the farming, fuels to transport the chemicals to the field and fuel to transport the finished product. Lastly, he thought of the dioxin they used to defoliate the plants in the process of harvesting the cotton for the shade, his jeans, his polo shirt and the 1400 thread-count Egyptian spun sheets on the bed, on which he rests very comfortably. He remembers the tainted cotton-seed oil he saw dripping from the massive gin. He remembers the outlaws, illegal immigrant men on aluminum lawn chairs who sat beside the nearby pond where the toxic runoff collected. They were paid by the hour to shoot birds that landed there before they could fly off to spread the malignancy. He thinks about the twelve-cylinder Italian car in his five-car garage, six hundred and sixteen horses under the hood.
He looks at the activated-carbon filtered, reverse osmosis purified, de-ionized, quintuple-distilled clear liquid, a fluid combination of water, carbon dioxide, water-ice (which was frozen using more fossil-fuel-based energy and chlorofluorocarbons, now outlawed) quinine, high fructose corn syrup and vodka. A little sodium benzoate topped off the vodka tonic. The liquid conforms to the crystal clear glass, and condensation drips down to the mahogany table, the wood imported from the Philippines half way around the world where the old growth forests are long gone. He knows in confidence that the marine polymer resin coating would never allow for a ring to mar its shining beauty. He imagines the plank as part of a beautiful, durable coffin. Then, he asks himself the first in a crooked line of questions, not stupid questions, but questions he already knew the answers to. With his strategy in arguing with himself he could never lose.
He began in a scandalous instant when a sincere intent to reassess his conception of happiness flashed through his preconscious mind. The instant ended in a personal house cleaning that lead back to where it began. Still, it did leave a trace. It arose from a core, now long remote from him. It was far away from the manmade island estate where now he found himself. He looked at Walking Hawk who was looking down at his own bare feet on the hard wood floor. In that instant, Lynch formed a vague contempt toward the man. On the face of it, the contempt was born of anger. On a deeper level, it resulted from a social reality that reached back to times neither of the men was very familiar with. "I'm not dissatisfied," he said. "But you must be very dissatisfied with life, maybe with yourself. Life is not dissatisfactory. It is what you make it."
"With all due respect, Lynch," Walking Hawk said, "life is not what you make it. Life is broad and universal. Not even human life is a human invention. You didn't make life, not even your own, and neither do the millions of others who help you maintain the lavish excess you live in, now. Your surrounding fortress against discomfort will stand for as long as you are willing to devote nearly all your energies to maintaining it. But don't deceive yourself that you control all the factors that make it possible, nor all the factors that can bring it down. As we speak, forces are working to undermine its foundation, forces which are always at work, even while you sleep. I wonder what you know."
"You know what I mean, Hawk. I didn't say I created life, but I am a self-made man. How's your knee?" Lynch asked.
Walking Hawk sighs. "Healing," he replies.
"Take my advice, Hawk. Don't sue me. You'll be very sorry. Why were you dancing in my foyer, anyway? Marble is slippery when it's wet."
Hawk was dancing in the circular mosaic in the foyer. This is the simplest explanation, and it just touches the face of Truth. "It's a long story," Walking Hawk said.
"Sunrise is remote. You don't have anywhere else to be. Tell it."
The Shadow of a Doubt
"Night called me out. I went out with my friends tonight in spite of reservations. It was a gamble. For at least the last twenty three years, there has been a storm whenever I have left my home at night. But I didn't want to disappoint my friends who said they needed me. I didn't know what form the storm would take. I knew it could be destructive. I looked at the night sky, and I doubted myself because she was as clear as crystal. You certainly don't, but many of us need the rain, as you know. I thought a storm might serve some of us just fine." At that moment, Walking Hawk's stomach growled. At first, Lynch mistook it for distant, rolling thunder.
"I decided to go out because I believed the storm would not be destructive but just provide us with rain. We came out to your island on a lark, for the game. My friends said they planned to take one deer, and they promised they would take me back when they got one. It seemed innocent enough after they justified it to me. I'm vegan, but I don't judge people for being omnivorous. Flesh eating is ubiquitous in nature. Normally, I wouldn't poach an egg. But my friends insisted. Honestly, sometimes they get a laugh out of me. To them, I'm a mass of contradictions. I'm a white elephant, a white buffalo, maybe I should say.
When they got me out here, they presented me with a bow, and they put me up to making the kill. I used to hunt with a bow. Now, I practice Zen archery. They said I couldn't hit anything moving. They unpacked all their put downs, dares and cuts to my manhood. They said ‘this is the home of the brave,' and they had me. I wanted to cry. As they handed me the bow, in a moment of lapse, wrong-hearted, I took it, and with it, responsibility for the whole night into my hand. It felt lighter than air, the string so taut it sang of strength. I felt its living heart. I knew the bow would take a life this night. Since I knew it would have to shed blood, I agreed to shoot one of the deer, which you count among your property. I would kill for the creed, the creed of my people and of the bow. I saw my people crying out for blood while my friends drunkenly insulted me. I knew it was really the land demanding a sacrifice for itself, demanding a sacrifice from me. I asked the deer people to give their blood for me. If they would not, the spent blood would be one of ours. That means the blood would be mine because I would not allow anyone to pay the price for my mistake.
My friends and I know well enough how to stalk and track a deer, even in the dark of night. She knew we were there for her, and she was wakeful. We tracked her down, all right. There she stood still and silently. Looking me in the eye through the sight of the bow. She offered herself to me, and my heart sank. My hand was shaking. No, my heart was shaking. Suddenly, I couldn't see her, anymore. She vanished from my sight. Everything else I saw was the same, but she was gone. In the next instant, I heard the shout. ‘Drop the weapon!' I was startled, and the arrow pierced one of the trees you consider your property. Your mercenary guards took me and my friends to you. Now, here I stand. Very well, it is a good day to die." Walking Hawk became silent. He looked at Lynch with resignation. Lynch thought it was stoic determination without pride.
"I don't know if you're crazy," Lynch said "but no one here is going to kill you. Maybe you should have a drink. You and your friends can stay here until it stops raining. Then, I want you all to go back to wherever you came from."
"Is it really so simple?" Walking Hawk asked.
"Yes, it is that simple!" Lynch answered, raising his voice.
"Then I will go, now. I will walk and swim back home."
"It's more than twenty miles to the mainland!"
"Science is empire. Technology is neoplasm. Spiritual evolution is healing. There is no promise of a cure," Walking Hawk said.
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