2000 Souls

Orleans, Indiana is a town of 2000 souls and from 1975 to 1985 I was one of those souls, albeit a small one.  There were pockets of darkness hidden in neighborhoods that I mostly avoided but sometimes brushed up against for the briefest of moments.  

My Dad was a pastor and it was expected I would not hang out with the “bad” kids, but that was OK because I was mostly a loner anyway.  I had friends, but none that wouldn’t turn on me in a heartbeat if expedient to do so.  Maybe it was something about me?  

I spent much of my time roaming the streets of this town on my bike.  There were no helmets, no cell phones, and no sense that something could go terribly wrong.  And if it did, it passed me over and found some other kid or family to haunt for years to come.

There was the town square with the drug store and its comic book rack, the movie theater showing “First Blood”, a ceramics store where my Mom painted things to decorate our house, and the variety store with three levels of secondhand treasures.

There was the high school with its palatial basketball gym but primitive cinder track, the elementary school with Patton Field for Little League games, and the nearby airstrip with ultralights waiting to take to the sky like giant mechanical dragonflies.  

There was melancholy by the rick load though I didn’t really know what that was back then.  It was the air I breathed and a persistent heaviness in my chest.  It drew me at times to the massive cemetery to brood, the quietest of quiet places.

And it is the town that most thoroughly put its stamp on me, a decade of growth and development from 1st to 10th grade in the heart of Southern Indiana.  I love it in the way someone would love a good-enough parent because that’s who raised you.

***

The Fog Monster

  

The fog monster

devours the city

in forgetfulness.

*

Alas, Poor Aaroneous...

Alas, poor Aaroneous.  I knew him well.

Pitiful impulsive man-boy, lost in a world and situation outside of his control, proud in his ignorance with illusions of invulnerability.  It was March of 1991 when he found himself almost two months into a 16 week Basic Training cycle on Sand Hill at Ft. Benning, Georgia.  

***

He’d been a senior at Indiana Wesleyan Univeristy just two months prior and due to a premature midlife crisis he’d made the seemingly inexplicable decision to join the Army after GHWB declared war on Iraq.  Something burned in his patriotic breast.  It may have been reflux.

Or maybe it was depression that drove him to this madness, but whatever it was he found a way to turn it into an adventure of sorts.  BFF Tibor was brought along for the ride to a mystery location off campus.  When they pulled up catty-cornered to the recruiting station the Hungarian looked at the coffee shop next door to it and exclaimed, “Buddy!  We’re going to have coffee.  How nice!”  

“We’re not here for coffee, Tibor.”  He followed Aaroneous out of the car and into the Army recruiting office where the wayward college senior announced he wanted to join the infantry.  Within an hour it was a done deal, the papers signed, and his parents didn’t even know yet.

***

So here he was on Sand Hill where the days are like weeks, the weeks are like months, and the months are like years.  Sleep was scarce and highly regimented with a regular fireguard duty rotating trainees through an allnight roster one hour at a time patrolling the barracks with a flashlight.  Days were spent strenuously from before sun-up to after sun-down.

There was complete deprivation of contact with the outside world apart from the precious few times allotted to call home which could just as easily be taken away if someone in your platoon screwed up.  Most were rule-followers to minimize any extra misery doled out by the Drill Sergeants, but Aaroneous was different in that way.  He was quiet, unassuming, boyishly naïve, but a lot went on behind those hazel green eyes of his.

In that first week when the scrutiny was at its highest intensity and trainees were afraid to breathe wrong, Aaroneous slipped out at an opportune moment and cut through an adjacent forest to the back of the base PX.  When the sidewalk next to it was empty he stepped out from the shadow of the trees to walk casually into the PX and buy some Skittles.  Back at the barracks lights-out was drawing near but there was some time to relax just a bit before the on duty Drill Sergeant came to do the last headcount of the day.

Aaroneous laid on his side and casually spilled out his Skittles onto the bunk where only the trainee next to him could see them.  The young man’s eyes widened considerably before breaking into a perplexed grin. “Holy shit Haney!  Where did you get Skittles?”  At that point early in the cycle there were frequent inspections to make sure we did not possess any contraband and the borders of the barracks were considered sacrosanct and off limits on pain of mental and physical torture.  He shared them with this bemused fellow and a few others who treated it like some exotic food from a faraway land.  “I’ve totally guessed you wrong, Haney.  Goddam!”

***

So, we are back again to almost two months into Basic Training.  In retrospect it was the be-all end-all of quarantine and shelter-at-home type scenarios.  Aaroneous felt his personhood was beginning to erode under the dehumanizing conditions and isolation.  He needed a break of some kind.  A few days earlier they’d marched past the base movie theater and he noticed the marquee was featuring Mel Gibson in Hamlet.  Maybe not his first choice but almost anything would do.  

Once again he found a time that he could slip off unobtrusively and hightail it the half-mile or so to the theater without being seen.  It was glorious!  He luxuriated in the soft theater seats and took in the Shakespearean spectacle of Mad Max emoting.  It is impossible to describe the pleasure of such a thing after so many weeks of being made to feel one is not a human being.  He laughed.  He cried.  And right as it was getting to its most powerful moment with his emotions at a fevered pitch he glanced down at his watch... 5 minutes until lights-out.

He literally jumped up from his seat and ran out of the theater.  He ran across the parking lot.  He ran across a grassy field or two.  He didn’t stop all out running until hitting the border of the barracks area and then quick-stepped to his barracks in order to not look too obvious to any casual observer.  He laid in his bunk with his BDU’s and boots still on and pulled the covers up to his chin just as the Drill Sergeant came barreling through the doors for headcount.  

Poor Aaroneous.  A fellow of infinite jest.  Caught in the spider’s web but avoiding the spider.  


***

Korea

Are there Little Boys on Jupiter?

Are there little boys on Jupiter

giggling when you say “poopiter”?

It’s fun to think about it, to 

bounce and fly and shout it.

Where colors mix and swirl 

while spinning in a tilt-a-whirl.

But are there little boys on Jupiter?

Well, I’ve heard things much stupider!

***

Murderer of Murder Hornets

With all of the talk about so-called “murder hornets” on Facebook this past week it didn’t take long for me to recollect that I had a history with these fascinating insects.

I had to rewind to the summer of 1991 to find this pertinent scrap of memory.  I was new to the Army as a young infantryman fresh out of Basic Training and assigned to “Delta Death,” a company  on the north end of Camp Casey, 2^nd Infantry Division, Republic of Korea.  When I arrived to the company area it was eerily quiet as the entire battalion was on its 3 month rotation to live and patrol inside the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea.  I was issued my weapon and necessary equipment before being sent north on a bus.

On the DMZ I was assigned a cot in my squad’s tent and then taken to be introduced to the First Sergeant, 1SGT Glasgow.  I was in a tight parade-rest position which seemed to amuse him.  He told me I could take it easy and have a seat.  Things were a bit more relaxed “in the field” as they say in the military, but I had no experience of the Army apart from the insular and high stress world of Basic Training where trainees cowered before the NCO’s, especially around one as high ranking as a First Sergeant.

He asked me some questions about myself and learned I had finished three years of college before dropping out to join the Army at the start of the Gulf War.  He then asked what I knew of the political situation in this part of the world.  I was a History and Political Science major so I gave some history of the region and dropped a few names so that he raised his eyebrows and looked at my escort and guffawed, “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard since we’ve been up here!”   

So what about those murder hornets, you ask.  I’m getting to that part.

While living isolated on the DMZ life was pretty much consumed with training exercises that could run around the clock, depending on which phase you were in.  Much like the quarantine situation now, there was not much to do with your “free time” after work because you were living in a small town of tents surrounded by a high fence crowned with concertina wire in the absolute middle of nowhere known as “Warrior Base.”  It was during one of our field training excursions that I ran into this notorious insect that has so captured our imaginations this past week and spawned a veritable swarm of memes.

I remember being out in the woods somewhere miles from Warrior Base around midday and I had to go #2.  I broke off from the others in my squad and went deeper into the trees to have some privacy.  I pulled out my entrenching tool (a small folding shovel) and started digging a “cat hole” at the base of a tree to do my business.  That’s when I heard what sounded like a stealth helicopter skimming the treetops.  I stopped digging and looked around.  The sound came again, but this time closer.  It buzzed by me so loudly that it produced the doppler effect!  

At first I thought it might be a small bird because it was too big and loud to be an insect.  When it finally landed on a tree and I could see it more clearly I knew there was no way I was dropping my pants anywhere near that thing!  It was either me or him, but one of us had to go (I had to go! stupid murder hornet).  I pulled my knife and circled around the tree where I knew it had landed.  It was remarkably tolerant of me as I ever-so-slowly peered around the tree and lifted my knife.  In a kind of spasm I flicked the blade with my wrist and severed the hornet in two pieces.  That’s how big it was!

I see myself now in a 30 year retrospective: PFC Haney, Murderer of Murder Hornets.

***

Lost in the Hoffa Maze

The stormtrooper patrol was winding its way through the frozen Hoffa Maze when the storm hit.  

Goji heard the speaker in his helmet buzz to life, “This is Leader Echo, stay in close formation.  This storm looks treacherous.”

He quickened his pace as he had fallen behind the column winding its way through the surrounding snow-covered hills.  Ice bits mixed with snow were beginning to whip around in the wind reducing visibility to only a few meters and pinging off his suit creating a disorienting racket inside his helmet.  After only a few moments he could no longer see the trooper in front of him.  

He felt his heart begin to pound and his breathing quicken as he sped up to a trot into the strong head winds.  Even without the weather conditions this was a perennial problem for him.  He was shorter than most stormtroopers and was often the butt of jokes in his platoon.  “Part of the Stormkinder program Goji?”  He’d laughed to make it seem like it didn’t bother him, but conscription had been a painful and heartbreaking process separating him from hearth and home, and now to be in this frigid place was almost too much.

An unexpected *bump* and “Blast you!” heard crackling through his speaker.  He had run into the trooper in front of him who promptly butted him to the ground with his blaster.  “Watch where you’re going blurrg bait!”

Goji felt the sting of tears in his eyes and he was slow to get up despite the real danger of getting left behind.  The storm was intensifying and he at least had the good sense to check in with the platoon leader.

“Leader Echo, this is Trooper-12.  I’m falling behind, over.”  No answer.  Only static.  He smacked the side of his helmet to see if that would help but the line went completely dead.  Goji scrambled up and sprinted forward only to find the trail cold as the path branched and then branched again with no one in sight.

***

Goji knew he was in some serious banta doo-doo.  The patrol was lost to him and he had no idea which direction the base was.  That was the problem with not being in charge.  They had the information and it was not handed out willy-nilly to grunts like him.  His job was to simply follow orders and drop into a tactical fighting crouch when necessary and fire his blaster down range.  If he hit an enemy that was a bonus; if not, well, that was just par for the course.

A dark opening loomed in a hillside to his right and he identified it as the entrance to a cave.  He needed to find shelter knowing he would likely perish if he continued to wander lost in this storm.  The infrared sensors in his helmet lenses were glitchy but he thought it was picking up a slight heat differential that told him he would be better off in there and so he reluctantly entered, his blaster at the ready.

Rootlets hanging from the ceiling brushed his helmet and shoulders insect-like as he pushed deeper into the cave.  His sense of time had become distorted since the storm had swept in depriving him of references to place or even time.  It could have been hours ago but maybe even just minutes since he’d lost his way.  His infrared sensors flashed bright red as he rounded a bend and then died leaving him stumbling forward with no visibility.  He lost contact with the cave wall as the space suddenly opened up.  He stood still in the darkness and let silence envelop him.  His situation seemed hopeless and he felt his thoughts flee homeward to the warmth of a fire, his mother singing while stirring a pot suspended over the coals.  

He no doubt was hallucinating but he thought he could actually see burning coals or at least a faint red glow on the ground further ahead.  That’s when a high pitched gargling bark shattered the silence and he felt something big hit him in the back and knock him violently to the ground.  His helmet popped free and rolled away from him.  There was something heavy making a panting sound pressing him to the ground and smelling like a musty rug.  His blaster was lost somewhere in the darkness and there was nothing he could do as the creature aggressively sniffed his head.  Terrified as he was, still, the air from it tickled his ear.

***

In the darkness in front of his face two small circles lit up and a polite voice spoke, “Oh my, are you all right?  My friend can be a bit rough.”  At that the creature on his back gave him a wet lick with its tongue and Goji recognized the glowing circles as the eyes of a droid, or at least the head of a droid.  It appeared that its body was missing.  

“Who are you?” Goji asked while flinching from another lick to the side of his face.

“I am a protocol droid or at least what’s left of one.  My friend and I have had a run of bad luck it would seem, as have you.”

The creature on top of him let out a low warbling noise.  “He says he likes you but you can’t have your blaster back.”  At this he felt the weight lift off his back and he rolled over to see a huge furry creature towering over him with the blaster in his hand looking like a small toy gun.

“I call that lovable beast Chewbiscuit.  Our ship made an emergency landing in these hills which was a bit bumpy and my head became separated from my body.  The other crew members suffered a similar fate but they cannot live in two parts.”

Goji did not know what to make of this droid and whether or not he was trying to use humor.  “Well, I am Goji the Stormkinder and I came to this planet reluctantly but now I am happy to be here and on my own.”

The droid’s eyes appeared to pulse a bit brighter, “Wonderful!  Will you join us then?”

Chewbiscuit was stoking the coals and adding some sticks so that light began to creep back into the room.  “Rararrrawarrrr!”

“Chewie agrees.  You should join us!”  At this the dog-like creature began gallivanting around the room, first on all fours and then upright, making happy noises and waving his arms.  He then batted the droid’s head towards Goji and crouched in anticipation of a game.  Goji rolled it back and laughed as the droid exclaimed, “Oh my, the room is spinning!”

Memory of Leaves

How is it that Winter can steal one’s memory of leaves?

It is a long period of time no doubt: cold, desolate, and

lonely. But not so long that memory should be affected 

to any great degree. Yet here I am looking out my back 

window seeing buds and green shoots proliferating on 

branches and still I can’t remember what leaves looked 

like before they fell to the ground to rot & die, forgotten.

***

A Divine Wink

It’s a subtle thing, like a Divine wink, 

when white flowers on the tree outside 

my window are suddenly speckled with

a pale glowing orange of the Golden Hour 

lasting for the briefest of moments, then gone.

***

The Step Between

It was there. I could feel it.

The step between.  

I had sensed its presence before 

in moments of great fear or anxiety, 

but had not known what to do about it.  

I was not even sure what "it" was, 

but I knew it was 

the step between 

and I knew I needed to access it now.  

The hit was coming at high velocity 

to knock loose my soul.  

Time downshifted and 

put reality into a tailspin.  

That was when my foot found 

the step between 

and became a pivot point.  

I did not disappear so much 

as become inaccessible 

to the laws of cause and effect.  

I stepped into his anger 

and found a world of hurt 

coursing down through his extending arm, 

emanating from a fevered brain.  

What had we done to be in this situation

(what had been done to us)?

I felt time telescoping back 

to the very moment 

of sinking our teeth 

into that hard cold apple 

of knowing instead of loving.


***

Spring of the Quarantine

We have been buried, immobilized, 

lying dormant in our homes

waiting to sprout, to sprig, 

reaching upward to find the light, 

but also sending down roots 

to nourish us in whatever future-state 

we may find ourselves, more fully alive, 

a stronger organism in this web of life 

when we finally break the surface 

of our egocentric self-isolation

and feel the sun on our collective faces.

***

Planets are Sleeping

Planets are sleeping 

in my basement.

(silent spheres sorrowfully suspended)

Their grandeur reduced to

a humble quietude.

***

IT IS TIME TO CONSUME

*BEEP*

IT IS TIME TO CONSUME.

YOU MAY CHOOSE

WHAT YOU CONSUME.

HERE IS THE LIST OF YOUR [OPTIONS].

THERE IS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO UNPLUG.

YOUR PARTICIPATION IS VITAL

TO THE [WELLBEING] OF ALL.

IGNORE UNAUTHORIZED INFORMATION

THAT PURPORTS TO EXPLAIN

WHO IS BENEFITTING MOST.

ALL ARE [WINNERS] WHEN WE CONSUME.

OPEN YOUR EYES WIDE

AND EMPTY YOUR MIND.

THE INFORMATION IS YOURS

TO [ENJOY] AND IS ERROR-FREE.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION...

***

the end.

When 

the stairs don’t connect

the wires get crossed

and the pipes burst

know 

the facade will crumble

bones will see the light

and gravity will pull you

down

.

.

.

but that will not be the end.

Train to Pechory

It was an overnight trip by train from Moscow to the town of Pechory near the Estonian Border.  The year was 1998 and I was traveling with three seminarians from Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra named Denis, Kyril, and Demetrios.  I was a 29 year old stranger in a strange land who through a serendipitous sequence of events found myself in the heart of Russia.  

On the train it turned out that my companions’ berth was in one car and my berth was in another because as a foreigner I had had to buy my ticket at a special counter for such things.  I hung out with them for awhile and we shared some food and conversation until it was time to settle in for the night and try to get some sleep.  I walked back through a few train cars and found some middle-aged Russians sitting in my place.  I was very tired and wanted to lie down and sleep on my bench.  I pointed to the bench and indicated I wanted to lie down.  They talked to me in Russian and I kept telling them in English, “I don’t speak Russian.”  Their tone became a bit more impassioned as the impasse lengthened, like if they put more emphasis on their words I would find a way to understand what they were trying to tell me.

I finally gave up trying to obtain my spot.  Behind me on the opposite side of the train corridor from the berth was a kind of hanging ledge about two feet in width and at about eye level.  There were folded blankets stacked on one side of it.  I hoisted up my backpack, scrambled onto the ledge, and laid out as best I could to try and get some sleep.  This elicited a kind of bemused consternation from the people I’d been trying to talk to and they indicated by their tone and gestures that I was not supposed to be doing what I was doing.  I was so exhausted I ignored them and rolled over to face the wall to try and get some sleep.

Soon thereafter someone tapped on my back and I turned to find a train employee in uniform indicating he wanted to see my ticket.  When I showed it to him he indicated I should follow him and we went to the end of the next car where I recognized some young people who I’d seen earlier in the evening when we’d first gotten onto the train and realized I’d been at the wrong berth.  But here at the right spot one of the young men had set himself up with his blanket and was lying on my bench.  I pointed at the bench and he feigned confusion and then he pointed to the lofted bench above him.  My ticket was specific to his spot and I stood my ground until he finally moved and I quickly laid down on his bedding and fell asleep.

***

The rolling and swaying of the train made for strange dreams.  My sleeping form was being transported in a North-westerly direction from Moscow towards Russia’s border with Estonia, floating along like a Russian peasant in a Marc Chagall painting.  In the early morning hours I was awakened by the slowing of the train, tired and groggy from too little sleep, too much walking, and too little access to the kind of food I was used to.  But I was young and seemingly could function fully despite all of that.  I threw on my Army surplus backpack and made my way forward through the train cars to find my fellow travelers.

***

“Fellow travelers” seems apropos here.  In my extensive reading of Cold War history (novels, memoirs, creative non-fiction a la Solzhenitsyn, etc) through my late teens and early twenties there was this concept of “fellow travelers” that kept popping up.  It was a description used of people from the Western world who were not themselves communist but had sympathies with their aims and policies.  In my case it would describe my spiritual journey in cohort with these seminarians to visit the ancient monastery in Pechory known as the Pskov Caves Holy Dormition Monastery.  They were the tried and true Orthodox believers who had chosen to immerse themselves in the faith of their ancestors despite the resistance applied by the communist government that had attempted to eradicate the one thousand year  history of  Christianity in Russia in the 20^th century but had ultimately failed.  

I was the odd convert who had found my way into the Orthodox Church at 25 years of age in Southern Indiana of all places.  I’d recently graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University as a young disaffected Evangelical who was finding it increasingly difficult to follow the faith of my upbringing.  A vacuum was forming inside of me and “nature abhors a vacuum” as Aristotle would have it.  I visited my friend, Brian Oh, at IWU who had yet to graduate and at some point he mentioned the peculiar incident of another IWU student and former roommate of his who had transferred to Wheaton College.  This friend of his subsequently became Orthodox with a handful of other Wheaton students.  It had caused quite a stir at this famous Evangelical institute of higher learning.  He had given Brian a publication put together by Franky Schaeffer and Jim Buchfuehrer called “The Christian Activist.”

I remember sitting at the communal table of his house with that distinctive smell of college rentals hanging in the air which I would describe as a kind of musty dirty-laundry meets carpets-have-never-been-vacuumed odor.  The article that caught my eye was “Flowers on Sartre’s Grave.”  Its literary and intellectual notes sang out to me from the page and the fact it was in a Christian periodical had me triply intrigued.  I found its Orthodox perspective oddly intoxicating and I drank in some more articles before spying an advertisement for a book, “Becoming Orthodox : a Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith.”  I don’t remember if I asked permission or not, but I ended up snipping that advert with its order form and mailing it in the same day.  When it arrived a week or two later at my parent’s house I devoured it in one sitting.

***

In retrospect, I’m reminded of Gandalf and his traveling companions standing at the Door of Durin in “The Hobbit.”  They have come a long way on their journey and find themselves staring at the face of a cliff that has a mysterious elven door carved into it that glows in the moonlight.  They cannot figure out how to open it and are stuck in this dark and dank place with no option to turn back but seemingly no way forward.  The inscription on the door is in an elven language and says “speak friend and enter.”  Gandalf tries several things that don’t work and it is looking hopeless until he thinks more simply.  He says the elven word for “friend” and the door opens.  That periodical and the book I purchased from its pages was the door that opened for me in my journey to becoming Orthodox a year or so later and solved the quandary of my spiritual impasse.  Brian Oh, whether he knows it or not, was that “friend.”  

***

So I found my friends in the dimly lit passenger car where the windows remained black from the lack of a sun in the sky.  I’m guessing it was about five in the morning.  My traveling companions found a driver to take us in a very small car to the monastery gates.  

The town of Pechory was pitch black with no lights of any kind and this guy was speeding over pothole-filled roads with only the brief warning of the ten foot reach of his headlights, swerving in, out, and around whatever obstacles might present themselves.  It was an exercise in faith; faith that he knew what he was doing and that I would not die or be seriously injured in this small Russian town in the wee hours of the morning.

We stopped in front of a church which I could only just make out due to the faint silhouette of a bell tower against an ever-so-subtle lightening of the sky.  It was strange to walk along following my friends with little to navigate by but noises and the brush of bushes.  We heard some movement and soft murmurings ahead to let us know that other people were milling about in the darkness.  It was a handful of other pilgrims and townsfolk outside the monastery gates in a courtyard who, like us, were there waiting for the prescribed time for the gates to open.  

In the stillness I found myself in a kind of hushed anticipation as we waited for the gates to open or the sun to show up, whichever would come first.  And after a time the twilight signaled both as I could just  start to see the others even as the gates creaked open and a monk greeted those who would enter.  

As we entered the monastery grounds I could see we were headed for a church straight in front of us.  To our left the land fell away down a path through trees to some lower area, but the church remained level and appeared perched above  the valley below.  We entered into a vast darkness with a single flickering lamp before a bejeweled icon of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child.  The space was large enough that I couldn’t really see to the opposite side or the dome above us.  My friends led me to a wooden bench behind a pillar where we sat and waited, propping each other up shoulder to shoulder.

I found myself falling in and out of a light sleep until some movement drew my attention to the front of the church.  Two monks were beginning to light the icon lamps and islands of light were slowly multiplying and beginning to merge as more lamps were lit around us.  The singing was soon to follow in filling that sacred space combining heaven and earth with us floating somewhere in between, like a wakeful dream.


***