Later that same Sunday after the sun had dropped and shadows were long, and the back of our old single-wide trailer across the field from our house was a blob of deep blue-purple with the Juniper hill behind it softened in the sodium light of the frosty pollution-rich inversion, I was staring at a rectangle of sunlight cast against the family room wall when our youngest pug, Buddha (short for Budapest) broke into frantic yapping, growling and scraping at the sliding glass door in the dining room. I thought perhaps she saw or heard a deer. She never seems to think our two big outdoor dogs, a blue heeler and a German shepherd/golden retriever mix, might be better equipped to handle an invasion of revolutionary-minded deer armed with shot guns better than some yappy flat-nosed, baby-bite pug.
I had been reading Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as I thought perhaps I should. As stated previously, I'd had a dream in which I'd created a data table for a school to be used for tracking school improvement (or more likely, the lack there of), and had randomly placed the following words from the novel in the table: Kasahara, occurred, Creta Kano, surrounded by darkness, sleep no border, wakefulness.
The words probably meant nothing. I don't read too much into dreams, but it was odd that I would remember them, quite odd indeed. I can never remember names, especially when I have to. I would tell my students that it is impossible to know what you are going to write before you start because without some trick, a mental trigger, like a rhyme scheme, the human mind can't hold much more on its mental screen than three sentences. And I believed it. Energy, not thought, carries human communication forward--one word, one image, one phrase, one clause, triggers the next domino to fall in a chain reaction that can ultimately produce something as beautiful as War and Peace. Okay, time to admit here that I've never actually read War and Peace, but you get the idea. What I always left out during this great oratory on the merits of automatic writing is that my mind can barely hold one sentence. If Marci wants me to get more than three items at the store, I make her write it down, or better yet, text me, as I also frequently lose bits, sheets, or even slabs of paper. So, that I would actually remember what I assumed were random words from a dream was a bit of a miracle to say the least. I wanted to find out if they actually were in the novel, which I hadn't opened for at least five years.
Before that, I had been reading in my Book of Mormon. Nephi I, Chapter 22, verse 18 stood out:
Behold, my brethren, I say unto you, that these things must shortly come; yea, even blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke must come; and it must needs be upon the face of this earth; and it cometh unto men according to the flesh if it so be that they harden their hearts against the Holy One of Israel.
I thought about the fires in California, about the smoke. Skies were seldom clear anymore even in a county of less than two people per square mile with an area of 6,828 square miles. And compared to China, our air was a pristine glacier-fed stream, China's the Ganges River. Perhaps we were living in the time of the vapor and smoke prophesized.
I thought about the firefighters and those who lost their homes. I thought about how, although a nice bowl of cold, pure vanilla ice cream couldn't undo all the sorrow and pain, it could sooth the parched throat and temporarily bring relief to the broken heart.
It was a simple act, but perhaps that's what the world needed now more than ever. Simplicity. Good simplicity. Kindness without motive. Something without too much ego. How can you tell someone who has had their home wiped out by a wall of flame that everything is going to be okay? I wasn't even sure myself everything was going to be okay. In the long run, sure. I was convinced that there is a grand plan that ultimately leads to joy for all but the most wicked. But, science indicated we were headed towards climatic catastrophe and the predictions of the prophets of my religion and Christianity in general seemed to confirm that this indeed might be the end. But, one could, with a small gesture, still say "I care" with a scoop of ice cream.
I also thought about my dream, about the student-data table, about how meaningless most of our activities are in the grand scheme of things. I had been in education for nearly twenty years, always working to better things, and yet, as far as I could tell, things at best remained the same, and in some ways they were spiraling out of control--mainly because of the disintegration of the family. Life wasn't meaningless. I just had to look out side and see that. It was the way we choose to spend our time that meant diddly-squat.
Maybe my dream meant something. I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I knew that was silly. I don't believe in fortune cookies. Yet, I wanted to find something in black and white, something that would tell me what to do. I wanted an answer, quick:
Should I buy the ice cream truck? Should I not?
Just then Buddha went off barking like a maniac, and I went to see what was up. It wasn't a deer. It was one of our home teachers bringing us goodies for the holidays. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints every family is assigned a set of priesthood holders who visit and check in on them to see how they are doing and report back to the bishop if there are any needs. For example, an elderly couple might need yard work in the summer or firewood split in the winter. Or, perhaps a family where one of the parents had lost their job or was laid off would need financial help. The pair of elders would report that back to the bishop so that the family could temporarily receive help through the church welfare system. Generally though, home teaching is just a time to socialize and share a short gospel message.
Ray, my home teacher, was a cop. He didn't stay long, but he told a story about last Christmas, how he was called out because there was a semi-truck going down the freeway at 110 miles per hour. That, in itself, would not have been so bad, but it was in the middle of a heavy snowstorm.
"Why was a truck going 110 in a snow storm?" I asked incredulously.
"Oh, it was stolen."
So, I realized ice cream can't solve everything; in fact, I doubted it could solve most problems. Still, I was pretty sure, despite its limitations, it could definitely bring joy. Did data tables ever do that? Not unless you were laughing at the futility of your efforts. Then sometimes they did, but I was sick of finding mirth in meaningless daily existence. I wanted results, and positive ones at that.
Maybe I had my answer. Maybe not.
