Читать книгу Yesterday - Robert J. Firth - Страница 3

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

ways to dusty death.” Act 5, Macbeth, Shakespeare

Once upon a day, so many days ago, I looked up into the sky and saw the silver flash of a high jet heading south. I thought of my Father who, at the time, was a senior pilot for Eastern Airlines. Those of us who look back more then most will remember that wonderful company. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the WW I Ace who flew in the Skies over France in a wood and fabric powered war-kite, started the company back in the 1930’s.

The Great War was well before our time and, in fact, all those who fought in that war have passed on, following the endless lines of soldiers from all the wars …

This book is not even for those who were in WW II, even though there are some of these men still around… not many, and less every day but, of course, there are some still…..

Instead, let’s talk about those millions of us who are just approaching what one might call elderly…

Looking back to yesterday, I often see myself as I once was, young, vigorous, athletic, ready for anything life could dish out and eager for everything life had to offer..… In my early morning dreams, there, just at the edge of awakening, I remember all too well those glorious days……. I take my coffee into the garden and, walking in bare feet on the damp grass, I wander into he long shadow of a great tree……. shielding the morning sun.

These precious moments are like a cool drink of years past. The area is still silent, before the rush of the coming day. I see clearly the beautiful streaming dreams of my youth… there run with me all the friends of those happy days, just as they were…. and will always remain… memories…

In these moments of extraordinarily clarity, the days of my life pass in brilliant flashes… a wonderful photo album, so dear- and so poignant ….. Some mornings, I travel to my days on the River and Barnegat bay... The grey blue choppy waters of the shallow bay were and remain fed from ocean inlets and the river…. The water has a taste of the oceans, but not so much…

The small sailboat was healing further that was safe against the strong gusts of summer wind ….. When it capsized, as it had to, the sail fluttered like a captured bird, killed by the wet waves…..finally, laying still on the surface… The boat, floating on its side, filled with water while we, the two of us, held to the sides…

Others in the race, saw us go over and, after a while, the club’s tender motored up helping us aboard….. My wallet was stuffed into some cubby hole or other and was lost….. I imagine it settling into the soft grey mud of the bay.. carrying my photographs, licenses and Navy ID with a few dollars, to the bottom….. I never found it…..but oddly, it remains a memory…

Once, we traveled in a small rowboat to the headwaters of the river, miles west, through twists and turns, shallows and shadows… The shores were thick with ferns, bushes, cedar trees, dragonflies and birds… In those days there were no developments or houses … Where the river was deepest, the water was dark. We had a very small outboard resolutely pushing us against the current flowing into the bay…

To get the boat under the low railroad bridge guarding the entrance to the river, we had to fill it half way with water and wait for low tide… The smell of the creosote timbers of the bridge remain in my memory and, without difficulty, I can recall in finite detail the underside of that structure…

The trip through the wooded shores to the origin of the river took us two days… Finally, we were brought to a great bog draining into a stream, which slowly gathered strength and became the river….

Seasons and years flash through my mind; I do not need to keep them in particular order... I enjoy playing with them, bringing them to mind like surfing through channels…. A winter day, the sleds and bright wool clothing… a day skating on the wide river in front of the small town… The power of the wind against a skate sail, pushing me far too fast … So many interesting and important moments to remember……One of the great pleasures of age and perhaps, its only consolation…….?

The sun rises higher, climbing over my shade tree and warming the still damp grass... My coffee cup is empty…I head home... I have no thoughts or regrets of where the hour has gone…no sense of time… Is it eight already…?

How do we measure a life...? Is it just a collection of minutes, hours, days and years- all stuck together like strips of a movie film? Can we use our memories in that way, with our minds as the projector, to see where and who we were? What value is such a pastime? Of course, to those with less in front than behind, this is almost all many are left with.

Of course, it is important that we travel back slowly to the beginning, through those winding roads of our lives. This is how and where we make sense of ourselves… This is how we measure where we are, by where we have been, who we are by who we have been. It’s not then purely with meaningless and weepy nostalgia that we examine our past. To remain alive, while we are alive, and to pass on something of value, something that our collective experience has given us as a polished truth, a thing that has withstood the pressures of time and therefore, has crystallized like a jewel…..something of value..

Each of us has some unique set of lessons, different from all others. None has ever walked exactly the same footsteps of those who have gone before. Just as, of the billions of previous lives, none have shared the same DNA and none have had same fingerprints. Our souls and minds are then unique among all men. Each of us can share something that only we can know and that only we can understand…. We have all seen things that no other has. For example, the special sight of an icy mountainside just at the instant the suns rays turn it to diamonds’ or the curious knowing smile of a newborn, seeming to understand what they cannot possibly.

There are more neurons in the human mind that stars in all the universes. This means that our minds are truly remarkable and, in fact, have infinite potential. As humans with this stunning gift, we are then bound by our creator to develop to our greatest capability that which we each possess. We must, and indeed should, reach a considered understanding of what we have learned, experienced and accomplished as we rushed through our early and middle years. By closely examining that which only we can, we will find those special nodes wherein lie that most precious of intellectual gold – truth!

Like paintings on a cave wall depicting men and animals in two-dimensional primitive poses with red imprints of the hand of the artist, we all can take brush in hand leaving our marks in stone for all to find, to wonder over and finally to learn from. This then is our human duty and this is our best reason for existence, at least for all of us who have something to say…

You reasonably ask, what can I contribute, what do I have to say and why should I bother? I say this to you, look deeply into your memories, examine your knowledge and seek out those kernels of truth that you know perfectly well to be unchanging verities. There is no doubt whatsoever that your yesterdays left a unique residue of knowledge and understanding that can, and needs be, passed on. Man climbs always on the collective knowledge of his predecessors. Indeed, there is no other way to advance and advance we must!

The ladder of knowledge we have before us began at the beginning of time and time is not an endless commodity. Every fact in science, mathematics, medicine and, in every school of intellectual endeavor, was and is firmly grounded on the steps immediately below. Each generation contributes as we climb taller and see further….understanding more and more of everything….

I said that time is not infinite- let me explain that. As the entirety of the universe is concerned, time may indeed be endless but, for earth and our solar system, this is most certainly not the case. Our sun will most certainly die and our earth will and is changing. If we stop advancing, the end of humanity, and all life as we know it, is then assured- it’s simply a question of when not if!

For man to continue it’s imperative that, sooner rather than later, we migrate and populate other solar systems. The ladder of knowledge we have built, and are building, then is one that we, each and every one of us, can and must contribute to. For us to abandon our quest for the stars in favor of feeding empty and limited minds is beyond foolish- it’s suicidal and immoral and an insult to our creator!

You can argue that you’re but a simple soul and have no special knowledge to contribute. I argue that you are wrong. Your life is and was remarkable and no one has had before you the special and unique set of circumstances as have you. You have seen things that no one else has; you have understood and understand things that no one else ever has... Open your mind to a gentle inquiry and examine carefully who and what you are. Like panning for gold, as you slowly wash away the silt of years, glimmers of the purest and most valuable bits of truth will remain.

All of us need what you have learned. Millions wander through life in a kind of daze unseeing and unfeeling, waiting for that kind hand to steady them against the brutal winds of life. What you can give to others then may well be that special word, that special understanding that will suddenly free them from their mental prison, illuminating the way out… Imagine, how many minds can be saved, how many lives given purpose and imagine what a plethora of thought can emerge.

Each of us, those who have our yesterdays, have the ability to change the world by changing even one life. A single individual, like Galileo, Leonardo, Beethoven, Einstein and the thousands of others who have so greatly influenced the advancement of humanity were, at one time or another, exposed to the inherited knowledge of his teachers and his teachers teachers. Without this special ‘kick-start,’ many of them may have languished in relative obscurity.

What is it that most distinguishes each of us from another. We all are born looking surprisingly alike- similar bodies and similar likes and dislikes, for example, we all prefer to be warm instead of cold, we all wear clothing, we like to and need to eat and we are, mostly all, thinking beings. The single most interesting characteristic distinguishing us are those unique set of experiences as we travel through the years of our lives. Just as no two of us share fingerprints or DNA, no two are imprinted by life in the same way. We can of course, pass down our genetic characteristics to our children…about this we have no choice. However, in choosing to cull through our lives and pass on those special truths that only we know, in this we do have to make a conscious choice.

When I set out to write Yesterday, I had these thoughts in mind and hoped that I would be able to motivate you to do the same. What parts of your long life can you and would you think of sufficient value to create a written, recorded or visual record such that you can influence and add to man’s collective knowledge and understanding.

For example, one of the memories that I would want others to know concerns the lessons of hunting, trapping and fishing, all of which have meaning for me. Imagine a cold and misty morning back in the 50’s, a time before computers and in the days of black and white TV. I’m out of my warm bed before first light and quietly dress. I leave my home in sweaters, a heavy coat, gloves and tall rubber hip boots with layers of wool socks.

I have an empty wet burlap sack slung over my shoulder and a short strong billy club that I made by cutting a baseball bat in half. It has a hole drilled in the end with a length of rawhide as a strap. I head down the hill behind the one room schoolhouse and into a muddy wet swamp where the reeds reach higher than I can see. I follow narrow game trails where the grass and reeds have been bent and broken- ice has formed in the many puddles. I stop at the places where I have set my forty traps. There are small fury animals caught in the cruel steel jaws - some still struggling to escape with their paws broken and clearly in pain.

I quickly kill them with a single blow to the head from the club and, opening the traps, dump their inert cooling bodies into the burlap sack. I reset the traps and move on to the next. As the sun is rising, after perhaps two hours, I leave the swamp and head up across the baseball field to the old two-room school. It’s about 0800, I enter the still quiet building. I’m the early one and have to shovel some coal in the basement to warm the building. Remember, this is 1953 and coal was very much still in use.

The cold basement is a dark and scary place. Some say it’s haunted by a kid who many years ago hung himself there. Some laughingly call him the “school spirit.” Not me! My Mom, who went to the same school many years before, says it’s true and that she knew him. I turn on the weak light, shovel some coal and get out… Then, hanging my coat and sack with the dead bodies of the animals I killed in the cloakroom, I remove my hip boots and enter the classroom in my stocking feet and wait for the rest of the students.

Later, about ten, there’s a thumping sound from the room where one or two of the animals I thought I had killed were only stunned and have come alive, beating their wounded feet on the wooden walls. The teacher, a life long spinster, who had taught my Mother in a previous generation, says to me “Robert, you better whack those critters.” The girls squeal, I go and beat the outside of the sack until all inside is quiet.

At three, school lets out into an already darkening dreary and cold afternoon. I walk the few blocks home with a light snow falling silently onto the frozen ground. I clear a layer of fresh snow, emptying the damp sack on the picnic table. There’s a small pile of dead animals with wet fur and some blood. I slice each of them down the inside of their legs with a very sharp knife, cut off their heads, gut and skin them quickly with never missing a beat. In about thirty minutes, with frozen hands, I finish and wrapping the small bodies in wax paper, dump the feet and heads into a garbage pail where they freeze with sightless eyes staring at the dark grey skies... Now it’s dark, the wind and snow have picked up, I’m really cold and head inside…

I scraped the fat off the inside of the bloody hides and fastened each one to wire stretchers. I freeze the little bodies and later trade them for shotgun shells to a guy who eats them – he swears they taste just like chicken! I hang the hides to cure on the hot water pipes in the basement. Once a month, I place the dry ones in a box mailing them to Monkey Wards. After about ten days, I get a check back paying me a buck and a half for each one. What do they do with them? I have no idea. Perhaps they use them to make fur liners for leather gloves? Perhaps some pairs of these gloves exist even today, their fur warming the hands of the wearer just as it did the small critter those many decades ago? I’d like that…wouldn’t you?

So, you ask, what earthly use is this stark and dark memory to anyone? Fair question. To me, there is a lesson here worth passing on. It is this. At age fourteen I learned that actions have consequences and that many actions have consequences so profound they can never be undone. The taking of life is one such action. If you shoot a duck or kill some furry animal, the life that was shining so brightly in the eyes dims, grows unfocused, becomes sightless and cold.

For whatever your reasons may have been, once your have killed for the first time, you learn this bitter lesson. The dead, at least in this life, don’t come back. One has to accept this responsibility and get on with it. Whether you kill on purpose as a trapper or hunter or just hit a dog with your car- you have taken a life. The hunter does it knowing that he is setting out to kill while, of course, a driver hitting some animal can say to himself; it is just an accident, and I didn’t mean it. That is, of course, a huge difference.

So, as one like me, sets out on those cold mornings to take life for personal benefit, in this case for money, one might ask; what separates me from a hired killer? My customer is the department store. They pay me to murder and my victims are the poor warm-blooded animals I kill. One small consolation may be that I’m not killing for sport. Those who blast birds, lions, elephants and hook great fish, that they then have stuffed, make into rugs or mount on their walls; it seems to me, are far worse than I. Would you agree?

Before leaving this, I should say that growing up in rural New Jersey, I, and many of my friends, carried shotguns and rifles. I often hunted ducks and pheasant in the swamp behind the old school and brought my gun to school, leaning it against the wall in the coatroom. Imagine doing that today? It purely boggles the mind and gives you an idea of how far we have come and how incredibly things have changed!

We are discussing death. The cessation of life, the end if cellular reproduction and cognitive thought. Yes, animals do have cognitive thoughts. They dream, they love and care for their young, sharing many human attributes. The guy who makes his living as a tracker or professional hunter, leads his clients into the bush for money, where he shows them how and where to slaughter the animals. Is he profiting from death- you bet! Is he better than those who pull the trigger, yes, again, you bet! He, at least, is doing this to earn his living, to feed his kids, to pay for a home for his family. He has valid reasons and is not motivated by the simple-minded and immature ‘sport’ of it. One can never, and must not ever, escape the responsibility for being an agent of death but, for it to have some purpose does seem a mitigating factor if nothing else…

So, to me, this lesson is one well worth articulating and, to some degree or another, preserving. To further the conversation, since we are writing about death and the lessons of yesterday, all of us represented in this book, meaning those of us of some certain age, have already lost a few of our childhood friends and of course, most of us have also lost our parents.

We sometimes sit by the fireplace staring into the flames and remembering… Christmas’ past, loves and friends lost, roads not taken….that is one thing all of us, those with many yesterdays, most certainly have done and will do, until our own passing and then, who knows…Reminiscing, if you choose to call it that, can be what this book is about. My story, about my days as an animal trapper and hunter taught me about death at a relatively early age. Of course, kids who grew up on a family farm learned all this even earlier than did I. As children, they watched their Dad slaughter hogs and their Mom wring a chicken’s neck and clean it for dinner. Death then is no stranger on a farm.

As a boy of fourteen, I knew what I was doing and I accepted the responsibility. I however, hadn’t matured emotionally to where I comprehended my own eventually demise. I hadn’t understood that one day, my eyes too would glaze over as did those of the animals I killed, and that I too would become still and inert. No, this lesson was still far off, waiting for me in the deadly jungles and skies of Vietnam.

One day, in the mid 60’s, while still a naive young man, I was flying south of Saigon. The aircraft, a single engine Pilatus Porter, was level at 8500 feet when the suddenly, engine quit cold. I reacted from training following the restart checklist. I understood it wasn’t going to run. I feathered the prop and called for help. The aircraft was silent, there was only the soft swishing sound of the wind, as it slowly glided down to the burning war torn earth. There were hostile eyes looking up. They would kill me for sure, as they already had other luckless pilots. This time, I managed to glide into a safe landing where a helicopter flew me back to base.

Not until that evening did I become fully a human being. I was sitting in my rented home with a glass of scotch and ice under the slowly turning ceiling fan, relating my harrowing story to a fellow pilot. Suddenly, it hit me! Only by the slimmest margin was I alive. Another few minutes and I’d have been forced into the trees, perhaps shot climbing down if not killed in the crash. From that moment, that very second, I have never been the same! So, another lesson! I had come to terms with my own mortality and once that was clear, there was no going back- never!

I would argue that the knowledge of ones ultimate and unavoidable demise creates a final threshold of emotional maturity. Like leaving grade school, once you have walked out and the door closes behind, there’s no going back. I would say to you that the essence of being human is the sure and certain knowledge that you, your family and your friends are only here on a temporary basis and that, to be human, one must love and cherish them all- and tell them so. Further, I believe that one can’t really know and understand this until one comes to terms with this knowledge -don’t wait too long!