Fire

I never got to go camping as a child. I never went on hikes. I wasn’t a Boy Scout, and I wasn’t made aware of any great spirit. I never connected with nature—or, at least, what I now consider ‘nature’ to be. I thought of autumn trees and rolling hills. Eagles. Nature was a place that was somehow quiet on its very own. If you go to the woods, don't build a fire. Sit still; you are responsible for very little; you are free.

I grew up in a small town on Route 1 in the south of Louisiana, where there were no forests or hardwood trees—just bayous and rivers and lakes and reeds. There was no firm ground from which to transcend. "The Outdoors" was not a destination, but a great obstacle that spanned the space between other things that mattered. The rivers moved one way, the bayous swayed by anything. Even when we drove north, to Mississippi and the woods, we went hunting and there was always the gun.

With each passing year what I came to relish was the absence of activity, the absence of human machination. I wanted to connect with something greater than myself. Once, as I was driving above the swamp on a long, raised bridge, my car ran out of gas. There was no way to turn around. It was then that I realized I was looking for something that was scattered all around me, but I would have to run away from everyone I knew in order to find it. I had been rejecting it all my life by sitting still, offending nobody but myself. Because out there, wrapped and waiting, was my life. 

I guess I’m making up for all that now. I am alone in the woods, and I am perfectly happy. It’s winter in Tennessee. The Appalachian Trail sits about two miles distant across the valley on a vertebras ridge. I’ve laid out a few boughs. I have a small tent. I brought a few books along, but none of them have caught.

The fire has reached its peak, and the snow melts in a widening circle. There's a half-foot of powder out amongst the hibernating trunks. It fills the thickets of rhododendron and the holes left behind fallen trees. I have a nice fire going. A nice fire, and I have nothing to worry about. Bears are afraid of the fire. The cool, blue center of the flame. If I can keep it going I will sleep below this black bowl and the snowline. I should save the kindling for later—but it’s nice to be warm. I throw the last of the sticks into the fire, switch sides, and warm my back. 

Maybe nature (as an abstract concept) cannot be defined. Maybe it's just what you decide it to be. After all, what is natural? And what is unnatural? What would an African tribesman living in a mud hut say to me if I asked him, "Do you like nature?" Distinctions like that are absurd. I cannot speak for anyone else, but for me one thing is certain: a man in the woods is natural and good.

A branch cracks behind me. Snow compresses and squeals in the woods. I turn and see that the fire is out. The coals are settled into a small pile and the logs above them are deep and black and unburning like two arms straining against an invisible weight.

 I paw for something to throw on the fire, but find only Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I kick the consumed logs aside, tear out several folios of paper, and throw them over the embers. They smolder a moment and then ignite. My eyes search the woods for the source of a voice. One of the half-consumed logs is cocked back in my arm when two silvery orbs come determinedly forward.

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey!” I cry out, swinging my arm.

“Hey.” The flat brim of a hat, the gleam of cufflinks, and a golden badge emerge from some pines. It's a park ranger. "Sorry to bother you," he says and points to the disappearing leaves. "I saw the fire." 

“Oh. OK."

He stands business-like, boots on the edge of the unmelted snow. "You’ve got the Louisiana plates? The Saturn?" I nod and he begins prodding with a flashlight, smiling up to his bushy eyebrows. “Well, you left your lights on.” 

"Shit."

"Hope your battery isn't dead." He shines the moon-white light over my face, noticing the tent, the torn book cover and scattered pages, and my arm, cocked back with a black log. He freezes. “Everything OK?”

"Oh." I drop my arm quickly. "Sorry."

“I scared you." 

“I thought you were a bear."

"They're sleeping," he says, motioning around. He clicks off his flashlight. The black dome lowers like a curtain and he steps toward me through the middle of a withering fire. "It’s people you have to be worried about in the woods.” 

Sensation

There was something that you could call a “YouTube Sensation” the other day: a video of a golden eagle, one of the largest birds of prey, swooping down and grabbing a child in a puffy winter jacket who was playing in the park. The parent (filming) runs toward the child (who’s already been let go)—he was just too heavy.

I was at the office. I walked to the kitchen to get some coffee and a coworker was standing with his back to the beige wall, waiting for the bathroom. I started to say—and hardly were those words out of my mouth, when he said he’d already seen it— "Yeah that kid got ten feet off the ground." Later, when I returned for lunch, a few tables were discussing the video—at different points of the narrative, but the same story: the eagle and the child. By 5 p.m., the clip had 125,000 views.

I sat on the corner on a bench next to a bus stop after work. I headed home. The bus was nearly empty. The sun had fallen. An aged black man rose from his seat, folded a newspaper into perfect sextants, lowered himself to a street with many dilapidated and abandoned homes, and walked off toward a grove of trees with the newspaper tucked neatly under his arm. I stepped into my apartment near 7 p.m., sat down on the sofa, and  then turned on the TV. And there it was again: a screenshot of the eagle next to the fleshy cheeks of a news anchor, the rosy countenance that says This is this, and that is that. Fake was the eagle, she says. The eagle was fake. It was a hoax.

It turns out a group of graphic design students from Canada had made the video. So then the pretty little anchor’s presuming-to-summarize-and-so encourage-a-flippant-disregard-for-this-type-of-unreal-threat head shaking empties out into a smile. For we too had been released. 

After all, eagles don't steal babies. That sort of thing doesn't happen—especially to children.

These Canadians had also made a video of a funny looking penguin that just kind of walked around a zoo parking lot—it wasn’t afraid of people, just kind of curious, and that was the joke. Then an angry zookeeper walks into frame, babbles something in French, and carries the bird back through the gates. But that clip had garnered only a few hundred views. And the special effects (which had surely been looped, probed, and examined by all walks of nerdery in order to find its faults and imperfections [in order to reclaim it as something human]) used in the penguin video were undoubtedly more complicated to achieve. Kids have access to this sort of technology. The eighth-grader next door could do this, and we'd all watch and believe. 

Admittedly, the video does feel authentic. It seems to me that recent special effects-driven films (specifically those that lack a coherent narrative) have become a little too "special" with their effects. One cannot replace a strong narrative with a succession of tinkered-with images. But one also cannot tell until afterwards because of all the flashing lights. Enter Eagle Clip. It appeared to be shot from a shoulder-mounted camcorder, the type from my childhood. The type that created my home movies and those of my parents. It begins, and the man or woman holding the camera is apparently distracted, for in the frame is a blue-grey sky and the tops of some winter trees. Nothing is happening. But sometimes a camera sees without a cameraman. A man can forget to be a cameraman, but a camera is a camera, always meant to shoot. So a subject emerges. The trees. All the shivering leaves waving in the cold. Then the eagle tracks past, up and on into the thin blue, high and deliberate. It is now at the peak of ascent—now above that tree. It flaps, bends in an arcing about-face, and pulls in its wings. It descends fully into frame in seconds, sinking its tendons into the child's jacket, flapping, looking skyward. But the wings do not work. Then the cameraholder runs. 

Cars backing up in grocery store parking lots, power outlets on the fritz, frayed wires, kidnappers, unattended pools, Drain-O, undertow—these are parents' nightmares—but not eagles. Can a human being prepare for the threat of threat and remain rational? High beams combing the trees' canopy preemptively. Looking for big birds. 

Then eagles are arrested and charged with sadism and conspiracy to murder en masse. If sentenced to death. No last meal. "What an opportunist!" the bird's lawyer would say. "An enterprising individual, your Honor, who acted in self-defense." A Southern man sweating up the court. Each word delightfully weighed. "We know the laws of past practice, your Honor...Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. And they must go both ways. The child sitting now in this court—and every child in this glorious nation—does little but graduate from innocence to corruption—from the prey of all to the predator of all. If we are here today to weigh guilt—and I'll remind you, we are—then let us also add to the scales of justice the potential for guilt. My client has done only what this society has asked of him. He is wholly American, and he has been treated his entire life like a bird. Thank you, your Honor. That is all." 

"You may step down counselor. Does the defendant wish to address this court?"

"Chirpity-chirpity-chirpity.    Chiiiiiiirp    chirp-chirp    squee-squee   squeeeeee."

“Oh.” (Plead the fifth. And then move for insanity. Best shot.)

It seems silly to say, but there's no such thing as monsters. Truly, there isn't. But there is this small metallic instrument that's more familiar in size and shape than a toaster. Most people know next to nothing about them, but some know a lot. Certain people actually live with them, and they die just like they live. All of the sudden. They know something about people that they can never tell back. Because once it’s all been figured, the flash is gone and so are they. Isn't that the way? A bang and an echo. But not another bang.

Early Birds

Machino sleeps with Machina. Machina sleeps with Machino. Machino sleeps with change in his pockets. Machina sleeps in a threadbare gown.

The parceled conversation of sleep forecasts the impossible—the unknown—until a bird twitters through. No dream, no projection, just the sound of a humble bird. Far before the rising sun, just one—it’s a wonder we don’t dream of more of them.

Anyhow, it’s Machino’s big day.

The triage begins: birds sitting on a wire: two, three. In settled darkness. Now four. Holy six flaps in a crashing triangle above high love. Five, now shooting for the sterns—the frowny jobs get into their cars, park, walk. Seven cuts mindless over domains, kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders, families, species, like light. Machino and Machina still sleeping. 

The alarm goes off near eight.

Machino swivels from the mattress. Stands in the shower. Machina orders herself to sleep, but decides she won’t; it’s Machino’s big day. She tilts the faux-venetian blinds and parts the curtains. Brick building. Pulls a T-shirt over her breasts. Puts out the café. Machino stamps down the stairs. Yesterday's change rattles in his pocket. Leaves tumble toward the street. Machino hustles around the corner as Machina watches.

Machino will get the job today for showing up first—then windex the windows, mop the floors, sanitize, dust, and take out the garbage. Sanitize again. Over lunch, Machina will look at pictures in a magazine. She goes to bed listening to her tapes and wakes up frozen—a chain rattles beside her. It’s almost midnight. She closes her eyes. A song sings from the center. Machino fitfully dreaming beside her.