Twelve By Twelve Part 8

"I'm not sure I want a family," Paul continued. "I'm thirty seven. I feel like not having kids is a way of fighting."

"Fighting what?"

Paul went into a head-tilted, toe-tapping, thinking smile and finally said, "Fighting against ... Help me out here, amigo amigo."

I only vaguely glimpsed what Paul was driving at. Then he lit up and said, "It's when they really get you!"

"They?"

"The advertisers, the marketers, the culture. They kinda-sorta have you when it is the stuff you you have to have. But they've got you by the b.a.l.l.s when it's the stuff your vulnerable have to have. But they've got you by the b.a.l.l.s when it's the stuff your vulnerable kids kids just have to have." just have to have."

He squinted toward the woods, as if listening to the creek, and continued: "I've got a friend, about forty, who's got two kids. He says to me, 'Paul, if you don't have kids, you're not in the game.' Not in the game? What What game? You go from comparing jobs and salaries to comparing what school your kids got into." game? You go from comparing jobs and salaries to comparing what school your kids got into."

He talked about how having kids in any society, anywhere in the world, is a way of saying that society is good. Or at least good enough. Worth perpetuating. He wasn't sure whether he felt ours was.

"But what about you?" he finally said. "Are you going to get married, have kids? What about Leah?"

I looked away from Paul and at the 12 12. It stood there staring at me, silently, simply. A fixed point in a swirling universe.

So I told Paul that I had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Amaya.

He looked a little startled. After a moment, he s.h.i.+fted position in his chair and said with a kind expression: "Talk to me, my friend. We've got time."

I hesitated. My daughter was in Bolivia, with her mom, and this was the longest I'd been away from her. I thought about her every day, saw her expressions in Allison Thompson's face, and kissed her photo each night before going to bed. I didn't like to talk about it. I kept my love for her close to my chest because talking about her was like reopening a wound. Just as I had been repressing my anger toward the three gangs that had attacked me, I'd been repressing a confusion of feelings about my fatherhood. Beyond the wound of physical separation was a sense of failure: I hadn't lived up to the ideal my Catholic parents and I had of what a father, a family should look like.

Deeper still, the stakes of a flattening world had gone up exponentially since her birth. What had before been my life's work was now a question of what kind of world my daughter would inhabit, a world whose future appeared bleaker by the day.

The wind whistled a little in the trees; No Name Creek lowered its voice. I started talking.

MY DAUGHTER, Amaya Powers Cortez, emerged from her mom's womb in Bolivia. Amaya ("beloved first daughter" in Quechua and "spirit" in Aymara) took her first breath in a hospital surrounded by palm trees whipping and swaying furiously in an angry Amaya Powers Cortez, emerged from her mom's womb in Bolivia. Amaya ("beloved first daughter" in Quechua and "spirit" in Aymara) took her first breath in a hospital surrounded by palm trees whipping and swaying furiously in an angry sur sur that had blown up from Antarctica, slicing a chill through the tropical heat. One of the four doctors attending my daughter's birth handed the newborn to her mom, Ingrid, who then pa.s.sed her to me. I felt the purest love imaginable stir inside, things I had absolutely never felt before. that had blown up from Antarctica, slicing a chill through the tropical heat. One of the four doctors attending my daughter's birth handed the newborn to her mom, Ingrid, who then pa.s.sed her to me. I felt the purest love imaginable stir inside, things I had absolutely never felt before.

But I wasn't to dally. In Bolivia the baby belongs not only to Mommy and Daddy but to a web of extended family. I pa.s.sed Amaya to Mama Martha, her maternal grandmother, who pa.s.sed her to Papa Mike. Then she was pa.s.sed to Tio Eduardo, Tia Alison, and Tia Melissa. Each person kissing her pure white forehead, her red hair, looking into her gray-green eyes - she was a carbon copy of me, looking nothing like any of them, but n.o.body minded a bit. She was part of la familia la familia. We then ate quail eggs and drank champagne, pouring the first few drops onto the floor as a gift to Pachamama, Mother Earth.

My own parents became "Mama Anna" and "Pop Bill," and despite the initial shock to their values, they played those roles with genuine love and grace. So, essentially, my daughter was born with three mothers and three fathers, and that was just the beginning: today, I can't count the number of her Bolivian relatives, and of the many neighbors and friends who love her as much as any relative.

"Donde esta nuestra Amaya?" nuestra Amaya?" - "Where's our Amaya?" - the neighbors would say when Amaya was a year old. Ingrid or Mama Martha would pa.s.s her over the little fence and she'd disappear into their house for hours. I'd hear my daughter squealing with laughter. - "Where's our Amaya?" - the neighbors would say when Amaya was a year old. Ingrid or Mama Martha would pa.s.s her over the little fence and she'd disappear into their house for hours. I'd hear my daughter squealing with laughter.

Little red-haired Amaya grew up with her mom, extended family, and a slew of neighbors in a kind of kunda kunda household. My mother came down to Bolivia several times and joined in with the clan. Amaya's hands and feet hardly touched the ground that first year - she was always in somebody's arms. I lived in my own house and visited her all the time and was accepted as part of the family. household. My mother came down to Bolivia several times and joined in with the clan. Amaya's hands and feet hardly touched the ground that first year - she was always in somebody's arms. I lived in my own house and visited her all the time and was accepted as part of the family.

From a Western perspective the whole arrangement was extraordinarily nontraditional, but it worked beautifully. Ingrid - a strongly independent twenty-six-year-old Bolivian biologist - and I decided from the beginning on two things, both grounded in that peculiarly Latin idea of destiny: First, for a variety of interwoven reasons, we decided that our fate was not to remain together as a couple, whether in a traditional marriage or not. And second, we considered without question that we had been destined to bring Amaya into the world, and though we would likely live on different continents at various points in our daughter's life, we would do everything in our power to give her the best possible life.

During the first two years of Amaya's life, we took her all around Bolivia, which is to say into places of great natural beauty. Bolivia is three times the size of the UK and has only nine million people. It's a world without edges, one of V. S. Naipaul's "half-made societies." This is not a bad thing. It means the other half still belongs to Pachamama and still breathes. It means that the other half might still be left alone, instead of slashed and mined, produced, packaged, marketed, and sold. It means it's still soft.

Amaya wandered among the giant fern trees of Amboro National Park, in the shadow of a jaguar-shaped Inca temple, as I scribbled away in the artist's retreat where I was on a fellows.h.i.+p finis.h.i.+ng my book Whispering in the Giant's Ear Whispering in the Giant's Ear. On the other side of Bolivia, in the famous Madidi National Park, rare monkeys came down from the trees into our canoe and scurried over to the eighteen-month-old Amaya. Fearlessly she reached out her tiny hand, and one of the smaller monkeys grabbed it. Amaya spoke to the monkeys, gesturing with her other hand to the trees, and then pointed at herself and said "Amaya." They listened and then responded. Amaya argued with them about something but then broke out in a grin and took their hands in hers.

Around Bolivia we traveled, Amaya making friends with humans and other species. Ingrid and I were constantly awed by the way our daughter brought joy into so many people's lives, just by her very presence. And everywhere we went, the rainforests, cloud forests, raging rivers, and Andean peaks seemed a perfectly natural, fresh world to grow up in. Bolivia seemed insulated, protected by low human population density, strong indigenous traditions, and geography, with the seemingly impenetrable Amazon on one side and the towering Andes on the other. Yet, as was happening around the world, the rainforest, that strange green beast, was being slain. It got worse each year. The very monkeys that befriended Amaya began fleeing into the last remnants of their reserves. I knew that unless the global economic system causing this destruction was fundamentally changed, Amaya's children would not have any at all left to enjoy.

I BEGAN TO SEE MORE CLEARLY in my work that, along with the forests, the Flat World was eliminating the people who live in them, rapidly spreading across the globe, the pulses on the earth's heart monitor ceasing. Flatlining. Of the sixty-eight hundred languages spoken now, half will be dead in fifty years - about a tongue per week. When languages are forgotten, the culture itself soon follows, as if the memory of what it means to be of a certain people can be expressed only in that language. Next on the wait list for oblivion are the Amungme of Indonesia, Paraguay's Enxet, and Kenya's Ogiek. Within Bolivia, tribes like the Pacahuara, Araona, Uru-Chipaya, and Weenhayek are also on the way out. The villain most often cited is the spread of global capitalism, including the impact of television. in my work that, along with the forests, the Flat World was eliminating the people who live in them, rapidly spreading across the globe, the pulses on the earth's heart monitor ceasing. Flatlining. Of the sixty-eight hundred languages spoken now, half will be dead in fifty years - about a tongue per week. When languages are forgotten, the culture itself soon follows, as if the memory of what it means to be of a certain people can be expressed only in that language. Next on the wait list for oblivion are the Amungme of Indonesia, Paraguay's Enxet, and Kenya's Ogiek. Within Bolivia, tribes like the Pacahuara, Araona, Uru-Chipaya, and Weenhayek are also on the way out. The villain most often cited is the spread of global capitalism, including the impact of television.

As a father, I now felt the stakes of my work had sharply increased. I loved Amaya deeply and wanted the world she would live in to be kind and fair. I felt, in an increasingly personal way, how the Flat World virus, by destroying nature, also destroys those societies living in harmony with nature, hundreds of them. In Amaya's Bolivia, this was epitomized by a remarkable woman named Kusasu.

In my two years of work in Noel Kempff National Park, in the remote east of Bolivia, I befriended Kusasu - the very last speaker of Guarasug'we. I went to Kusasu's village, Bella Vista, deep inside the park with the desire to help save her tribe from extinction. My project team and I had written it as an activity in our workplan as part of a much bigger aid and conservation project covering that region. The activity: "Cultural survival: Guarasug'we." Through reclaiming language and handicrafts and securing land for the final Guarasug'we, perhaps we could apply defibrillators to bring the culture's heartbeat back, to tease a stubborn blip from the flat line on the monitor.

The trip to Bella Vista was magical. With a skinny park ranger named Misael, I raced up the Itenez River in a motorized canoe to the Guarasug'we area. Light s.h.i.+mmered on the immense, beautiful river. The water reflected the sky and the thick forest around us. We sliced through the water, into a candy store of multicolored birds: wading in the shallows, soaring above, fleeing just ahead of us.

I'd stayed up late the night before, poring over everything ever written about the Guarasug'we - a grand total of one book, anthropologist Jurgen Riester's Guarasug'we: Chronicles of Their Last Guarasug'we: Chronicles of Their Last Days Days. Candles and incense ablaze, and Andean music on my stereo - charangos and walaychos strummed to the rhythm of wancara drums, overlaid with zampona cane panpipes - my imagination followed Riester's account into the Indian Territory under the Amazon's seven skies, heading toward the Guarasug'we Ivirehi Ahae, or "the land without evil." I had also met in person with Dr. Riester, and he told me that for the Guarasug'we, a canoe carries a person to the next world after death. Your soul travels up an Amazon River tributary like the one Misael and I traversed, toward a hole in the sky, finally slipping forever into the seven skies.

For several hours, the sameness of the jungle wall seemed to be luring us toward that eventual hole in the sky. I pulled my green park ranger-issue rain jacket tight around me and closed my eyes, imagining the fish, caimans, and eels below and the jaguars and foxes lurking just out of sight. Finally we pa.s.sed a structure. Then another. Huts made of thatch, with the roofs caved in; Misael told me that these were the places where Guarasug'we used to live.

We arrived in Bella Vista, climbing the embankment and heading to the schoolhouse. There we convened a meeting with the local community, to brainstorm strategies for cultural rebirth. "Yo soy Guarasug'we!" "Yo soy Guarasug'we!" - "I am Guarasug'we!" - an old woman said. I realized who she was: Kusasu. She must have been eighty and had a long gray braid hanging over each shoulder. She sat with her spine straight, her firm jaw set, and her attractive, softly wrinkled face held high. Though she said this in Spanish, she quickly repeated the same thing in Guarasug'we, which caused the dozen teenagers present to break into embarra.s.sed giggling. - "I am Guarasug'we!" - an old woman said. I realized who she was: Kusasu. She must have been eighty and had a long gray braid hanging over each shoulder. She sat with her spine straight, her firm jaw set, and her attractive, softly wrinkled face held high. Though she said this in Spanish, she quickly repeated the same thing in Guarasug'we, which caused the dozen teenagers present to break into embarra.s.sed giggling.

Staying strong, answering the teenagers without scorn or raised voice, Kusasu said, "Why do you laugh? How can you remember your language if you do not speak it?" She then s.h.i.+fted her gaze to me, "You can call me sari sari - grandmother." - grandmother."

With this, the teenagers laughed outright at her. The Guarasug'we teens, in their shorts and T-s.h.i.+rts, had adopted the style of their adolescent counterparts in neighboring Brazil. Misael and I continued this ruse of a meeting, our presence revealing itself for what it was: a fool's errand. Kusasu was the only one who spoke a decent smattering of the language. This wasn't a culture; it was a hospice of fullblown AIDS patients on their last T cells.

Still, Kusasu had a vitality about her, inviting us back to her home after the failed meeting. Her nephew had hunted a tapir in the forest, and the large animal was roasting on a spit. She pointed to a leafy plant that she said cures rheumatism; she pressed my palm against a tree and said their mattresses used to be made of this bark. Like the few words of Guarasug'we she still spoke, Kusasu offered these things up to me proudly. Even under the direct barrage of mocking teenagers, she had been unwavering, certain of the language and customs she held tight to her chest.

While eating later with Kusasu and several relatives in the open-air kitchen next to their hut, I asked the old woman about Ivirehi Ahae, the Amazon's seven skies, and the canoe ride to the hole in the first sky. She told me that was what "the ancestors believed," but real emotion broke only through when she said, "Sometimes I miss Mother."

She chewed a piece of tapir, staring off toward the river and the disappearing forest over the river, in Brazil. "It's nice to have a mother," she finally continued. "We would work all day, talking Guarasug'we." Her eyes closed, the rounded lids like moons, imagining the past.

"Who can I speak the dialect with now?" she asked. "My children don't want to speak it, and my aunts and cousins are dead. Dead! Si, estamos perdiendo la cultura un poco Si, estamos perdiendo la cultura un poco" - "Yes, we're losing a little bit of our culture."

With this understatement I completely lost my appet.i.te. Excusing myself I walked down to the river and sat there in silence until well after sunset. That night I slept fitfully, getting up at dawn to a sunrise over the river and marshlands, pink freshwater dolphins surfacing, and a hawk flapping to the other side of the river with a large fish in its claws. The tragic story of Kusasu's people wasn't unlike that of the Amungme, the Enxet, and the Ogiek: a story of twenty-first-century races falling off the flat edge of the world.

For centuries the Guarasug'we lived in communal longhouses where everything was shared. Their simple houses were easily abandoned as they migrated through the Chiquitania into the Amazon on the parallel trail of good hunting grounds, the Ivirehi Ahae, or "land without evil." The Guarasug'we believed that our physical life formed part of a reenactment of the archetypal journey to Ivirehi Ahae. The prominence of Ivirehi Ahae in the Guarasug'we worldview was magnified as Portuguese and Spanish colonists - and later the Brazilian and Bolivian governments - penned them into an ever-narrower area. Remarkably, the Guarasug'we eluded these opponents right into contemporary times, as they continued their search, now with time running out, for the land without evil.

But industrial capitalism dealt the coup de grace in the mid-twentieth century. Ma.s.sive quant.i.ties of rubber were needed for a growing fleet of motor vehicles in the United States and Europe, and some of that rubber was found in Guarasug'we lands. Bolivian and Brazilian rubber tappers on the payroll of wealthy barons invaded, enslaving the Guarasug'we. They were also given license to kill those who resisted.

A few held on, abandoning one shelter after the next as they fled deeper into what is today Noel Kempff National Park. But soon there was nowhere else to go. The rubber tappers were everywhere, and all that was left was to surrender or fight. The last Guarasug'we chief died in a standoff with well-armed and rubber-hungry invaders; their final shaman fell in a pool of blood soon after. The spine of their political and spiritual leaders.h.i.+p cracked, and the last fifty or so Guarasug'we, including a younger Kusasu, disbanded and huddled together in the homes Misael and I saw along the banks of the river - to die.

Before I left Bella Vista, Kusasu took my lightly freckled Irish hand in her wrinkled, bony one. The sound of our canoe's motor overpowered the swish of the river's eddies. I knew, as Kusasu did, that there was really nothing to say, so I just held her hand in mine for a very long moment - and then let it go.

LIKE JACKIE, KUSASU IS A WISDOMKEEPER. Against odds, she has fought the good fight by simply being who and what she is, rather than letting herself be melted into an endless h.o.m.ogeny. Sometimes now, when I hold my daughter's hand, I can feel Kusasu's in the other. Amaya's hand is tiny but growing, pink and soft; Kusasu's is dark, calloused, thick with heavy veins. Amaya takes my hand loosely, telling me about her day. Kusasu's grip is steadfast, insistent, and sometimes feels like a vise.

I gave my daughter an indigenous name. Her mom and I kept up the tradition of letting her hair grow without a single haircut for her first two years and then cut it in a ruthuchiku ruthuchiku, or traditional community haircutting ceremony. I teach Amaya about indigenous values of love of nature (about Pachamama). I even auth.o.r.ed a children's book t.i.tled Kusasu and the Tree of Life Kusasu and the Tree of Life that portrays a Chiquitano girl who learns from the Guarasug'we to integrate ecological consciousness into her Western university studies, bringing her skills back to her people. Is all of this enough? Amaya is a Flat World child who now lives in Santa Cruz, a globalizing city of two million inhabitants in Bolivia. She attends prekindergarten at Cambridge College, an English-speaking school. that portrays a Chiquitano girl who learns from the Guarasug'we to integrate ecological consciousness into her Western university studies, bringing her skills back to her people. Is all of this enough? Amaya is a Flat World child who now lives in Santa Cruz, a globalizing city of two million inhabitants in Bolivia. She attends prekindergarten at Cambridge College, an English-speaking school.

I look down at my hands: Amaya holds one, Kusasu the other, the creative edge being born and dying as the Flat World crushes in on us from all sides. For a moment, it seems possible that if we find more hands to hold, we can walk with strength into the flattening world, planting seeds of the old cultures for the young to cultivate. It is not that we want the world to remain static, unchanging forever. Change is inevitable, but is there a way to change without destroying cultural and ecological diversity? If we connect to others who want this new paradigm s.h.i.+ft, it might be possible to bend the Flat World in enough isolated places and communities that they eventually push out and touch at their fragile, diverse edges.

17. SUCHNESS.

SITTING ALONE ON LEAH'S FIRE ESCAPE, I can hear her inside cooking breakfast, the smell of bacon frying, and find myself reflecting on the Buddhist concept of "suchness." Suchness suggests that things are exactly as they are, and not otherwise - "such" as they are. Much of our unhappiness comes from missing the true essence of things. Take Leah's tree - it towers over us whenever we're in her white citadel of a house. Its "suchness" has to do with size. It wraps its arms around the house, folding everything into a hug. Once, during a storm, its enormous leafy branches drenched in water slapped at windows, the walls, and caused the back door to fly open.

The fire escape door swings open and there is Leah, her eyes clear blue as the sky behind her, her blonde hair blowing in the same direction as the giant tree's branches. She hands me a plate of eggs from the Thompson farm, scrambled the way I like them, along with some of the Thompsons' bacon and a slice of thick-crusted bread she's baked. The food's glorious smell fills my nostrils as she bends down, pus.h.i.+ng her hair aside, and sits. Such as she is.

Leah and I had talked about my daughter before we became lovers, but at the time I didn't wanted to dwell on the topic. But once I'd opened up to Paul Jr. about it, I for some reason felt the need to talk about it more with Leah. She now picked up our previous conversation, saying, "I admire you for taking responsibility for Amaya."

"How could I not?"

"Do you know how many millions of men wipe their hands of that responsibility completely?"

"Yes, but how many millions more form a family."

"Is that possible? I mean in this case?"

I'd been over that question so many times in my life. Though Ingrid and I agreed from the beginning we wouldn't form a traditional family, we hedged on that once we both fell deeply in love with our daughter; we wanted to give her as much of a sense of security as possible. We discussed what it would be like to live together as a family, but luckily both of us had the maturity to know, down deep, that we were far too different in our perspectives and interests to make it work. We knew that if we married we'd likely end up as half of US marriages do, in divorce. What would be better for Amaya? Defining our own clear, respectful co-parenting arrangement from the beginning? Or forming a false togetherness with the likelihood of it later ripping apart, causing much greater pain? To us, the answer was obvious.

Leah took a bite of bacon, and I felt that the tree - hovering heavily over us, over the entire fire escape and house, casting a light green glow around Leah - seemed to be listening to our conversation. I opened up to Leah about something I rarely shared, from my childhood: I'm Bill now, but in grade school I was B-B-Billy. I had a stutter. And this in addition to being a carrot-topped, four-eyed smart kid. "Where ya g-g-going?" kids would call from down the hall, shooting spitb.a.l.l.s at the back of my neck. Knowing how awful it feels to be the outcast, to be marginalized, was part of what drew me into helping others and nature through aid work.

My parents' love got me through the stutter. They wisely went against my teachers' advice and refused to stick me in speech therapy. Instead of seeing me as damaged goods, they accepted my suchness, stutter and all, until my speech defect healed. Most healing, of ourselves, of our society, is really just holding a s.p.a.ce for things to come into alignment.

"Not being a household dad," I told Leah, "feels like that stutter felt. It was a piece of me that shouldn't be there." Even though Ingrid and I took the best course of action given our circ.u.mstances, something in me still couldn't accept the suchness of it. I should should be in a nuclear family like my parents; I be in a nuclear family like my parents; I should should be there with Amaya, every single day. be there with Amaya, every single day.

We sat on Leah's porch, under the gigantic tree, for a long time in silence. Finally, Leah asked: "What's love?"

I felt blood rush into my chest. I pictured my daughter as an infant, the first time I held her. I said, "You first."

"It's something you can't help. It's literally 'falling' in love. It's gravity."

She bit into a strawberry. "I like this," she said, opening Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated Everything Is Illuminated, which she'd brought out. "This is love ... isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More even, than you love his presence?"

I replied with my own quote from the book: "From s.p.a.ce, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light."

"You've read it."

"Have you ever been in love?" I asked.

Leah thought for a moment. The other day she'd said to me: "Not a lot of women will tell you this, but the desire to be pregnant be pregnant is like the desire to eat when you're starving. And it's distinct from s.e.xual desire; a physical craving to carry that weight." She looked at me as she said this, and I had to look away. I felt choked up. We had so much in common, Leah and I, but did I - did we - want more than is like the desire to eat when you're starving. And it's distinct from s.e.xual desire; a physical craving to carry that weight." She looked at me as she said this, and I had to look away. I felt choked up. We had so much in common, Leah and I, but did I - did we - want more than anam cara anam cara, a soul friends.h.i.+p? All I could imagine was this: another child, another continent, loves scattered around the globe. I thought of Paul's question, about whether I wanted to marry and have more children. A side of me could imagine it, but I hesitated.

"Yes," Leah finally said, "I've been in love. I've had my heart broken, and now it's got these tiny cracks."

Everything, just then, was illuminated. A squirrel on the brick patio below did little pushups and then froze in the down position, belly to the ground, legs splayed to the sides, absurd. Then it leapt back to life, darting through a yellow-white pattern of insects. The begonias gleamed, and I could smell the white pollen that was fluttering down from the trees, swept up and down in soft air currents, and settling on my jeans. Across the street, teenagers cajoled drivers to hang a left into their benefit carwash. A bird screeched.

"Those cracks," Leah said. "Light streams out of them."

"THIS IS MY DAUGHTER," Jose said. We were at his house, and he pa.s.sed me a photo. Jose said. We were at his house, and he pa.s.sed me a photo.

La Fea Mas Bella was on the TV in the background. Hector played RuneScape on the computer, killing chickens as usual. Jose told me that Hector was not his only child. His daughter, Ofelia, age eight, had gone back to Mexico with her mom. They'd separated several years ago and split the kids. Jose showed me a photo of Ofelia in her first communion dress, saying he hadn't seen her in two years. was on the TV in the background. Hector played RuneScape on the computer, killing chickens as usual. Jose told me that Hector was not his only child. His daughter, Ofelia, age eight, had gone back to Mexico with her mom. They'd separated several years ago and split the kids. Jose showed me a photo of Ofelia in her first communion dress, saying he hadn't seen her in two years.

I took a photo out of my wallet - Amaya at age two - and handed it to him. He looked at it for a long while. Light filled the room to the muted sounds of video carnage. "She's an angel," Jose finally said.

Somehow there wasn't much more to say. Jose changed the channel. Hector came in and sat next to me on the couch, and we watched TV together. Later, I biked into Smithville and called Bolivia on a pay phone.

"Estoy triste" - "I'm sad" - Amaya said. I asked her why. She replied: - "I'm sad" - Amaya said. I asked her why. She replied: "Te extrano" "Te extrano" - "I miss you." It's a parent's natural instinct to cheer his child up, so I told Amaya how much I missed her and then quickly changed topics. I asked about her preschool, about her kittens and dog (named Skip, after a card in the game Uno). She talked about her simple world for a while. When I finally hung up the phone and gazed across the Quick-N-Easy's island of gas pumps, I felt a dull, deep ache to be back in Bolivia, close to Amaya. - "I miss you." It's a parent's natural instinct to cheer his child up, so I told Amaya how much I missed her and then quickly changed topics. I asked about her preschool, about her kittens and dog (named Skip, after a card in the game Uno). She talked about her simple world for a while. When I finally hung up the phone and gazed across the Quick-N-Easy's island of gas pumps, I felt a dull, deep ache to be back in Bolivia, close to Amaya.

The next day my Honduran neighbor, Graciela, pulled up to me in a red sports car. She flung open her door - "Hola!" "Hola!" - and launched into a stream of quick Honduran Spanish, heavy on the - and launched into a stream of quick Honduran Spanish, heavy on the rr rr. She cut the engine. All the time in the world. I loved this: instead of rolling down her window, she had her whole door wide open. It seemed so Latin, so open. Her grin was joyous; she'd pa.s.sed her McDonald's SafeServe test with a 90 percent score.

"I'm not that literate," she said, "even in Spanish. And the test was in English. I stayed up until one and got up again at four. Studying!"

"How did you understand the test if you are illiterate?" I asked.

"I can read some of it. And the rest - el diccionario! el diccionario!" she said, flipping invisible pages. She boasted that only one in ten pa.s.sed the test; even many of "the Americans" failed. For pa.s.sing, she'd get a dollar raise.

"What was on the test?"

"Health stuff. Like bacteria."

"Now you can forget it all," I said.

"Oh no!" she said, suddenly serious. "I won't forget."

We talked for a long while. At one point a pickup I'd not seen before drove around her car, picked up something in front of her house, and then pulled out past us again and onto Old 117 South. Her mechanic, Graciela said. Their car was in the shop; this red one was her aunt's.

She has an aunt an aunt around here? How lovely that cars circulate freely through the Honduran extended family. It got me nostalgic for Latin America. Now Graciela had an arm and leg dangling casually out of the side of the car. We laughed some more, and then she closed the door and drove along, as casually as when she'd stopped a full forty-five minutes earlier. around here? How lovely that cars circulate freely through the Honduran extended family. It got me nostalgic for Latin America. Now Graciela had an arm and leg dangling casually out of the side of the car. We laughed some more, and then she closed the door and drove along, as casually as when she'd stopped a full forty-five minutes earlier.

ALONE, 12 X 12.

No visitors on the agenda, just an overcast day stretching out all around me, the New Yorker New Yorker insufficient company. David Sedaris buying pot in a trailer park. I laughed at a sardonic insufficient company. David Sedaris buying pot in a trailer park. I laughed at a sardonic Onion Onion news article Leah had left. The headline read, "Seven Percent of World's Resources Still Unconsumed": news article Leah had left. The headline read, "Seven Percent of World's Resources Still Unconsumed": A report released Monday by the U.S. Department of the Interior indicates that 7 percent of the natural resources that existed before the dawn of the Industrial Age still remain unconsumed."The global environmental crisis has been greatly exaggerated, as there are still plenty of resources to go around," Deputy Secretary of the Interior Russell Kohl said. "In addition to more than 30 tons of fossil fuel, the planet has literally hundreds of acres of tropical rainforest."Exxon celebrated the announcement by spilling the contents of a supertanker.

Then I flipped to a New Yorker New Yorker cartoon in which a woman was saying to her husband: "Don't judge me until you've walked a mile on my medication." I laughed dryly, but then felt a pang of sadness. Leah and I had spoken the other day about healing. I told her the term comes from a word meaning "entire" or "complete," adding that Sartre said that Che Guevara was our era's "most complete human being." cartoon in which a woman was saying to her husband: "Don't judge me until you've walked a mile on my medication." I laughed dryly, but then felt a pang of sadness. Leah and I had spoken the other day about healing. I told her the term comes from a word meaning "entire" or "complete," adding that Sartre said that Che Guevara was our era's "most complete human being."

"Because Che overcame his own inner s.h.i.+t," Leah said. "He linked his life to the fate of the poor. And do you know the root of the word therapy therapy? It's 'to support ' or 'to hold up.' "

Over the next several days, as I continued my daily walks on the tracks, through the forest, I felt sensitive all over, like skin blistering. The wound of my separation from Amaya was now exposed. I realized that on one subtle level I was playing the victim: I'd somehow been deprived of a stable, traditional family, of togetherness with Amaya. What nonsense What nonsense, I realized, as these feelings surfaced during meditation one afternoon. Didn't all of my life belong?

Later, I watched a spider down by No Name Creek. This clever little spider, I noticed, never built its web between two rocks. A strong wind might then take the web right out. Instead, it always constructed its web between two reeds or blades of gra.s.s. That way when the wind gusted through, the web naturally bent with the plant, ducking beneath the breeze and rising back up when it was calm. We can construct our characters in the same way: with definite structure but flexible moorings.

The wind was blowing hard through my life. I had a choice. I could choose to resist, to create a victimhood or other drama out of my separation from my daughter, maybe even going so far as to flee the 12 12 and return immediately to Bolivia to feel her love in the flesh and blood. Or, on the other hand, I could accept the imperfection of life, such as it is; like that spider, I could allow the difficult times to blow over and then come back up in the calm. Did it have to be either-or: with Amaya all of the time or none? Could we create a rhythm of togetherness that rose and fell regularly, gracefully?

In an ideal world, Amaya would have Daddy by her side all the time. How did she feel about our separation? I talked about this with Leah, a child of divorced parents who grew up with her mom. Leah said the most most important part, for her and for her friends in similar situations, was not the constant presence of both parents, but the feeling that Daddy loves you no matter what, supports you, calls you regularly, and that you sense that he's got you in his heart. She added that I certainly made the grade in all of those categories. I knew Amaya missed me and wanted to spend more time with me, but I took comfort in the fact that she was secure and healthy and surrounded by love in Bolivia. important part, for her and for her friends in similar situations, was not the constant presence of both parents, but the feeling that Daddy loves you no matter what, supports you, calls you regularly, and that you sense that he's got you in his heart. She added that I certainly made the grade in all of those categories. I knew Amaya missed me and wanted to spend more time with me, but I took comfort in the fact that she was secure and healthy and surrounded by love in Bolivia.

While reflecting on this, I received a letter from Jackie. "I've made a decision," she wrote from her desert pilgrimage. "After thirty years I've decided to move on from being a physician. I'm giving up the last of the image of me-as-doctor."

I was astonished to read this. It seemed a radical step. She then wrote a little cryptically that "faithfulness to the path given is the way to learn to love": I have been pulled into peace walks, how they blend a pa.s.sion for being in the natural world with the silence, the discipline of putting one foot in front of another. It's something in my most activist days I would have made great fun of: "What's the good of it?"It's a big decision. But by leaving work, leaving medicine, I will be free to respond to what is presented in a way not possible before. My sister is moving to a retirement place; I can go down and spend two months helping her transition. I will spend two weeks doing deep cleaning at the Catholic Worker in Birmingham on the way to my sister's. A humble path seems to open. I'm no longer seeking "high drama." Like the notion of pilgrimage, I'll go out of familiar places into what is not known. Follow the path.

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FAITHFULNESS TO THE PATH GIVEN.

18. SOLITUDE.

WHEN I WAS BY MYSELF, I'd sometimes pause to look at the inner walls of the 12 12 by candlelight, or regard it from outside as the evening sun warmed its wood siding. The house looked like a sculpture of solitude, art s.h.i.+ning through utility. Jackie's honest choice. She had chipped and carved away the clutter, releasing something essential. I'd sometimes pause to look at the inner walls of the 12 12 by candlelight, or regard it from outside as the evening sun warmed its wood siding. The house looked like a sculpture of solitude, art s.h.i.+ning through utility. Jackie's honest choice. She had chipped and carved away the clutter, releasing something essential.

A 12 12 doesn't distract. I recalled my reaction the first time I saw it, the horror of the small. How I craved something that proclaimed the glory of the human, ten thousand square feet in which to lose myself. Jackie, I believe, went into solitude so that her outward life would contain more presence. I already knew about this process from meditation practice. In meditation you sit and allow thoughts to surface, like bubbles in a gla.s.s of champagne - and then allow them to float away. A deep well might open up, coal black and filled with dragons. But you maintain presence.