Bright Dark

Oh but it’s odd. Don’t you think. How much of it all comes down to something like this. This sense. This oxymoronic sense. This bright-dark sense. This beautiful bright-dark sense. This jumboshrimp militaryintelligence sense. That the beautiful is both this and that. Both bright and dark. But how. But how does this make. How does this come about, one wonders. Why this particular oddity. This way. This structure to things.

But of course it gets really interesting when you notice someone grinning when tragedy strikes. Grinning and the person’s father let’s say has just died.

Or say someone in church. The Holy Spirit shows up. And this person. This woman is full to overflowing. And cannot do anything but cry. Or a man. Sex doesn’t seem to matter. So much joy that it’s released through tears. Copious tears. Tears that fully wet his cheeks and chin. Her cheeks and chin. All about the place.

Or say it’s a tsunami. December 2004. The sky blue. A beautiful blue. The lush island green. A beautiful green. And then the lovely blue sea. The sea, the sea. The beryl sea that is the very symbol of God’s love. Rises. Monsters up and smothers the lush green island. Smashes and drowns all the people. An entire people destroyed in one grotesque gesture of the sea. The day perfect. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect. A more cloudless unblemished smooth sky. But all the people. The children. The old people. The middling people. All the people. Drowned or crushed. Or broken some way. And floating. Or sinking. Distributed all about in the water around the island. Or after the sea subsides, bodies in the trees. Bodies on the beach. Bodies all about the place.

I know a woman who just had a baby. A miracle baby. The cord wrapped around its neck six times. Five pounds of tumors growing in the woman’s uterus along with the baby. But the baby is born. Successfully born. A healthy, fine baby. To a woman who by all rights would never be able to have children, the doctors said. And then another. Another woman young healthy woman. Who is both as blameless and guilty as the first. Neither especially one way or the other. Whose baby dies in her. A baby who dies a week or two from the due date. A woman who must give birth to a dead baby. Who must go through labor to birth death. The very image and sign of death. Coming out into the world from her. From inside her.

What in the Sam Hill is going on. And who in the Sam Hill is Sam Hill. And when you ask this out there on the web you get various answers. All of them converging on the nineteenth century. On a guy. Could be New England. Could be Northwest. I like my dad’s the best. My dad’s explanation the best. A Michigan guy. State I’m from. A roustabout. A logger. A guy who helped bring down a creation’s crop of trees. White pine and cedar. Who had a foul mouth. Always swearing and cussing. Always outraged and angry. Always a stream of profanity. Of profanation. In response to the outrages. The screw ups. The offense of the world. The transgressions of the universe. The imperfections. The hellish way the world has of being downright disappointing. Diabolically hostile. Dangerous. Dark. Frightening. Violent. Cruel.

Or that bright dark sense of God we get in the Bible. The Old Testament sense that God is with the Jews as they annihilate cities, whole populations. And the New Testament sense of God as Love. The Love God. The God of Death and the God of Love. The God of creation and the God of destruction. The God of the revealed and the God of the hidden. The God of Mystery and the God of Truth. The God of light and the God of dark.

The God of knowing and unknowing. The God of comfort and the God of discipline. The God of correction and the God of unconditional love. The God of perfection and of imperfection. The God of the wealthy and the poor. The God of the arrogant and the God of the humble.

The bright dark sense of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Who is of all women most blessed, according to Luke. Who became pregnant out of wedlock in a society of fundamentalists. Whose son for years was regarded as a blasphemer. Who had the opportunity of seeing her son crucified and of burying him.

This bright dark sense that becomes. Without one really intending it to or getting that it is becoming and now is. A kind of Zenish way. A kind of irrational path through the light and the dark of the world. A meander. A sort of riverine wander. A kind of zigzag Zenish riddle box ramble of a life. A puzzle box. A puzzling river box. That will not. No matter how we all apply ourselves. Our great cleverness and ingenuity. Our American cando attitude. Our optimism and paradigm of progress. Our entrepreneurship. Our indefatigability. Our energy. Our money. Our enthusiasm. Our enormous inventiveness. Our cooperation. Our practicality. Our team work. Our process orientation. Our ingenious tools and methods. That will not. No matter what we do. Be opened and laid bare. Be deconstructed and diagrammed and dissected and schematized and. And. Well. Understood.

Understood as one may. Let’s say. Understand a frog’s anatomy. Or the structure of a fly’s eye. Or the valuation of a company for purchase. Or electron mobility in gallium nitride.

So if this is what you’re after. If you are interested in breaking open this puzzle box. In dismantling the rivering box to get at the secret of its intricate construction and its mysterious, rattling contents. I’m sorry to say. There’s nothing for you here. There’s only this unmodifiable riverine environment. The given of our story. The fixed and immutable condition of our story. This switching back and forth through the bright dark more or less on one’s own. Listening to the current. Reading the river in the starlight. The moonlight. Puzzling out one’s way. To where, one has no clear idea. There’s no map, you see. We could all ride this river right over the edge of the world and fall purely into nothing forever. For all we know. For all our rational minds are able to provide us.

And if you want to swear and cuss, that’s your business. Many a logger has. Peavey gripped hard like a weapon. Riding a boom like a banshee. Screaming his way down.