Let Your Light Shine
“Just a latte please.”
“Okay latte, anything else?”
“Nope that’s all thanks.”
“Okay what’s your name?”
“Robert.”
“Robert?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay cool. Wasn’t sure if I heard Robin or Robert… you look more like a Robert.”
“Well, thanks.”
—
Of the few I’ve received, that’s perhaps my most favorite compliment.
How silly is that?
Sayers of wisdom say…
“Love of one’s country is part of the faith.”
Yes! It is good and noble to die for home and hearth. But steady now soldier. The sayers of wisdom haven’t rested yet. Listen, still.
“Your ‘real’ country is where you’re heading, not where you are.”
“It’s right to love your home place, but first ask, ‘Where is that, really?’”
—
How often am I off and running while wisdom is still standing with words in her mouth..
Drinking and thirsting again.
Having and not holding.
Resting in anticipation.
Sealed and stored.
Bled and bought.
Sunny showers.
Dying for Joy.
Not yet.
Still.
“What’s your favorite poetry?”
“Poetry? You mean ‘poem?’”
“Yeah yeah, what’s your favorite poem.”
“Geez. I don’t know. That’s like asking… I don’t know. ‘What’s your favorite drink of water?’”
“I don’t drink water.”
“What?”
“Too boring.”
“I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”
“You don’t have any other friends.”
“I will cut you.”
“Poetry. Come on, educate me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not gonna try to explain it.”
“See, that’s the problem. No one knows what the darn stuff means.”
“Look out here. What do you see?”
“Uh, trees, sky, a hill, some cows.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“Uh, relaxed, I guess. I mean, it’s pretty.”
“What does it mean?”
“Huh? What does it mean? It’s just… dadgumit. You always do this.”
“Start with Frost. His famous stuff. He’s crisp and clear.”
“I’m still mad.”
“The foggier ones, not as popular, but usually my favorites. Here listen to this…”
“She would refuse love safe with wealth and honor!
The lovely shall be choosers, shall they?
Then let them choose!”
“Then we shall let her choose?”
“Yes, let her choose.
Take up the task beyond her choosing.”
Invisible hands crowned on her shoulder
In readiness to weigh upon her.
But she stood straight still,
In broad round earrings, gold and jet with pearls,
And broad round suchlike brooch,
Her cheeks high-colored,
Proud and the pride of friends.
The Voice asked, “You can let her choose?”
“Yes, we can let her and still triumph.”
“Do it by joys, and leave her always blameless.”
Robert disobeyed a direct order and rescued much life from waste, though a pig did die.
Lack of clarity about boundaries began the trouble.
San Juan Island squats right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean channel separating British Columbia (UK, then) and Washington (USA).
It was 1859, British and American settlers were both laying claim to the island.
The powers-that-be couldn’t agree and were playing grabby with the territory.
Agreeing to disagree, settlers attempted to share the island, farming and ranching side-by-side.
This reluctant harmony might have continued until today, if not for a hungry hog.
One afternoon in June, a Devon (large black) pig was helping himself to potatoes in a field belonging to an American farmer, Lyman Cutlar.
Tragically, his mother hadn’t taught him better manners.
Cutlar, finding his potatoes so rudely turned up, promptly shot and killed the intruding swine.
Charles Griffin, an Englishman, island resident and owner of several live pigs and now one dead, took great offense.
Lyman, the American farmer, offered $10, in good faith, as compensation for the animal.
The English rancher, Charles, squealed and stamped and demanded $100.
Lyman, a principled man, could not see his charity so far stretched, then refused to pay anything.
“I am in the right. Just defense of my property. Your pig was trespassing, and eating my potatoes.”
“It is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig!” Charles huffed.
Seeing that his neighbor had fled common sense and decency, the American retreated to think no more of the matter.
Griffin, on the other side, involved his local government. The British Governorship immediately threatened to arrest Cutlar.
The American settlers responded in kind, calling for their own military support.
Hot-under-the-collar Captain George Picket and his 9th Infantry were dispatched to the island. “We’ll make a Bunker Hill of it!”
The British countered and soon three warships under the Union Jack were sailing for San Juan.
Before you could say “maybe let’s just build a fence,” both militaries were bristling the tiny island.
461 American soldiers dug in with 14 cannons.
Five British warships floated 70 guns and 2,140 Marines, just off shore.
Then came the fate full order.
“Land the Marines and turn those pompous squatters into the mud they so arrogantly maintain!”
Authority is a curious matter. Power comes in submission to higher power.
When authority steps from under the higher order, Good, it ceases to be.
The rules need breaking when they start to break The Rule.*
At least, that’s what British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes believed.
He told his superior, the Governor of Vancouver Island, to take a long walk off a short pier.
“Two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig? Ridiculous.”
So, both sides stood under orders to “defend yourselves but under no circumstances fire the first shot.”
No shots were fired. The blustering continued and the boundary stayed unsolved…
…for twelve years. And no shots were fired.
In 1871 the UK and US signed the Washington Treaty, and the matter was settled.
San Juan Island, Washington, USA.
More than a decade after the pig shooting, both nations finally withdrew forces from their respective island camps.
These camps remain open today, as a US National Park.
Worth the drive, someday.
Everyday, US Park Rangers hoist a British flag to fly over the camp site.
The flag and pole was an English gift, a sign of friendship between the two countries.
San Juan Island is the only place in the US where a foreign flag is principally and regularly hoisted over American soil.
The Pig War of 1859. Real, crazy, history.
The friendship of two great nations saved; no casualties, save one pig…
because one guy named Robert knew when to break the rules.
—
*Rulebreaking is a potent potion. Drink responsibly.
The best writers I’ve ever read can write about everything and nothing, with the same words. She won’t tell you what to think. Just touches you where you feel, up to her wrist in my rib cage, “it’s okay.” I don’t know how it’s done; probably with great care, hard work, lots of practice. From here, it looks like magic.
It looks like by water or wind she swishes the skirts of her soul and words ballet from there to here with a basketful of empathy.
If questions had hands this one would pinch your cheeks
and maybe sometimes slap you in the face.
Like that aunt, lovable but only once-a-year;
intrusive, audacious and unavoidable, this question.
You answer with your life.
All I ask is a small ship and a Star to steer her by…
Do you think that, everything, is too much to ask?
Gazelle eyed princess with a heart like Texas. Cool olives skinned, lava flow feeling just under her skin. Fierce for faith and family. Emerging from mystery, appearing so modestly; no one knows she’s a princess.
Well, almost no one.
A valiant heart. No one tells him but he sees. And he fights. And he falls. Head over heels. Only honor and virtue are his hopes. His bright sword bends evil blood to the earth and his knee bends to Creator and king, only.
His a tribal people, customs are king.
And customs command marrying.
And so the story begins.
Will it be tribe and tradition, his heart be dammed? Or will the spring steel of true love bear the weight of time and recoil to set all things right, in time?
If you hear a distant popping, that’s the universe making popcorn.
All of this is for a true story, after all.
—
P.S. I’m writing about a Netflix show, here. Based on a true story.
It was a grey pickup, like their hair. Same year and single cab.
Some couples sit silently in the car. Not them.
Couldn’t hear their words, but it was friendly on their faces.
They went into a sunset yellow light.
I caught the red.
Don’t worry.
I’m only a little bit behind them.
Look into her too-big eyes… she knows something.
“What is it baby? What do you know?”
Baby can’t talk. So I search her eyes for her secret.
“Your drool doesn’t fool me baby. I will guess what you’re hiding, soon I think.”
Awe and then some.
“A low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby
I’m a sucker for a good storm. It’s embarrassing. I just sit on his tailgate and watch the thunderheads walk straight at me; striking, ponderous steps. “You’re gonna get soaked.” I know. “You’re gonna be miserable.” Silence. “You might even get struck.” Struck. Stricken. Ooh, interesting words to play with… “You’re hopeless.” Thunder. Smile. Rain.
Watch with your ears on…
Two fields crept close, and kept until the wires whined and the fence posts wept. A fence I can’t see. Eyelashes painted giddy green raking the wind and stacking it in piles so the wild grown flowers can gather ‘round and wave and bow down. The other field lays mown.
And neither has what the other wants.
He pinched a glowing coal from the fire, studying it closely. Then he popped it in his mouth and swallowed.
Looking around again, the strange boy slid back into his sleeping bag.
—
“I must have been dreaming.” the cactus boy stared at the glowing horizon, thinking about what he had seen.
The yellow yolks on the fire eyed him and the frying butter cackled.
“It was pretty dark last night, maybe it just looked like he ate the fire…” he thought.
“Hey we gonna eat those eggs or wear ‘em for shoes?”
Cactus boy spun and yanked the pan from the coals. “Rats.”
“Well done!” strange boy was snorting giggles. “My favorite, seriously. I love everything ‘well done.’”
—
“How do you make our fires?” cactus boy asked, lacing his boots.
“Huh?”
“The fire. You always make the fire but I’ve never seen you do it.”
The strange boy looked through a squint for a long second.
“Did you see something?”
“No.” cactus boy locked eyes to really sell the lie, and stepping in a hole on the trail, he fell hard.
—
“So, why… how… you swallow the fire?”
Strange boy stood and lifted his shirt.
Cactus boy was glad he was already sitting.
Hot light glistened from the center of his chest.
“Where I come from, it is never night and fire floods the sky. But here in your world we each have to carry the Flame, inside, through the night.”
“Wow. I mean that’s… wow… does it hurt?” cactus boy also saw scars tracing the glow.
Strange boy smiled, and for the first time, seemed tired.
“Why don’t you just put it out during the day and then restart it when you need it, like with matches or something?”
His eyes looked like lightning and his voice came like thunder… but gentler, like thunder far off.
“This was kindled in Death’s Forge, it can never die. It was given to me, special, for our journey. If anyone tries to put it out…”
—
Stoke the fire in your heart through the night, though it burns.
Return it to the Sun, in the morning; well done.
Morning always comes.
“Heard some cranes goin’ south today.”
“Oh?” she filled his plate.
“Must be into March now.”
Clearing the dishes, she said, “Do you think it’s the 12th yet?”
“Don’t know. The preacher hasn’t been around.”
“I think tomorrow is the 12th.” she stated.
“Will you go with me tomorrow to sit with him?” she asked the window.
She was answered by the door. Closed and hard.
Their little house shook from the shake-shouldered roof to the toe-nailed floor boards. She held the counter until the shaking stopped and their empty cradle stood still too.
—
P.S. I wrote this hard-to-read story for you because you are a brilliant reader-of-stories and you deserve it.
Interesting facts: Sandhill cranes frequently give a loud, trumpeting call that suggests a rolled “r” in the throat, and they can be heard from a long distance, especially in migratory flight. Mated for life, pairs of cranes engage in “unison calling.” The cranes stand close together, calling in a synchronized and complex duet. [Wikipedia]