Reece - Practice Resurrection And Other Essays

Copyright 2017 Erik Reece

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Cover design by Nick Gomez-Hall

eISBN: 978-1-6190-2896-8

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Wendell,

in memory of Guy

help me

I am of the people the grass

blades touch

George Oppen

SCENE: The heads of Orpheus and John the Baptist are floating along a Mediterranean river.

Conversation ensues.

Q: What is the world?

A: A self-creating God.

Q: What is God?

A: Being.

Q: So you believe in God?

A: I believe in the world as it exists.

Q: Thats what I meant.

A: Wave!

W ith my solo canoe loaded down by camping gear and a cooler full of beer, wine, and cold cuts, I paddle out onto Lake Umbagog, a beautiful eight-thousand-acre body of water that stretches across the MaineNew Hampshire border. Spear-shaped firs, spruces, and white cedars frame the lake in deep green hues. Otter, moose, and mink are said to prowl the marshy banks. I already see a solitary loon floating in the distance. The day is warm and bright, and a cool June breeze is combing narrow furrows onto the surface of the water. I balance the wind on the stem of my canoe with a paddle stroke my grandfather taught me thirty years ago. Back then we explored the coves and inlets near the Chesapeake Bay, where my grandparents lived in a small stucco parsonage. Some years later, my grandfather talked a fishing buddy of his into selling me this canoe for $100. My grandfather was a forceful country preacher, and people had a hard time telling him no. From the other room, I could overhear him saying into the phone, Well Bill, hes just a poor graduate student.

By turning the paddle away from the stern at the end of the stroke, I carve the letter J into the water, a kind of one-letter poem that dissolves into a small eddy and must be reinscribed over and over. I remember, when I was a kid, watching from the bow seat of my grandfathers canoe as he performed the J stroke with a deft deliberateness. He handled his paddle with such a fluid ease, the water never even splashed around the blade as he turned it into the curve of the J . I try to emulate that artistry now. But once I reach the middle of Lake Umbagog, I find myself struggling against a strong headwind. After about two hours of paddling south, then east toward what I hope is the Maine border, I see the number 35 blazed in white on a boulder. I realize with a sudden thrill that this is my island. At least for the next several days, it is mine alone.

The bow of my canoe eases to a halt between two exposed roots of a tall cedar that stands on the sandy shore. The island is about the size of a football field. It is all wooded except for a small clearing, where a picnic table sits next to a stone fire pit. I haul my gear out and pitch my tent on a bed of pine needles. I set my portable kitchen (which amounts to a propane stove, a burnt pot, and a fork) on the picnic table and unroll my sleeping bag inside my small tent. Thus ensconced, I pour some white wine into my blue metal camp cup and take a stroll around the grounds. A small archipelago of stones and boulders defines the northern tip of the island, while at the southern end, I find one wild orchid, a pink lady slipper, growing in the shade of pine trees. Its single seed must have blown over from the mainland a few hundred feet away. The flower, which looks like a pale, slightly deflated wind sock, is the only thing blooming on the island.

The island straddles the state line, so that walking west to east, about forty yards from shore to shore, I cross over from New Hampshire into Maine. A bifurcated white birch stands in the middle of the island near my campsite, and I amuse myself by imagining that the state line cuts right between its forked truck. What taxes might I incur simply by walking from one side of the island to the next? Had I an automobile on Island 35 (a ridiculous thought), Id have to buckle up as I crossed over into Maine. New Hampshire remains the only state in the Union with no seat belt law. Consequently, some have proposed that the state motto, Live free or die, be changed to Live free and die. I sympathize, though, with the anticonstraint crowd. As one who refuses to wear a seat belt on (admittedly shaky) libertarian grounds, I raise my cup to the independent spirit of the Granite State.

Because I live in Kentucky, I am surprised at how early the sun rises in these northern latitudes. I find myself up at six, making coffee on my island still shrouded in mist. I toss out the dregs of last nights wine and replace them with traditionally terrible camp coffee. Sugar improves it though, and as I sit in my folding chair, the cool air and the hot coffee cast a promising feel over the day. Out in the lake, fish are rising up to snatch midges and mayflies from the surface of the water. Slowly the sun starts to burn the mist off the lake.

On a small islandparticularly alone on a small islandone has the sense of standing outside all institutions. Here, the only rule I must follow is: take only notes; leave only feces. For the latter, there is a discreetly placed privy in the middle of the island, surrounded by shrubs. The island is also our most persistent metaphor for solitude. And solitude, we are told, is the condition out of which philosophy arises. I myself have no ambitions for making any contribution to the field this week, but I have brought with me a slim volume of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus (translated by classicist-modernist Guy Davenport). Actually, a volume of Heraclitus, by definition, must be slim, since all that has come down to us are fragmentsepigrams on philosophy, nature, and the human mind. And because a canoe, unlike a backpack, lends itself to transporting a small library, I have also brought along a few books by other men who lived alone and in their aloneness contemplated the fragments of Heraclitus: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Merton, Guy Davenport. Nietzsche called Heraclitus the royally secluded, all-sufficing Heraclitus. Between 540 and 480 BCE , the Greek philosopher wrote from an island of his own choosing, a self-imposed exile outside the city of Ephesos. Like Nietzsche, Heraclitus was considered by his contemporaries elitist and reclusive. And like an itinerate street preacher named Yeshua, Heraclitus spoke in images that suggest meaning but do not spell it out. Much remains left to the reader.

Every collection of his fragments begin with this passage:

The Logos is eternal

but men have not heard it

or men have heard it and not understood.

Through the Logos all things are understood

yet men do not understand

as you shall see when you put acts and words to the test I am going to propose:

One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows.

Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world or to their own minds,