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“We are but thinking reeds, but because we know, we are superior

to the universe. Thought constitutes our greatness.”—Pascal

This is a book about our thinking. If we begin to think more actively, some stunning changes are possible: we can know ourselves better, we can have more options in life, we can distinguish fact from fiction and hype from hope, we can begin to think more decisively as we choose liferoads to walk down, and we can become more persuasive as we listen and talk to our fellow thinkers.

We often define ourselves by our actions. In a way, we are what we do, but perhaps more than we realize, we are what we think. For instance, if people pretend to like someone whom they hate, is it their hateful thinking or their false acting (or both) that really represents what they are? “Whether a thought is spoken or not, it is the real thing and has power” (Herbert, 1987, p. 257).

Five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci used an analogy that is being supported by research today: “Just as iron rusts unless it is used…so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.”(Da Vinci, p.294). Dr. Arnold Scheible, director of the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, tells us: “If you decrease input you decrease structure. The brain is just like a muscle—use it or lose it.” Indeed, “scientists are now discovering that the brain can grow and reorganize itself, within limits, past puberty and well into adulthood: (Sheppard, 2000, p.42).

We have used our brain to explore the universe, and the sciences of physics and astronomy are now firmly established. But exploring our thinking will be more difficult. The neurosciences are still at an early stage, even though knowledge of the brain has leapt exponentially. We have already identified many of the neurotransmitters that control neural activity, and our ability to look inside the brain has progressed from anatomy to EEG to CAT to MRI to PET to MRS to PEPSI (proton echo-planar spectroscopic imaging). Even with these advances, unlike the DNA code in genetics, the brain code has not been deciphered. If we use physics as a measure, brain research may still be at the pre-Newtonian stage of knowledge.

Complicating this puzzle is our brain’s enormous intricacy: Over a trillion cells compose it; 100 billion of them are neurons devoted to our thinking process. Each of these, on the average, reaches out to make thousands and thousands of other contacts. If we could walk along this marvelous labyrinth, the number of different journeys we could take may exceed the number of atoms in the universe! The neurons cannot communicate to quite that extent, but the number of real, potential pathways in the brain is still absolutely unimaginable! With such tremendous complexity, can our thinking brain even begin to comprehend itself?

And that, perhaps, is the greatest obstacle of all: we are attempting to know our mind with our mind. That is like a pair of pliers trying to grasp itself. How can the instrument of thinking grasp itself? While this obstacle may seem theoretically insurmountable, practically we do experience the ability to reflect on our thought; and in an attempt to escape from this cyclic conundrum, we will frequently stress communicating our thinking in writing and in dialogue so that we can objectively analyze the results of our thinking. One of the best ways to understand what is in our mind is by looking at what comes out of it: our expressed thinking.

OUR CULTURAL LEGACY

We are such stuff as thoughts are made on.

adapted from Shakespeare

In this book we encourage you to engage your mind and plunge into thinking. But first, let’s meet some powerful thinkers who have preceded us.

Humans were speaking, and thus thinking, many millennia before the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and the Phoenicians learned to write their thoughts. The Greeks took their alphabet and burst forth into song, literature, philosophy, rhetoric, history, art, politics, and science. Corax of Syracuse, perhaps the first rhetorician, taught us how to use words to pierce into other minds. The sophists, skeptics, and cynics asked us to question everything, including our own questioning. Socrates probed and prodded the Athenians to think: “The unexamined life is not worth living,” he said. And he threw down to us the ultimate gauntlet: “Know thyself.” Plato was so caught up with Socrates and with the pure power of the mind that he thought we were born with ideas and that these innate ideas were as close as we could come to divinity. Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, sharpened his senses to make impressive empirical observations that climbed toward first principles; then he honed his mind into the absolute logic of the syllogism that stepped inexorably, deductively downward.

The Roman rhetoricians Cicero, Tertullian, and Quintilian built massive structures of the mind and legal mentalities that rivaled Rome’s architectural vastness.

The medieval thinkers, mental to a point that matched their ethereal goals, created mental structures mainly based on Plato, fortified with the logic of

Aristotle. Aquinas, in his Summa, forged an unmatched mental creation that, if one grants his premises, still stands as an unassailable mountain of the mind.

In contrast to much of this abstraction was the clean cut of Ockham’s razor,

slicing off unnecessary entities, and the welcome freshness of Anselm, who preempted Descartes by stating, “I doubt, therefore I know.”

The Renaissance thinkers turned their minds and energies to earthly navigation, sidereal science, art, pleasure, and empire. Some of these thinkers, like Leonardo da Vinci, returned to the Greeks (Archimedes); some like Montaigne recovered rich ore in the Romans, sifted by the skepticism described on a medal around his neck: Que sais je? (“What do I know?”).

Pascal called his whole book of aphorisms Thoughts. Descartes echoed Anselm: “I think, therefore I am,” and challenged our pride by telling us that “it is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well” (Les Discours, Vol. 1). Those were the French rationalists.

No less rational, the British empiricists progressed from Locke’s Aristotelian focus on the senses (the mind as a tabula rasa), to Berkeley’s idea that we can be sure only of our perceptions to Hume’s radical skepticism.

Hegel looked on all history as an idea unfolding, and Marx concretized and capitalized that idea.

Twentieth century thinkers like Wittgenstein, Whorf, and Chomsky all enter the open, unfolding, and marvelous arena of the mind. They welcome us to come, enter with them, and think….

Is anything more important than thinking? Is there anything important that is not connected with thinking?

Blemished: Snot nose. Miss Prissy Princess. The boys, like ugly little toads, hopped around Snow White-but she was dirt black inside.

Snatched: Her rich parents, smashed by a drunk who swatted them dead, like flies. Orphaned, the judge awarded her to an unknown grandmother who drove her away to the Wyoming Mountains.

Angered: The old woman looked like a witch. The child simmered and boiled and bolted away into the hands of an alligator elegant man-”You have to take your clothes off.”

Refreshed: That old mountain magic flowering in that young breast, glowing in that wondering mind, and stretching rock strength down the bones of those swelling young legs.

Transformed: A dream summer of beauty and wonder, beauty burning within and glowing all outward, enchanting like elven laughter, uplifting like the rainbow, breathtaking like the thunder, and warming like the sunlight.

Wise: Gram never told me what the tree meant. She just said look. She just said learn. She just said beauty. She just said love.

Enjoy the first pages of  The Other Edge of Beauty

Prologue

She snatched me.

I could not have written this until she died.

I respected her too much to reveal her name while she lived.

But now I can tell the world.

And the world needs to know.

Millions of you would recognize her married name as the stunning, arrogant wife of George Michael Vanderfeller III, who took his money and disappeared–twice.

Carolyn Faye is the name she took to vanish from the media.

In her words, she simply changed from a rich bitch to a woman.

In my words she transformed into a saint. From a cheerleader into a slut into a society star into a bag lady into a wild woods woman into…well, I’ll have to tell you about that later, because you wouldn’t believe it now, and you might toss her book aside, and I do want the world to know who she was in her second, hidden life.

I hated her, then I loved her.

She snatched me from the city and took me to the mountains.

Many people never see those mountains. I was lucky enough to have lived there, loved and guided by a warm and wise woman. This memoir is hers, and a little of mine since I carry her within. The story might get a little raw at times—she would have wanted that way, and I think you will too. And she would want bare honesty. I’ll try, but I am biased– she is my model, my mentor, my grandmother, and the greatest gift of all my life—I am one-fourth genetically and one-hundred percent personally grafted into her. I wish all of her, all her wisdom, goodness, strength, and sensitivity to beauty could be entwined into my nerves, arteries, sinews, fibers, and bone of my body and soul.

Some of you, when you were hurting, might have been lucky enough to have met Carolyn personally. Thousands of you, hundreds of thousands of you across the country have been helped by her. That will become clear later. But everyone in the town of Bow, Wyoming, all one-hundred and forty-four occupants, knew her. Mention Carolyn’s name in Bow, and watch people smile and sunshine flash across their faces. Carolyn did that to people.

They called her Mountain Momma, and they will tell you how one time she drove her pick-up truck right up into a blizzard in the mountains, parked the truck in an old wooden shack at the top of Bow, hopped onto a snowmobile and went right through that blizzard into that Snowy Mountain Range and was packed solid into an ice block for the whole winter. They thought they would find her frozen body thawing in the spring, still stuck to the snowmobile—or more likely, her bones, scratched by teeth and scattered nearby.

The first part of that story is true. The part about the blizzard was wrong. I know. I know Carolyn and she watched storm clouds like a cat watches a mouse. No blizzard would ever catch her.

So if you want to know the real story of her disappearance, and of some of the deep down things she has done, read on.

I must write on. I must release this welling up, almost forcing itself out, unfolding from within. I need to tell her story

Carolyn loved stories. That first summer that I met her, she told me parts of her life. I begged for more. On a good day I would get three or four of her adventures, and I replayed them in my head. So I know they are accurate. I was only eleven, but I remember them with awe. And I want to get them down on paper now exactly like my Gram told them.

Gram’s stories are true. The parts about me are blurred a little, because I do not have Gram’s courage and honesty. I have bent the truth-telling to put a little shine on my story. But doesn’t everyone bend the truth a little? Because I was such a miserable, unlovable snot nose I thought I needed the touch of a few graces.

Oh, and please forgive the rough spots–I am not the story teller that Gram was.

I sent this to a literary agent who loved the story but didn’t believe a grandmother would share the ugly parts of her life with her young granddaughter.

She did.

That agent also didn’t believe that an eleven-year-old girl could have a vocabulary like that.

I did.

I ought to know. It was me. Maybe I’m adding some adult words now, but I’m trying to say it like I said it then. I did read a lot–that was probably the one good thing I did in my childhood before I met Gram. I stuffed my hollow life with books. Also, my agent didn’t like my foul mouth–but I won’t change the dialogue. It was the way I spoke. I had a torturing tongue. I thought nasty things, and I spat them out with my brat breath. You could have probably called me evil—that, too, was before I met Gram. She scrubbed my tongue, and she did it good. But she used the brush of example and kindness.

No matter to the agent and his problem about what Gram would say or about my vocabulary: Gram is famous enough that publishers will bid at an auction to get her book. And if they don’t, I’ll run off a million copies myself. I’ve got the money, her money, which she never spent enough of on herself.

I have changed the names of two of the towns and of some of the people, and I decided to write it in the third person, like a novel. But all of the stories and the naked beauty of nature remain unchanged. Just dimmed by my pale pen.

Now that you know Marilyn was really Mrs. George Michael Vanderfeller, III, you probably want to know why and how she disappeared from the public, and just how much money she had.

A lot. And you probably want to know what she did with her fortune–she doubled and re-doubled it many times over. But I’m not going to tell you about Mrs. George Michael Vanderfeller, III. I never knew that woman. But I will tell you about Carolyn Faye, and although I wish to have known her far more deeply than I do, I do think I knew her better than anyone. And I certainly know how much I love her and miss her. And how much she is in me, and what I owe her– far more than I owe my mother. I owe her my childhood and the woman I have become.

I owe her myself.

Mariah Faye

Granddaughter of Carolyn Faye

Blessed by her Beauty

Chapter One: The Guardian

The child sucked the air from the room. When the courtroom voyeurs saw her, they held their breath. Outside a sea of reporters washed against the concrete steps. Male or female, even the very old, almost anyone who saw this girl would just pause, look, and sometimes forgetting their manners, would just stare.

Milk skin, silk smooth; teeth of snow; nose and cheeks and chin sculpted by the soft hand of a god. Beyond a diamond, clear and masterly crafted, flawlessly faceted. No jewel, no flower could match this child. No Renaissance master could ever sketch her.

But now sitting at a table in a courtroom, she crushed her lips into her perfect teeth; her blue eyes watered, and her lashes were wet with blinking.

Mariah was eleven. Her rich parents, the Sandstroms of River Hills, had been smashed by a drunk who swatted them dead. Like flies. The judge would soon appoint her guardian.

The old woman entered the courtroom and saw the pre-nubile beauty. The woman’s chest pulled up in a quick jerk and her breath wouldn’t release. “The pain!” she thought. “The pain. The beauty. My replica. The pain. The pain.”

Her past coiled into her sternum like a broken spring, the sharp edge gouging her bones. When her breath came back in rib hurting lunges, the old woman folded down onto the front courtroom bench, across from the stunning child.

“Are you all right?” asked Joan Ryerson, the social worker who was secretly hoping the old lady was having a heart attack. Joan had argued against giving custody to this woman. She was too old. The child did not know her. And the old woman lived somewhere off in some mountains–hardly a home for a child.

Mariah looked over at the old lady who was still gasping and holding a hand over her chest and thought: Good, she’ll die soon. Mariah knew she should feel badly about that thought, but she didn’t. The whole world can die for all I care!

Five minutes later Judge Gearson’s gavel struck: “This court awards full custody of Ms. Mariah Sandstrom to Ms. Carolyn Faye for the period of one year, a review to determine the disposition thereafter. In the interim, Ms. Sandstrom’s inheritance shall be placed in a closed trust account managed by Bank One of Milwaukee. Ms. Faye will not have access to any of these funds, and has agreed to bear all expenses directly related to the care and rearing of Mariah Sandstrom.”

This witch! This witch is going to be my mother? Not a chance. I’ll run away. Mariah felt betrayed. Betrayed by life, betrayed by the Ms. Ryerson, and now betrayed by the judge. Ms. Ryerson had assured her that if she said “no” loudly enough, she would not have to go with this old woman who was making claims to be some kind of relative. But despite Mariah’s protestations, the court had just awarded her custody to this half dead woman, a wrinkled, old crony, old, old, way more than half dead. And this thing that can barely walk is going to be my guardian? My protector? Take me away somewhere? Away from my friends? Her life had ended then and there. It was over, just as she was about to blossom.

Ms. Ryerson had objected, calling the ruling unusual and a risk for the young girl. The girl herself, she pointed out, had plainly stated that she didn’t want the old woman as her guardian, and an eleven-year-old child’s wish usually carried great weight with most judges, but not with the Honorable Judge Gearson. He had made his decision after just twenty minutes alone in his chamber with the elderly woman. He then returned and announced in her favor. The judge said that eleven was just too young to become a ward of the state or to be placed in foster homes until she was adopted, that her relative, Ms. Carolyn Faye, had the financial means and was of strong moral character.

What Ms. Ryerson didn’t know was what the old woman had disclosed to the judge: a thick financial portfolio and some astounding proof of how that portfolio was in play. The judge was in awe. He granted Carolyn’s request to keep her identity and address out of the papers. Carolyn had also promised the judge that, if Mariah was not happy, within a year she would return to Wisconsin and buy a home in a good school district and raise the child there.

After the hearing, in one of the strangest judicial procedures, the judge summoned Ms. Ryerson into his chamber and told her he would not disclose the girl’s destination, only that they were going west somewhere into a remote area. Ms. Ryerson was somewhat placated upon hearing that the unknown rural area had school buses, but to give a child to a 60 some year old lady out in the wild? It jarred common sense. What if the old lady died? What of marauders? Wisconsin seemed cosmopolitan compared to western mountains.

But the social worker’s concerns were small compared to the feelings of the girl. Her school had ended, her friends had ended, her life had ended. She was to be taken away to a wilderness that she had never seen, to a foreign state that seemed as strange as a foreign country or a different planet. She was afraid and sullen, bitter anger boiled, but the child let off no seen steam.

She had blamed her parents for something vital which had been missing during her eleven years, but now she shifted her anger to this hag who was ripping her out of the little life she had known. If Mariah were a magnifying glass and could focus her anger, she would have burned a hole through the leather weathered face of this woman. Mariah’s eyes, one shade lighter than sky blue, slitted and stared out like little hard marbles.

The old woman, the new guardian, saw the icy rocks in Mariah’s eyes: The pain! The pain.

“Come my dear, it is time to go.”

“Don’t—call—me–dear,” the words came out in chiseled blocks.

“Well I’m sorry young Miss. Let’s begin our journey.”

She held out her hand.

The girl let the adult’s hand dangle like a scarecrow’s, and said: “And my name is not Miss,”like a little girl. My name is Mariah Sandstrom. Call me Mariah when you talk to me,” she said in a voice of cold command, numbing coming from one so young.

Carolyn withdrew her empty hand and walked toward the door. The little girl followed, seeming to shrink as she circled the social worker like a puppy who did not want to leave her dead mother. She glanced at the judge and then crept after Marilyn toward the door that seemed to open into all blackness.

Bright lights exploded on the outside steps. Black cameras bobbed high on an ocean of arms and heads. Reporters struggled to catch the agony of the young heiress in the crutches of an crony who was obviously after the child’s inheritance.

Four police officers pushed like a tugboat through the human flood, and helped Ms. Faye and Mariah into her vehicle. Mariah was too numb to notice that she had just been put into the front seat of a white GMC Custom Cab, no truck for an old woman. Carolyn patted the dashboard and said: “Meet White Light. His full name is ‘White Light of Freedom,’ but you can call him ‘White Light.’ He’s going to lose this insane crowd of reporters.”

In the back seat of the extended cab, a golden retriever began barking excitedly. “And your new friend is Honnengold. You will love her, because she will love you.”

Mariah said nothing until Honnengold poked her long wet nose over the back of the seat, and began sniffing Mariah. “Eeew! Get this ugly monster off me,” said Mariah as she put her hands up in front of her face.

“Honnengold! Get back there,” Marilyn pointed to the back seat. “And you stay there.” She looked at Mariah’s face and was relieved that there was no fear: “I’m sorry. Honnengold usually rides shotgun for me. She’s not too happy being in back. She’s a friendly dog, and she might want to lick you like a lollypop, but I promise she will not bite. And she understands very well, and she heard you call her ugly, but I think she will forgive you.”

This old thing is insane like her dog.

Carolyn left the parking lot. Prurient lens violated her windows. She drove deliberately, annoyingly slow through the downtown streets of Milwaukee. The train of vans and cars followed her like she was the president.

“You’re a big story, Mariah. Look at the vans with their T.V. cameras on them. They want to know everything. You’re popular. You’re an heiress.”

Mariah scowled sourly.

Carolyn planned her escape. She slowed down for a green light on Kilbourne and said: “Hang on Mariah. We’re going to shake that wolf pack. White Light doesn’t like tailgaters.”

Carolyn stopped as the light turned red. Lulled into lethargy, the reporters stopped.

She stomped the gas. The GMC Custom Cab’s 402-cu.in. big block growled and spat out 300 horses into the four huge knobby tires. Black rubber screamed grey smoke as White Light burned across the intersection and into the expressway tunnel going north.

The journalists cursed and hit their palms on the steering wheels, as the cross traffic cut them off from their prey.

White Light shot out of the tunnel like a bullet from a gun barrel. Carolyn braked hard, exited west, and then drove normally.

“How did you like that ride? Not bad for an old lady, huh?”

Normally Mariah would have been impressed, but the noise and the turns just seemed to make her brutal departure feel more like a kidnapping.

She simmered in silence.

The papers did not get Ms. Faye’s destination nor the interviews they desired, but they had a field day with their headlines:

CHILD TORN FROM OUR CITY!

MYSTERIOUS OLD WOMAN GETS GIRL!

YOUNG BEAUTY, OLD BEAST!

HEIRESS VANISHES FROM THE COURTROOM

To the young readers: may your eyes grow wide and your mind wheel in wonder, may some of these stories touch your spirit; and may you grow vibrant and strong and good and smart as you discover the world that is far more mysterious and wonderful than any story can be…

To my children, Eric, Scott, Becky, and Matt, snuggling into the covers pleading, “One more! Please, please Dad.” I resisted the thought that they just wanted to stay awake longer, and I accepted their joy as a critique that these stories should live longer than a single night.

To my grandchildren, Isabel, Gus, and those to come, if these stories don’t still excite, blame your parents for the reading. The stories seem to have warped them only slightly, so may you, too, survive and enjoy!

TO THE READER

All stories live or die in the voice you give them. I have tried to instill the images, the rhythms, the repetitions, and the rhymes that children love. I have made the stories fun, but also lessons of love, with an occasional plum for the parent. But my words are cold unless you, reader, warm them with your voice. My grandmother literally cried and laughed the words she read, and I fell in love with language listening on her lap. May you pass the gift of words and of love to your children.

Contents

MAGICAL TALES

The Shy Silver Shimmer

The Sandman

Snails with Names on their Tales

The Ghost and Kid Piper

Little H

The Blue Sky Lights

TV Eyes and Mouse Fingers

Green Grass Sally and the Golden Boy

Hydrogen Hanna

The High-Strung Strings

The Golden Girl and the Green Queen

The Stardust Kids

What Goes Up

Blacknose the Bear

WHO AM I

Fluffy White

Wiggle Squiggle Little Worm

Wally the Worm

Stretchy Sammy

Little Ball

Tiny Tumble

Who’s It

GRAMPA AND THE GRANDCHILDREN: Stories to Grow On

Whiz the Wingless Eagle

Antic the Ant

The Three Tree Friends

Sally, Solly, and Selly

Tammy the Turkey Tornado

The Ugly Orange Ogre

The Sand Monster

Magmo, Ethro, and Jumbo

Circles and Squares

YesYes Jess and NoNo Joe

The Flapper and the Slither

Wee Willy Wind

The Orange Fluffy

Baby Blue Dragon

The Little Blank Book

Say Gently but Truly

Sea Squirts, Earth Quakes

Sunny and Cloudy: Sky Wars

The Little Book Writes Itself

Little Squirt Becomes Big Black

Bobby Iceberg

The Small Story

The Four Forces

The Dream Child

Heard of this Bird?

The Grumpers of Grumpsville

The Magic Paint Brush

The Old Orcle

The Fat Brothers

Little Spark

Tommy the Time Traveler

Little Brown Bird

Sensy Sally

Let’s Have a Ball

The Little Rogue Wind

Johnny the Germ Fighter

Long Line and Soft Curve

Cander Counter

Who’s It

Fair and Square

The Senseless Senses

The Balloon Monster

The Boy Who Became the Birthday Monster

Turn Your Light On

Maggie the Mongoose

Poor Boy Tom

Nice and Honest

Johnny Jet

Vulcan the Volcano

The Grousel Puffs

Little Girl Letter, and Little Boy One

THE EARTH TALKS

The Old Tree Remembers

Terry Tall Tree and Tommy Tiny

The Water Diamond

CREAKING FLOORS AND SQUEAKING DOORS

The Monster in Your Mind

Face and Chase Those Fears Away

Gorilla George and Softhearted Sue

The Greedy Snuckers

Shelly the Grilly

SLIPPING THROUGH

Slipping Through the Water

Slipping Through the Jell-o

Slipping Through the Rainbow Oil Slick

Sticking Fingers

A World of Bounce

Bigger and Bigger and Boom

MECKY AND BATT: THE WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVES

Green Goblets All Gone

The Pizza Bandit

Jewelry Foolery

Burp

The Bandit in the Sky

The Window has Two Sides

Money not in the Bags

Locks, Locks, and More Locks

The Rug Rat

The Masked Bandit

The Taste of Truth

Potty Problems

The Parrot Squeals

Tommy Takes a Time Out

Thunder Roots

The Stone Giants and the Four Powers

The Wise Woman of White Mountain

Nasty Names at School

SERIC AND OTTY THE WONDER BOYS

The Purple Witch

The Gonkle

The Buff Boys

The Black Flakes

PALACE OF WONDERS

Stuffed-up Sally

Hardhead Harry

Plain Jane Changed

SCREWEY ZOOEY

Floxy Foxy

Polly the Perky Pink Parrot

Powerful Paul the Polar Bear

Jolly Ollie the Otter

MORKEY THE MONKEY

Monkey Face, Wrong Place

The Golden Banana

Morkey the Mouth

Morkey Jumpy Monkey

Morkey’s Mommy’s Rule

Morkey’s Mess

Morkey Tells a Lie

RHYME TIME

Rise and Rime

Little Brown Grows Green

Little Finger Big Binger

The Little Light Who Wanted to Shine

Fluffy Flies Free

Little Word Plays

Little O, the Water Drop

Yeh or Nay

Purr

The Snarpels and the Warpels

THE END

The End

The Real End

The Shy Silver Shimmer

Once upon a time there once was a little Silver Shimmer who didn’t know what she was. She went shimmering up to the tree and said, “Am I a tree?” But the big tree laughed and said, “No, you are not a tree. You are not even a leaf.”

So she shimmered a little less and went up the rock and said, “Am I a rock?” The rock rolled around a little, rumbled, and said: “No, you are not a rock. You are not even a tiny pebble. Why you seem like nothing at all.”

Because the tree laughed at her, and because the rock rumbled at her, the little Silver Shimmer was afraid to ask anyone else. She would hide behind bushes and watch all the animals and plants play and grow. They all seemed to know who they were. She became a very quiet, a very shy silver shimmer.

So the Shy Silver Shimmer got a little dimmer, and one day she sat on the windowsill of a big red house. Her silver light almost went out.

Inside the big red house a small girl saw the faint silver shimmer. The girl opened her window and stuck out her finger very slowly. The girl did not want to scare the little shimmer away. The Silver Shimmer barely had the strength to climb up and sit on the little girl’s finger.

“How pretty you are,” said the little girl. “And how dim and pale you are.”

The Shy Silver Shimmer got the courage to ask one more time: “Do you know what I am?”

“No I don’t,” said the little girl in a very nice voice. “But we can find out.”

The little girl took the silver shimmer to her mother and asked, “Mom, do you know what this Silver Shimmer is?”

“No I don’t,” said her mother, but she is very pretty. I think she looks like a light. Why don’t you ask the lights?”

So the little girl went up to the light bulb and asked, “Do you know what she is?” But the light bulb didn’t talk at all.

They asked the firefly. The firefly winked on and off and said, “You keep your light on all the time. You are silver and I am yellow. I don’t think you are a firefly, but good luck finding out who you are.”

They found a campfire with a group of children singing. The children all liked the shimmering little light. When they all asked the fire, the fire said, “You are a little bit like me. You seem to have some fire in you, but you do not seem to need wood to burn and shine. I would say you are not quite fire.”

The little girl and the Silver Shimmer went out by the lake and sat down. The Silver Shimmer was sad. The little girl was sad too, and cried a few sad tears. The tears fell in the water and rippled tiny waves that sparkled from the light of the moon. The Silver Shimmer saw them sparkle, and asked the sparkles, “Am I a sparkle?”

“You sparkle like us, but we get our light from the moon. Ask the Man in the Moon and see if he knows.”

The Shy Silver Shimmer was growing much braver because the firefly, the campfire, and the sparkles on the lake had all been so nice. So the Shy Silver Shimmer shimmered very brightly up the to moon and said, “Am I a little moon?”

The moon smiled down at them and said: “No. I get my light from the sun. You have a light of your own. Maybe ask the stars.”

The Shy Silver Shimmer looked up at the stars. There were so many of them! She felt too small and too shy to talk to them.

But the little girl said, “Go ahead and pick just one. That’s what I do when I wish upon a star. The star you pick won’t laugh at you.”

So the Silver Shimmer picked a friendly lady star who seemed to have a twinkle in her eye. And the Silver Shimmer said:

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are

And how I wonder who I am

If you know, please tell me Ma’am.

The lady star laughed kindly and said:

Twinkle, twinkle little light

How you brighten up the night

Twinkle, twinkle little star

For that’s exactly what you are!

“Huh?” said the Silver Shimmer very loud with a brighter, glowing light. “Am I a star?”

“Yes you are,” said the lady star. “You are a little star and you flew very far. But your light is a piece of our own. You are a true star! So let your light shine!”

So the Shy Silver Shimmer began to glisten and glimmer and twinkle and shine with her bright starlight. She was not shy anymore. She now knew who she was. She was Silver Shimmer!

And the Lady Star said, “You have better get up here with me, and help me light the night.”

And the little girl looked up high in the night sky at the Silver Star, and said, “I am so happy. You are a star! You are my first star friend! And I can now make a wish:

Starlight, starbright

Silver Shimmer in the night

I wish I may, I wish I might

Shimmer always in your light.

And Silver Shimmer shined a bright light down on the little girl. And the little girl glowed and shimmered in the starlight.

The Sandman

Once upon a time there was a town that couldn’t fall asleep at night. From the tiniest little baby who yelled all night to the Mighty Mayor in his big house on the top of the hill, no one could sleep.

The people of the town just sat around in the day saying: “There is too much noise to sleep.” Rubbing his eyes, the mailman said: “Those cars honk their horns all night long.” And with a big yawn the teacher said: “That railroad train blows its whistle too loud.” And stretching her arms the policewoman said: “That plane flies right over my house.”

And the Big Mayor who sat in his red chair and usually did nothing, said, “Yes, we’ve got to stop this noise!”

But how would they stop the cars from driving on the roads? And the train needed to blow the whistle to let the cars know it was coming. And they certainly couldn’t stop the airplanes from flying over their heads.

And so they called the Sandman who came sailing down from the sky with a red bucket full of sand, hooked over his arm. “Mr. Sandman,” they asked, “ Can you help us? Our town can’t sleep. Can you put our whole town to sleep?”

“Do you want me to put the whole town to sleep? Are you sure you don’t want me to help put just a few people to sleep? You know, my sleepy sand doesn’t come cheap. You won’t find my sand on any beaches. This is my super special sleepy sand.”

And the townspeople replied: “Yes, yes. Everybody wants to sleep. We want you to put our whole town to sleep. Put everybody and everything in it to sleep, even those noisy cars and trains and planes. Stop the noise.”

“You had better think carefully,” said the Sandman. “How long do you want to sleep? And when you wake up, you will find piles of sand all around. Who will clean it all up?”

“We don’t care how much it costs or how much sand you dump around town. Just put us to sleep for a long, long time. We are all…yawn…. very tired.”

“Okay, but you must pay me first. Because I don’t want to have to wake you and shake you to get my money.”

So all the townspeople put in their pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, and even some dollars, and they gave the pile of money to the Sandman.

The Sandman said: “Tonight you will sleep.” Just when the sun was going down, the sandman stood on the clock tower and threw one handful of his sleepy sand on the great hands of the clock. They stopped. Then he flew high in the sky and sprinkled a light dusting of sand over all the buildings. The people began to feel their eyes getting heavy, like something was pushing their eyelids down. They began to yawn a lot. The dentist of the town was excited. He went around looking into people’s mouths and wished he had his tools with him.

Then the Sandman started sprinkling sand around each house, one by one. He put the houses to sleep. He put the schools and the churches and factories to sleep. He made sure the drivers got out of their cars before he put their cars to sleep. And then he turned his bucket upside down and started pouring sand out like a waterfall. It fell and fell like a sandstorm sweeping in from the desert. His bucket never ran out.

Everything was getting heavy and sleepy. The hands on the huge clock on the town hall slowed down, then went to sleep. The chimney quit smoking and the furnaces went to sleep. The phones wouldn’t ring, because the wires were sleeping.

The whole town lay sleeping. It slept the next day. And the day after that it slept. It slept for fourteen days until one young girl woke up, yawned, and went over to her window. But when she looked out, all she saw was brown. All she saw was sand! She went over to her door and could not push it open, because it was piled high with sand.

So she woke everyone in her family. To get out, they had to break a window, let the sand pour in, and then they dug their way to the top. And they stood on the roof and they looked over the town. It looked like a desert with the chimneys of the houses sticking up like cacti.

As the town woke up and the people stood on their roofs, they were not very happy. They said: “When you sleep too long, everything gets clogged up.” They were shaking sand out of their hair, and out of their ears, and some were even spitting sand out from their mouths.

“That was a great, great sleep,” they said, “but it was too, too long.” And so they began the clean-up. First they used their hands, and then when they could open their garages, they used their shovels and their plows. They spent many, many weeks clearing the sand from their town. And at night they were so tired from all that shoveling that they had no trouble sleeping.

When the sand was gone the noise returned. The train whistle blew, the horns honked, and the planes roared overhead. And at night, the people went to sleep.

But one day the mayor yawned and said: ”I couldn’t sleep last night.” And the people said to the Mayor: “Be quiet and get to work!” And they went back to work, which made them so tired that they all were able to sleep soundly that night.

“Yes,” said the sandman sailing in the sky high over the sleeping town, “Work in the day, and sleep the night away.”

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Sex shocks. Taboo touches love, arching white hot: “A Greek God, the alpha mental male wet and glistening from the sea, looked over the lecture hall of nubile forms. She sat in the third row like a burning spark. For a micro minute his mind swayed like wind through trees, but then with titanium logic he opened his lecture with thunder.”

Danger strikes: ”The rat lay dead on his desk. Throat slit, mouth open in a death snarl, and one curved tooth digging into a message: ‘those who probe the past are condemned to no future.’”

Adopted and astonishingly brilliant, Nick and Jenny’s search for their identities leads them into the test tubes of in vitro fertilization. Love pulls, incest repels.

Taboo and danger intensify as they peel back ever more dangerous layers threatening to expose their creators and killers. Their personal path winds towards a global plot of immensely, inter-nationally powerful “geno gods,” who have forged them for their own dark purposes.

Let Sow the Storm grasp your mind and grip your body.

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Flowers bloom and lightning strikes as God looks down on the folly, fatality, and beauty of humanity. See the world from a new view. Listen to the music of the poetry and paradox.

“I am the God of light and wonder, but I am the God of night and thunder. I am not a simple God, for I have woven life and death into the same strand. Your mother, like a silver fish arched above the water, struck the calm lake of life, and rippled you. Alone in you I have lit the flame of freedom, and you, burning, burning, have stepped out of your gene pool grasping the sun in your hands and hurling missiles at the stars.”

“So who am I? I am sound and sight and thought and passion. I am then and now. I am the winds that wash your hair and the waters that rinse your feet. I am the sparkle on the snow, the silver of the rain, the gold of the grain. I am the love shining in your eyes and the blood beating in your heart.”

Let the flowers of joy bloom in the field of pain, and let the lightning illuminate your mind.

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who have inherited our graying world

to whom we leave the enormous challenge

of returning nature to its primal blush of green

in the face of swelling corporations and civilizations

rushing forward at a lethal pace.

Somehow they, and we, must help

transform our energy and material uses

into a high clean tech that harmonizes

with the grass and the trees

the rivers and the seas

and the air we breath.

If they fail, we fail

and much of life fails.

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CHAPTERS

Prologue

A Moment in the Present

The Golden Glow

The Silver Shadow

The Great White Out

The Green Hope

Afterlog

BRIDGE OUT: FULL SPEED AHEAD!

The boat drifts calmly

Moonlight ripples the water

Dreamers sleep

Waterfall.

Forty yards away, wet death yawns

Father forgive the dreamers

They knew not what they did

The giant car hums smoothly

Headlights swallow the asphalt

Passengers doze in oblivion

Bridge Out

Forty yards or years away, steel death gapes

Father forgive the car’s creators

They knew not what they did

Father easy on the passengers

Drugged and drowsy of what they do

Father damn the drivers

Full knowing where they go

Father damn us all if we don’t find out.

To know

To know the cosmic bookends

and the human constructs

To know how we got here

where we are going

To hope

To hope we can change

To act

To act not only for food drink shelter and sex

but to act against custom and comfort

against the inertia of culture

To know, to hope, to act

Or to drive

Full speed ahead: bridge out

Prologue

I have hurt our earth. As my knowledge increases, I am still doing harm. It is easy to point my blaming finger at the giant grip of culture in which I am helpless, so why not succumb to its seductively comfortable grasp? A grasp I know will become a crushing caress, which I might escape, but not my children.

Yet how can I surrender when that same giant hand that holds me smashes down like a fist on my sleeping mother? I am in that fist; I am a part of that fist.

Escaping that clasp seems impossible. Even if I could slip under a crease in those huge fingers, and if I could shed my clothes and run from house and car, where would I run to? The woods are almost gone that once might have held a few escapees.

No, I can’t run, and you can’t either.

We are caught in culture.

If we were born in a brothel, a ghetto, a barrio, a shack or a slum, we could step out of it because there is a place to step to. But we can’t leave our technological chemical culture because it covers the earth. Somehow, smothering in these seemingly soft folds of protection, we must open the massive fist from within and change its very nature.

That is the quest of this book. I reach out to you for help. Please hold my hand, pardon my outbursts, and steady my footsteps. We all walk this planet together.

How did we catch ourselves in our own grasp? We did most of it in the last few generations. Although civilization was long in the making, and our species had eaten up many of the forests of the world, suddenly, recently, the mechanized, chemical assault became rapidly global. Largely started by our grandparents, increased by our parents, the destruction has run amuck by us—much of which was done without thinking.

History will absolve our fathers and mothers, for they knew not what they did. Their world exploded under their probing hands into this technological marvel/monster that glistens and shines like the sirens of old, while our air and our water grow sick.

From this point forward, history will not absolve any of us, because we know what we do. But there are ways to wheel our massive cultural inertia around. When we leave this planet in guilt or innocence, what will be the state of the earth that we pass to our children? It will be their greatest challenge–to save their planet, to save its life, to save themselves.

You could call this book a generational cultural biography of the road taken, not chosen.

Our parents sped along this road, ignorant of the broken bridge ahead. They had fled the golden glow of farmutopia, entered the silver shadow of Pandora’s Shop, and birthed us among her mechanical and electrical toys—and now we wander in this great white out, with an intellectual awareness of the problem, but with an apathetic blindness to the solution. And what do we pass onto our children who are our green hope?

While the above color-coded structure is hopefully chronologically clear and analogically appealing, don’t let the style fool you–I promise a rollicking, ironic, sardonic, sarcastic, humorous ride with flashbacks and fast forwards that might spin out of control. Hang on.

I throw this book in your face!

I apologize for not properly throwing my gauntlet to the ground, but I wanted to shock—to shock myself out of my comfortably lethargy, and to shock you, along with me, so we can do something about our cultural projectory. If you are still reading, you just might have the gumption (or the digestive system of a goat) to finish this book.

I can throw the book, because it is not the biblical stone that comes with conditions about who is allowed to cast it first. Certainly that wouldn’t be me, for I am with guilt–which would disqualify me from hurling anything. But I will hurl anyway–I will throw a lot of oaths at a lot of oafs, including myself.

I write for you, I write for our children. I write to crack this cultural bind that holds you, holds me. I write for our world.

If these struggling words work for you, I share them gladly. If they don’t, please formulate your own; for if our words, or another’s do not work soon, death by stoning would be a classy way to exit.

I lash out particularly at those who know and still destroy. To these, who are the cancers in our civilization, I have honed my words into caustic ridicule.

I also lash myself, (quite lightly, barely breaking the skin, I admit) to do what I now know I must do. I hurl at myself. I beat my head with my book trying to wake and shake myself out of a lethal lethargy, to coax, curse, cajole–and if I could, coerce myself into action to break free, to begin to heal, to begin to do what I know I should do.

And as I lash myself, I laugh. It hurts less that way. Laughter can heal as it cuts. And I am having fun in the writing, and I wish you so in the reading.

If you still hold this book, you have picked up the gauntlet. You must now read. Or be called a coward. (Because I might have angered you, I have requested anonymity from the publisher. Please address all heated correspondence and suspicious packages to Coward / Cobarde / Couard / Angsthase).

So as I throw this book in your face, and into my own, go ahead, curse with me, laugh with me, and then begin the cure—to know, to hope, and then to do.

Author’s Disclaimer

This book is honest. I swear to that, and I am honest.

There. If I’m not lying, that’s all you need to know. You do, however, have to figure out when I am being humorous, ironic, satirical, salacious, shallow, insulting, or unintentionally arrogant.

I played the game of being a scholar for six years, the dissertation of which now blocks the dust from a shelf at Northwestern. Compared to the knowledge of the scientists, historians, environmentalists, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and my kids, this book sucks—hey guys, I’m just a Johnny-green-come-lately English teacher with nothing better to do with my summer than vent. The venting is a stream of semi-consciousness (emphasis on the semi) with the faucet stuck open.

Though I have not put anything into this book, which I do not believe to be true, please check any fact in this book before going to the wall with it. I’m kinda lazy, and I don’t have a bevy of beautiful research assistants to, well, vet my facts. But I did check all my uncertainties at least once, and I paid attention to the reputability of the source; but being lazy and not liking bibliographical documentation, I have not usually told you where I found it. Google anything you don’t believe, like the first internal combustion car being a hydrogen car; and if you do check up on me, I’m kinda biased toward looking for that .edu on the end of the URL. Not that there aren’t liars among us teachers, but most of us don’t teach for the money and we are not influential enough to be paid to falsify a position.

Will someone please tempt me? And make it big. I want to find my breaking point.

Foreword

Okay. So I already had my opening shot with the Prologue. What gives with a Foreword? I am quite chronologically correct, for prologue is of Greek/Latin origin and thus precedes foreword which is of Anglo/Saxon origin. So cut my double-dipping a break.

“Who’s to bless and who’s to blame?”

We’ll answer that question in four generations—and most of us are in the last two of those generations.

But a more important question looms: into what hell (or heaven) are we hurtling? That hell is physically forming into clear, geological/cultural markers. Read the sign: Bridge out, full speed ahead.

And the most important question: can we turn this massive cultural machine around? And if we can, will we?

We had it.

We lost it.

Our days are not as good as the good old days. And yes, I know that most generations look back to their youth as the good days. So, probably they were never that good and they really weren’t that old and far away either.

Not long ago we had it. Yet we lost it. We lost the touch of eden, the fresh earth when it blushed sky blue in purity, and pine green in virginity. Sure, the sky still seems blue (if you are not looking from a distance horizontally into that slice of sickness that hangs over most of our cities). And the sky still seems clear at night (if you are not trying to count to 5,000, the approximate number of stars up to magnitude 6 which were once visible to your eyes, and many of which are now blotted by the thick offal in our air). And yes, the earth still seems green–witness the single crop of corn ringing the suburbs ringing the cities. With stars winking out in the skies, and corn usurping flora in the fields, we are on a geometrically eroding progression.

Can we regain it?

No. Never like it was. But can we try to stop the erosion? Alone, we can’t–like one person pushing against the giant car containing civilization, it would be useless.  Alone we might push and die with a clean conscience only to be swatted like a fly on the windshield.

But together, maybe we can begin to slow the massive inertia of the huge wheels. Since our recent family line set this machine in motion, since we empower it now, theoretically we can slow it, stop it, or guide it. It is doable, but damnably difficult (my daughter hates my alliteration—so if you have her mindset, and I wouldn’t mind having her mind, I apologize–I’m so seriously sorry for this sibilance).

Europe was the first to let the monster out of its coal mines and into their factories, from the looms in their parlors into Cartwright’s powered looms. America adopted the monster, fed its fire-bellied furnaces, gave it full legal rights, and then ran wild with it. As the greatest polluter per person, America must now lead the way out of the miasma, back into earth health. It is that–or die as a civilization. I say that not as an alarmist, but simply as a man who has lived and watched the earth change, who has seen the clear creeks of his youth buried under suburbs, who has stood on Montana’s glaciers that are now gone, and who has read barely enough science and history to understand the recent impact on our old earth.

Science is the tool in the wings of the dove and the fangs of the snake, in the hands of the father and mother monster which is in us all. And we know how to use that same tool of science to tame the belching, ripping, tearing monster turned loose on the planet, but we do not have the urgency, and therefore do not have the political will to do so.

The monster lies not in science, nor in the giant machine caroming recklessly forward; the monster lies in us, in our unreflecting, greedy selves.

Uh oh. That means changing something.  Like dieting, or quitting smoking. Hard. But after dropping that hanging adipose, or breaking that chain of smoking, don’t you feel better? A hard change can be a healthy change—and worth it.

So change. If not for yourself, then for your children–or favorite niece or nephew or some young person, who might be at your dying bedside, and who you hope will be gentle with you, and remember you for a while. For those people, if not for yourself, please change.  Change first your own living style.  Secondly, change your culture.

Apologies to literati for rambling like Rabelais, for failing the pen of Voltaire while swearing like a sailor– and therefore, apologies to my mother tongue. If you find all 103 non-sequiturs, I will give you a free book. While counting, do not include the sick segues because literary sickness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder: if you find a sick segue, suspect the source.

A Moment in the Present

This is my world. This is your world. This is my story. This is your story.

Buried so deep within us that we cannot touch them, unknown drives and forces from evolutionary time come burbling and floating, swimming and scuttling, crawling and climbing, and walking forth. We have stepped out of nature in the feet of our ancestors only a few short seconds ago, and we changed the earth.

Most of that terraforming can be seen in the four parts of my story–and those same parts in your story. I think we have a few pangs of conscience and some huge healing we need to do. We will meet that challenge in The Great White Out, of our story. You can help me to write that part when we get there. In fact, like it or not, you must help me write that one. You’ll understand later.

I tried to fictionalize our story for you, but I failed. Fiction has a way of letting the truth slip out: after all, truth will out was first uttered in fiction. I’m afraid this book holds far too much truth for many of us to look in the face, to reject much of what we have accepted as true and good, namely, our culture, because we grew up in it, comfy, fed, and fat. I certainly did, and the effort to turn my head around and see otherwise is Plato’s challenge in his cave. Please try to see and accept and change with me.

This book is real. Raw real. Blood dripping, rust-covered, brightest-smile-on-a-child’s-face real. To find the real you only have to double the hyperbole, sharpen the sarcasm, hypo-freeze the satire, and hype the humor by powers of ten. Laugh. Laugh with me. Laugh at me. And laugh at the Exxon Execs. You’ll be happier that way, and your life-sentence will feel shorter.

I said I was afraid. Intellectually I fear; emotionally I hope. I choose emotions over reason–a rational choice. If that seems contradictory to you, it is. It is the paradox we live in.

We are crucified on this cross of contradiction, called civilization.

With our hands nailed we must break free. And biased though it may be, I choose the emotionally positive as I spin our story. (Am I letting fiction slip into this truth?) I must choose the emotionally positive, for I must have hope in my story and hope in yours. You see, we read our past, and from it we choose to live or die.

Correction—we die whatsoever we choose. All do. But how will we die? That is the question.

And how do we feel about ourselves when we go screaming or smiling above the pain and fear of passing into the unknowing? That too is the question.

And how soon? Another question.

And whom do we drag with us? Our children?

But screw this dying stuff—the bigger question is: How do we live? And what do we leave behind?

Okay, two questions in one, but so related in cause and effect that we can call them one. After all, how we live is what we leave behind.

And Shakespeare notwithstanding–that is the question.

How do we live, and what do we leave? That question, the answer of which is the worth of our lives, can be rephrased in several ways. What will happen to our children sixty yards down the road? And our grandchildren? Born and unborn? And will they ever drive on civilization’s roads that are constricting the earth? And if so, for how long and how far?

Not very far, according to the huge lines of force pushing us towards an overwhelming conclusion; but maybe they will get some distance out of their lives if we join together, as humans have rarely done before, and bend those huge lines—then we can write a different ending.

Later for the bending. First our titular metaphor of the car going full speed ahead, even though the drivers see the sign: Bridge Out. I love metaphors! I have already assaulted your analogical sense with a fist, a cross, a monster, and this new analogy is not quite Steinbeck’s turtle nor Route 66, but it’s got a bit more motion than both of them, and it’s hurtling towards stone and steel, and it has us in it. And maybe we are more than metaphorically in it.

I just finished a ride pushing us perilously closer to that broken bridge. Motoring along in my 1992, G20, GMC, Custom Cruiser, I have just pumped 5.5 x 3.7 x 175 pounds of pollution into your air on a single trip. That’s 3,561 pounds of carbon dioxide! That makes me a hypocrite, choking even as I write…

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