Riverboats and Bone Yards IV |
Monday Feb 26 2007
By Stu Whitley
Bio
This is fourth in a five-part series.
The end of anything must be at least as interesting as the beginning of it, even if we think it’s not a particularly happy ending. As a novelist, the end of a story I’m writing doesn’t always present itself to me initially, and even if I think I’m working toward a particular conclusion, the climax consistently turns out to be quite different than that which I have conceived somewhere along the way. Oddly, I’m as interested in the outcome as I hope a reader might be.
The point is not that every story ends: it is that every story has a surprise ending that has everything to do with the way a life has been lived.
As I contemplate the decline of those once-grand and now-ancient paddlewheel steamers on the Yukon River, it occurs to me that, in not many more years, they will be gone almost completely, leaving only a few rusted pieces of machinery to mark their passing. I wish there was some way they could be preserved for future generations to see. But it surely cannot be that the pleasure I experienced in seeing them as they were, literally in the middle of nowhere, was conditional upon what I thought should be a better result than their ultimate decay. As Pascal teaches us, “He who found the secret of rejoicing in the good without troubling himself with its contrary evil would have hit the mark”.
I found myself perseverating/obsessing over the disappearance of these boats. I was living in the future, fearful and worried that there were no reasonable options for their maintenance and protection. Their end was inevitable. And I regretted that quite profoundly, thinking that my sons might never experience this same moment, see the same things I was seeing now, and marvel at these icons of another time.
I realized then that worry is always for the future about things that have captured our imagination in a manner that oppresses our present existence. Yet it seems equally apparent that what is to come lies completely outside our small garrisons. It is only possible for us to experience the present moment, no matter how much we might wish it otherwise.
the Aztecs, like those who went before,
and those who followed
were certain of their lives,
if all the rules were followed.
every 52 years – the span of a man’s life then –
permission of the gods was sought to continue life
a smouldering fire was set in the chest
of a carefully chosen sacrifice
whose beating heart had been torn away
only moments before
then runners carrying torches lit
with new life fire, spread out
in the four sacred directions
and one of them, running hard to the east
collided with the steel’d men of Cortez
emerging silently from the tumbling surf
with their rust-pitted girdments, and their foul breath
the gods, it seems, after centuries beyond counting
had declined the plea for succour in the smoky supplications
for the Aztecs had claim to their place, and each other,
only of a time
certainties are still anchored by ceremony and incantation;
we have our temples, our proffered hearts
and flame-engulfed breasts
and we still ask the gods, in our own way
with sacrifice and effort expended
for life to continue as it is
yet the future stands wholly outside our gates
knowing nothing of itself, or seldom of matters
that by and by may come to pass,
until we assign judgment
like the Aztecs, we cannot know the future
only ourselves
and those who followed
were certain of their lives,
if all the rules were followed.
every 52 years – the span of a man’s life then –
permission of the gods was sought to continue life
a smouldering fire was set in the chest
of a carefully chosen sacrifice
whose beating heart had been torn away
only moments before
then runners carrying torches lit
with new life fire, spread out
in the four sacred directions
and one of them, running hard to the east
collided with the steel’d men of Cortez
emerging silently from the tumbling surf
with their rust-pitted girdments, and their foul breath
the gods, it seems, after centuries beyond counting
had declined the plea for succour in the smoky supplications
for the Aztecs had claim to their place, and each other,
only of a time
certainties are still anchored by ceremony and incantation;
we have our temples, our proffered hearts
and flame-engulfed breasts
and we still ask the gods, in our own way
with sacrifice and effort expended
for life to continue as it is
yet the future stands wholly outside our gates
knowing nothing of itself, or seldom of matters
that by and by may come to pass,
until we assign judgment
like the Aztecs, we cannot know the future
only ourselves
Turning in the stern of our canoe one
last time as those hulks disappeared from view, I recall feeling a
sense of disappointment that our schedule did not permit us to linger
among them. And yet, my visit there was no more endlessly sustainable
than my capacity to remember.
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