Chapter 6

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Chapter 6

“What would you change?” I asked Nica.

Later that night, after our day at the beach, we were laying in her bed, the room pitch dark so that we couldn’t see each other, couldn’t even make out the broad outlines of the furniture or see the Toulouse Lautrec posters she had hung up all over her room.  Darkness so complete we couldn’t see anything at all, only hear each other's voices  and feel our naked bodies pressed against each other at the sides.  

“I’d change everything,” she said.  “Everything’s fucked up.  Everything needs changing.”

I raised myself to lean on my right side and extended my left hand across her body to caress her right thigh.

“Then what would you start with?” I asked.

I could hear and feel her inhale softly as she reached her hand down to clasp the top of mine, our two hands working in concert once more as I continued to caress her.

“I’d get rid of Reagan,” she said, “or more accurately, the assholes who make his policies.” 

She paused before adding, “That idiot’s a front man for the rich. Never had an original idea in his life.  Can’t even talk without a script, I’m sure.”

Nica was not a Communist or a Socialist by any stretch of the imagination.  She wasn’t political at all, at least in an academic, intellectual sense.  She was what I’d describe as a hazy leftist Europhile who knew she hated unbridled capitalism and corporate greed.  The nuclear protests in West Germany thrilled her because they combined so many things she admired: environmental awareness, anti war and empire building, youth protest and 1980s style insouciance, disdain for the powerful in all their incarnations.

'Wouldn't they just be replaced by people who would make the same policies?’ I asked.

Silence hung in the air for a moment.

“I know,” she said.  “I meant to replace their hearts and minds with people who are right with the world, who care about justice and love.”

I couldn’t tell if she hadn’t thought about it or just didn’t express herself clearly.  Nica was like Reagan himself that way.  Not a detail person.  She had a vision for how the world should be and was strong in her belief that this vision was the “right” one.  The irony of the situation was not lost on me, but I kept it to myself.  This time it was me who let the silence linger as I tried to think of a good way to ask my next question.  Not thinking of one, I went with transparency.

“So, I can’t think of a way to ask this that doesn’t sound like I’m discounting your initial answer,” I started, “but I’m genuinely curious about what you have to say.”

She squeezed my hand a little tighter, a gesture I took to mean, go ahead with your question, it’s okay.

“What’s the first thing you’d do for real?” I said.  “You know, tangible, like a policy or a law or whatever,” I added.  “I agree with what you said about our leaders having good hearts, but that’s an ideal scenario.”

I felt her chest rise and fall slowly under the blanket we were sharing.

“I take your point,” she said softly. “What’s the old saying?  You can’t legislate morality or something like that.

“I don’t agree with that,” I said.  “Laws influence norms, and norms become beliefs, eventually.”

“I agree,” she said.  “Look at Brown vs. Board of Education.  I’m not an idiot, I know there are plenty of people who are still racist, maybe even most people.  But how many today are hard core in their insistence that schools be completely segregated by race?”

“It’s still a lot, but I see what you mean,” I said.

“I get it,” she said.  “Policies influence behaviors, which influence beliefs.”

“Which influence behaviors, and so on,” I added.  “It’s a cycle.”

“I see it,” she said, “but you aren’t going to change the world by intellectualizing it, my love.  You have to start with the heart, with connection to each other’s humanity and, above all, to God’s plan and our place in nature.”

I had such ambivalent feelings about when Nica talked this way. On the one hand, she was right.  I intellectualized things so much so I wouldn’t have to feel them with my heart, as with my relationship with my older brother.  We weren’t close because of our age difference, because structural forces related to chronological age like school and marriage and careers made it hard for us to connect.  We were at different stages of life, unlike siblings who were closer in age and were experiencing similar things. That made it hard for us to connect - or so I told myself.

That made it easier, I understood, than acknowledging what I knew to be true, what I felt in my heart, as Nica would say it: We simply did not have much in common in terms of our values and interests.  Easier than admitting that, if he wasn’t my brother, I wouldn’t have much in common with him or want to spend time with him - nor him me.  It hung in the air between us, unacknowledged, in words or in the heart.

“An Indian guru called Nanek,” she continued, “who lived in the 16th century I think, said that man is the medium of his message, which is awareness of his relationship with nature and, therefore, can’t be at cross purposes with it.”

On the other hand …sometimes I didn’t understand her worldview, or even lacked respect for the naivete it suggested.  And, yet, I did admire her knowledge of and curiosity about ancient cultures and prophets.  She was well read, not comprehensively, but in the subjects which held her interest.  She was, like my mother, a woman of substance and depth if, also like my mother, egocentrism and manipulation.

Mostly, though, I was energized by her quest for meaning and deeper understanding.  All my intellectualizing could be a defense mechanism, she had told me once, and I knew there was some truth to that observation.  Nica was more aware of other people’s defense mechanisms than her own, it’s true, but who else at our age - or any age - even contemplated such things?  She broke through my pretenses and made me think.  How many people in your life do that?

Rather than resent her for it, I admired it.

“That’s a little too deep for where my soul is in the cycle of samsara,” I said.  “Explanation, please.”

She moved her hand out from under mine and grasped my forearm gently.

“You know I have such admiration for how smart you are,” she said.  “You’re brilliant, I really mean that.  But, you know that cliche, you can’t see the forest for the trees?”

I waited for her to continue, making sure to control my breathing or refrain from sudden movements.

“It’s like that,” she said.  “Only with you, the trees are all your knowledge, all your facts and information.  They prevent you from seeing, not the big picture, but the true picture.”

I could tell she thought I might be angry with what she was saying, but I wasn’t.  I liked when she challenged my thinking.

“Okay,” I said.  “Tell me the true picture, then.”

She leaned on her side to face me, but in the complete darkness I could only see the outline of her head.

“I can’t,” she said.  “That’s the thing.  You need to find it for yourself.  Everyone does.”

There was a pause, but I suspected she had more to say. I waited to see if she would continue.

“But Guru Nanek would say your truth is grounded in nature or, more accurately, your relationship to nature, to God’s creation,” she added.

A rush of that familiar ambivalence washed over me once more.  I could appreciate what she was saying - what Guru Nanek was saying.  But it did not resonate with me because …what the hell did it mean?  Stop and smell the roses?  Compost?  Take more nature walks or live in the woods like Thoreau?  

To voice these questions would have been insulting to her, yes, but on another level I recognized they were proof that she was onto something with her observations about me.  The mountains, the oceans, they’ve been here for millenia.  Human civilization has existed for 5000 years and our modern, industrial way of life for, what, a hundred and fifty?  Nature was here before us, it will be here after we are gone. What that meant, exactly, I could not say, but I could intuit its significance on some level.  And what Nica was saying is that I didn’t put enough effort into pondering that significance.  I, probably like most people, was distracted by temporal, man made issues. 

Human made issues, that is.

We laid there, not in silence, as we could hear the occasional car drive past the window, her neighbor next door yelling something indistinguishable to some unknown person, the old plumbing creaking intermittently.  Wordlessly, we reached for each other’s hand and interlocked our fingers.  She knew I was contemplating her words, and I knew she knew I was.  We did not need to reassure each other that everything was okay between us because we felt our connection from throughout the day wash over us - at the lake, in the car on the way home, at the dinner we made together, making love, considering the wisdom of Guru Nanek.

Just then, one of the blinds moved ever so slightly, but it was enough to let in a sliver of light from the streetlight outside.  I raised my head enough to look around the room and could see the general shape of everything now, if not the details. When I turned in her direction I could see Nica smiling at me, her teeth catching the small amount of light and reflecting it outwards.

“Hi, baby,” she whispered.

“Hi,” I said back, raising my left hand up to cradle her cheek.