Chapters 11-13

Chapter 11

Fun. That was always the real goal. Just have fun. With everything. For Marta that was the whole point to existence. And, while the rest of the group generally accepted that notion, they all agreed, even Marta, that finding fun in everything … everything? … would be quite a challenging undertaking. Sure there are the moments.
Marta enjoyed her sports, her music, her movies, her vodka. But she knew these diversions amounted to just bits and pieces of pleasure, moments that come and go. Just flashes – a breath, a sneeze, an orgasm. What about the rest of the time, she thought? What about the rest of the day? The week? What about the oncoming winter?
Suddenly, doubts and fear of the future, and the likelihood of financial and health concerns filled her head. These increasingly recurring thoughts almost never seemed fun.
With each passing day, the 55-year-old Marta realized how easy it is to become consumed with aging and death.
“Nobody thinks that’s fun,” she thought. “But it must be.”
As she worked toward this end, Marta sensed increasing resistance. The latest
blow came during a recent routine day at work. It proved devastating.
While delivering pizzas to some nursing home employees, Marta, as she had dutifully done for 17 years, raced from her parked car to meet the customers inside the building. As she arrived at the entrance, she noticed her car, the green Subaru, old Fred, slowly going up a slight hill. The now driverless car had not been put into park, but was still in drive. Before Marta could get to it, Fred reached the hill apex, and then like a cruel, possessed rollercoaster, sped down the hill, crashing into, and totaling two parked vehicles below. The once proud and mighty driver Marta, who had never had an accident in her 17 years, tried to keep this rather routine incident in perspective, but underneath her calm exterior she was consumed by her old ambivalent friends, fear and doubt.
“OK,” she thought, “no big deal. It’s just an accident. Happens all the time. No biggee. We’ll make it fun. Outside forces are wanting to mess with us, to test it’s all good. Well, bring it on, I’m ready. Bring it on, dammit! Let’s have some fun.”
Only she realized she was not ready. Fun was hardly the word for it.
Marta was well aware that being involved in some mundane accident that didn’t really hurt anyone, at least not physically, really couldn’t matter much in the overall scheme of things. Still, the reality-challenged Marta couldn’t help but see the incident as some colossal disaster in which all mankind might be threatened. She thought of a gasping Burt Reynolds after he had just broken his leg in one of her favorite films, “Deliverance.”
“Now, we get to play the game,” he tells his panic-stricken friend, played by Jon Voight. “Yes, a game,” thought Marta. “It’s gotta be a game, somehow, a fun game.”
Instead it was torture. After all those years delivering food without any trouble, Marta now felt her great empire at Pizza Hut quickly crumbling away. To make matters worse, both her insurance company and Pizza Hut were denying coverage of the claim, saying Marta had failed to state on her forms that she was delivering pizza, a fact Marta reluctantly admitted “may be true.”
“Yeah, looks like I’m out $20,000,” she sadly explained to her mother, Pat. “And now I’m probably out of my job, too. That’s all I’ve got, Mom.”
Pat, as well as Marta’s other friends did their best to comfort their fallen heroine. All expressed hope that “things are bound to get better,” but for the most part they were unsuccessful in rectifying the problem. While a seemingly insignificant event, the incident revealed that for once – and maybe once and for all – the mighty, invulnerable, Godly Marta was now a soundly beaten shell of herself.
“Emily would be especially disappointed,” Marta admitted as she discussed the matter with Pat. “This is the exact thing Emily hates in human beings. We’re all completely attached to all our bullshit. And sadly, I am no different. Not at all. Just some weak hypocrite who talks a big talk, but can’t get outside my emotions and all my petty selfish needs.
“All these ridiculous attachments,” Marta continued. “I’m not wanting this to be good or fun. I can’t stop worrying about losing money or my job. Everybody loses what they have. I know I’m gonna end up losing everything, even you, Mom. Yes, I’ll lose you, too. So why not figure out how to enjoy that instead of dreading it and being consumed by it. And yet it’s like I’m powerless to stop it. Did I think I would never have an accident? Do I think I’m not gonna die? Everybody dies! And I’m telling all you people I’m God. Yeah, right?”
To her credit, Marta did not back away from the backlash. A part of her wanted to suggest that evil forces, resistant to the concept of it’s all good, had forced Fred to assume control of the car, making it crash. But she knew that for once perhaps it was important to live in the real world. She would just take her lumps, like everyone else, and bow to the gods of fate. She was not God, of course. What on earth was she thinking all these years? Her brother and sister were right. Marta, or Martin as they still referred to her, was completely crazy.
“No wonder I’ve never had a family, a lover, a real job,” she thought. “I must be nuts. I had my fucking dick cut off, for Christ’s sake. What am I thinking?”
Just then the phone rang. It was Anne. As always, she was completely honed in on Marta’s predicament. But unlike the others, Anne saw this as a great opportunity, not a minor crisis. Having confronted obstacles of her own – domestic violence, working for a time as a stripper, overcoming an addiction to crystal meth, owing more than $100,000 dollars in college debt, and, most challenging of all, giving up her beloved autistic child, Damon – Anne understood suffering, and was devoted to ending it, not inviting more of it. She knew the true motivation behind her profound friendship with Marta, as well as their latest project. This was all about finding unconditional love, not a time to complain and self-destruct.
And, even though Marta was losing faith in herself, Anne reminded her friend of their true purpose. She alone understood the deeper ramifications of this seemingly innocent car mishap. Anne knew it was indeed a big test, maybe the biggest ever, and that it would have a profound butterfly effect on all of civilization. She posed a rhetorical question that instantly made Marta weep tears of joy.
“But it’s all good, right?”
In that instant, Marta’s self-wallowing came to an abrupt halt. The teacher and student became one. The two were equals at last. Anne’s perfect, understanding voice triggered in Marta an outpouring of seemingly unbounded memories. She remembered her friends, her parents, siblings, her pets, her home, her co-workers, her youth. With Anne’s simple, beautiful, teasing question, Marta’s entire life was somehow relived in an instant. She saw herself as a child, yes, even the asthma attacks and bed-wetting, but also sweet holidays and sports and games and Johnny Nasser, her best friend for life. She saw terror upon entering the Navy during the Vietnam War as a teenager, but also great joy in the friends she acquired along the way. She saw her life at the newspaper in Terre Haute. Her first love, Patti, was there, as well as “that unforgettable kiss on the Michigan City pier.” She saw her sex-change operation in Montreal, and all the beautiful, frightened gender-challenge beings, hoping their suffering would come to an end. It wouldn’t of course, at least not yet, but still, somehow it didn’t matter. It was a show, a great, Oscar-worthy presentation.
Like an unlimited visual memoir, Marta could see her pains and pleasures, defeats and victories, all racing into her mind in that tiny, near-limitless slide show. The show finally came to an end with the final scene. It was Fred, her beloved green Subaru, slowly climbing up the notorious hill and then speeding down it, crashing into the two parked cars below. Only this time, the image was not a nightmare. It was … amusing.
“Yes,” Marta joked to Anne. “Fred needed some time alone.” The two laughed acknowledging Fred’s brave, albeit possibly misguided break for freedom.
In unison, the two agreed. “It’s independence day.”
But Marta knew it wasn’t just Fred who tasted freedom. Now, Anne, too, had cast off Marta’s annoying puppet strings. Instead of feeling regret, Marta was reborn, enlivened with hope and strength.
“Dear, Jesus,” she said. “There is a way.”


Chapter 12

The snow was coming down heavily and the going was difficult.
“If I was an experienced guide I'd have thought of snow shoes,” Steve thought, “and I sure as hell would have sprung for that snow suit.”
He was well bundled, his body core was warm, but the wet had soaked his trousers wicked down through his thermal underwear into his boots.
His extremities had started to go numb long ago, when there was still a chance of turning back, but he'd soldiered on. Now he couldn't feel his feet at all anymore; they were like stumps that still somehow managed to keep him upright and propel him forward. They needed to reach the monastery by nightfall or he didn't know what would happen.
He stopped to survey the landmark he was steering toward – a long finger of rock on the horizon. He could barely see it through the whirling snow. Turning around the line of his companions and their heavily burdened yaks were mere shadows, only guessed at in the general whiteness. Fear clamped around his heart; a fear not lessened by the
knowledge that it was he who had led these people into this mess, and that it was his responsibility to get them out of it – or die trying.
At least it wasn't his idea to undertake this insane expedition in the first place, that was Marta's brilliant idea, damn her.
They were all tied together by a rope with thirty feet of slack between them. Every once in awhile the rope would pull taught as one member of the party or another would stumble, or stop to adjust a scarf or something, or just to take a break. They were all exhausted, particularly Pat and Beth. The rope’s sporadic action was reassuring to Steve, reminding him that he was not alone. But it also served to prick his conscience.
Now he hadn't felt that tug in quite awhile and stopped to look back. He couldn't see anything amid the swirling flakes.
“Hello!” he yelled. “Hey guys, how're you doing?”
There was no answering sound but the wind. He started drawing in the slack on the rope and was startled when there wasn't any tug of resistance. Horrified, he yanked the frayed end of the severed rope into his mittened hands. He stood there dumbstruck for a
second, then went leaping down the path as fast as he could.
Surely, he thought, they must be just below him, following his track. “What
could have happened?”
But as he ran on it was apparent that the track through the snow was only his, not widened by the passage of anyone else. “How long have they been gone?” He asked the storm, receiving only a mock howl.
Eventually even Steve’s own track disappeared, filled in by the wind and the
still falling snow. His fear was augmented now with grief.
“I hope you guys survive,” he said out loud, as if his friends were near him and
the wind wasn't howling, “but there's nothing I can do for you out here. I've got to try to save myself. When I get to the monastery they'll surely send out a search party.”
Now resuming his climb alone, Steve felt the darkness approaching. He couldn't see his landmark at all anymore. What choice did he have but to keep trudging on in what seemed the right direction, hoping for the best. Trying to avoid the thought, he realized he was truly and utterly alone.
Finally a break. A cave in the distance. An ice cave.
“I’m here,” he shouted. “I’m alive. I made it!”
It was an ice cave. Light filtered through from outside and the going was easy on a flat floor. It was warm, too. He could see his breath but was perfectly comfortable, enough to throw back the hood of his parka. At last, he could feel his feet again. His bright red fingers would take longer to thaw.
The cave was a labyrinth of branching paths. He was searching for something, or someone, but in his emaciated state couldn't remember what, or who. It was beautiful. The thick ice was faceted, like crystal, and fractured in the movement of the glacier. He thought he was imagining it at first. Vague images would appear on the faceted surfaces inside the ice and be gone again as he moved. It was unnerving but also fascinating.
At first it seemed that he was seeing through the ice to the outside but then he realized that couldn't be the case. Instead, he was seeing a summer landscape not in the Himalayas, but in the low leafy hills of … where? Oh, now he recognized it.
“That house, that barn, that's Sunman, where I used to spend my summers as a kid!” and he realized that the images were not just of southern Indiana landscapes, but of interiors too, and there were people. This was Memory.
He continued on his unknown quest, partaking now of the images flashed around him, which increased in both frequency and clarity as he went. He didn't analyze any of it but just felt the emotions that the scenes aroused in him; mostly pleasant; some terrible. He chose a direction at the intersection of three branching paths. As he turned a
corner he was surprised by the presence of a man standing there. The man wasn't surprised though, he seemed to have been waiting for Steve. He seemed sinister, with a smirk on his face and a deranged look in his eye.
With some relief Steve realized that it was just a reflection of himself. The path was a dead end and the smooth wall of ice before him acted as a mirror. He raised his hand and the man, now less sinister, also raised his hand. He let his hand fall and the man let his hand fall. But did the man wink as Steve turned to try a different path?
“Must be my imagination,” he thought.
As he moved on, Steve encountered more and more dead ends, and always
there was a reflection of himself, somehow sinister when first seen. The atmosphere of the cave was now becoming increasingly unpleasant. New images surrounded him that were less personal, more like he was watching documentaries of dirty politics or of industrial environmental abuse. He saw himself running – from what, or whom, he didn’t know. That didn't seem to matter anymore, if it ever had.
Finally he came to a place where there were no exits. He was trapped in … a cave? No. This is no cave. And then he saw something he didn’t expect. Deep in the ice, was a small child. It was himself as a child.
“I loved that kid,” he said.
Before being consumed with nostalgia, Steve suddenly noticed the severed rope in his
mittened hands.
“I'm lost on the mountainside,” he thought. “I'm freezing to death and this is the dream at the end before my spark flickers out.”
He let himself slide down against the ice to the cold floor and leaned against the wall. He was giving in, but not giving up. Not completely.
“What is it you're supposed to do when you're lost?” he asked the walls. “You're supposed to sit tight, wherever you are, and wait for help. Oh, Emily, send St. Bernard. It’s OK if you wanna rescue me. I’ll let you.”


Chapter 13

“This is gonna be too hard,” Beth thought. “I am no writer.”
But she said yes, and to Beth, a promise is a promise. She reread her notes:
“Two pages on the ego and pride, and three on the supernatural.”
That was the request coming from Anne.
“Now I’m supposed to put all this in their book,” she thought. “Why would I agree to this? They know I can’t write. What am I doing? This is getting silly.”
She looked again at Anne’s request.
“Just write whatever you want,” the notes read. “Anything. Put in your life story, we don’t care. Just so it ties in with pride and the supernatural. Those areas are the big ones. They have to be explored.”
Beth understood agreed with that. At least the part about pride and ego. That should be no problem. Hundreds of conversations with her daughter, Emily, and a few with Marta – and all her discussions about being God – had given Beth a strong background on that subject.
But the supernatural? I don’t even know what that is? I don’t even believe in God.
Again, she scanned the notes.
“There has to be some way to get outside the box. Not in logical, limited terms. We want to connect with the unlimited. This is about unconditional love. That means we can’t be tied to traditional, conditional thinking. So maybe the supernatural comes into play – we don’t care if it’s magic, angels, higher levels of consciousness, aliens, alternative universes, ghosts, death, afterlife whatever. It just has to be explored and included in a way that’s plausible and interesting. It’s all good, remember? Just a few pages to get things going.”
Beth remembered the meeting with Anne and Marta. Having only met Anne twice before, she was surprised that she, and not Marta did most of the talking. Right off, she sensed the two shared almost the exact same core beliefs, including this latest book project, right down to phrasing and speech patterns.
A little too creepy, she wondered, thinking maybe she had indeed gotten herself sucked into a Manson-like cult. Still, for some reason she tagged along, trusting Marta as a good friend of Emily, and appreciating everyone’s strong conviction to the it’s all good framework.
Plus, if it gets too weird I can always say no, she thought.
“So why don’t I?” Hmmm.
The daughter of a renowned Christian minister, Beth Montgomery Selke, was taught that pride was perhaps the biggest stumbling block in man’s advancement. Being important is OK, she believed, but being more OK than someone else – that’s what’s getting everybody into trouble. Just ask Lucifer, Adam, Eve, Cain, Aaron, Herod, Judas, Hitler, and yes, maybe even the self-promoting Marta.
Her religious background, and the fact that Beth had written a children’s book called “… And That’s OK,” made Beth the perfect choice for this particular assignment. The children’s story, simply but effectively written and beautifully illustrated by Beth, describes how all of us, with our deeply personal “differences and preferences” belong in this world together. That all of us are special, but not better than someone else.
Now Beth began typing on her latest literary endeavor:
“So what exactly is the ego and pride, and why do people think they’re better than others?”
“Oh, no,” she thought. “No, no, no. That’s way too boring. Sounds like I’m some expert.”
She went back to the children’s book for inspiration. Vaguely remembering her college creative writing class, she decided to try a little stream of consciousness:
“Does a squirrel think it’s better than another squirrel? Or a cockroach? Or a beaver? ‘Listen, beaver community, I’m taking over this dam because I’m stronger and I’m better and I can take it over… The other beavers may let him do so, maybe because he is bigger and stronger but certainly not better. Can he crochet a rub, for example? Well, some other beaver can crochet a rug, so he’s not better. If you think about it, a beaver who can crochet … that’s really something. … And then I guess wars are started because one beaver can lift weights and another can crochet and then sides are drawn, do I wanna do the weightlifting or the crocheting? Some will say the weightlifting is better others are convinced it’s crocheting. And then the wars happen. That’s kind of fun, seeing that war. I bet the crochet army will have way better uniforms.”
Beth smiled at the strange image she was creating. She paused.
“Oh, God no,” that’s ridiculous. “They’ll all laugh at this. I’m just not good at this. What am I doing? People are gonna assume I’m in some cult … anyway, maybe I should just bow out of this whole thing.”
Instead of deleting her beaver analogy, and the project as a whole, Beth took another sip of tea. She attempted to regroup, forcing herself to understand what the assignment was really for.
“Have we taken sides with Marta?” she wondered. “If so, are we crocheters or weightlifters?”
Beth smiled again, this time proudly acknowledging that probably unlike anyone else on the In Search of Emily team, she did in fact know how to crochet.
“Oh wait,” she remembered. “Marta’s mom Pat (whom Beth had never actually met). I bet she knows how to crochet.
“Anyway,” she added, “we’re still gonna be on the crochet team. I don’t wanna lift weights.”
Again, Beth tried to get serious, and “stay on message.” “How do we enjoy our strengths and preferences without letting the ego take over?”
She was convinced her children’s book and her theory that we all have an important place on this planet despite our differences is crucial in helping end suffering. It IS absolutely a worthy goal, she thought, even in the form of this possibly misguided new book project. She was reminded of the current, nasty state of politics, and of all the domestic and international struggles plaguing the world.
“Everyone wants to think they’re better,” she realized. “OK. We know this as the problem, but how do we fix it?”
Beth began to feel overwhelmed. She understood how some could view all of life as a constant war, something she remembered Emily discussing frequently throughout her Buddhist studies. Also, to her surprise, Beth unintentionally was finding herself thinking in dualistic terms. These philosophical “meanderings” were something she had always shied away from in the past.
Now, however, she couldn’t get away from it. Democrats versus Republicans, blacks and whites, Buddhists and Christians, good and bad, old and young. Does it all matter? And, more importantly, is it all EQUAL?
Again, thinking maybe she was getting in way too deep, Beth continued to question her role in Marta and Anne’s project.
“Maybe they should just keep me out of it,” she said aloud to her computer. “At least change my name so people won’t know it’s really me.”
Beth continued to worry about long-range repercussions of the project. Marta, and now Anne, aren’t aware that people might get hurt, especially if we’re using their real names. It’s just fiction, well, some of it is and some isn’t. It should all be fiction. Just don’t embarrass anybody.
Writer’s block continued to reinforce Beth’s negativity.
“They’re just sucking me in to brainwash me,” she thought. “And it’s working, I’m starting to sound just like them. This is crazy. … But am I crazy, too?”
And again Beth could not stop thinking about dualism and conflict and suffering.
“But are they right? And is this a war we’re starting?”
Beth looked at her children’s book. She slowly began leafing through the 24 pages. In spite of her resistance, she felt proud of what she had created. More importantly, she felt right. She knew she had chosen the right side.
“My intentions are good,” she thought. “But is it all good? How can that be, and should it?”
Now Beth was feeling a growing anger and even some jealousy. Maybe the others, notably Marta and Emily, and now, apparently Anne, had achieved some deeper awareness. Do they have some understanding of the whole picture? Something they could see, something Beth could not see?
Beth did see Marta’s smug arrogance, and her daughter Emily’s near-constant disapproval of humanity (derogatorily referred to as “the hobby lobby”). Was Beth part of the lobby? Was she inferior, somehow?
She continued scanning the children’s book. But this time, the wording seemed deficient, trite and childish – and the pictures uninspiring and even ugly.
“That’s why no publisher wanted it,” she sadly realized. “People just said they liked it to be nice. They were feeling sorry for me.
“God, it’s terrible,” she thought. Now quite discouraged, Beth angrily tossed the book on the sofa.
Saddened, she took another sip of tea. Before deleting her entire written essay, she took one last look at Anne’s assignment request:
“Just write whatever you want. Anything. Put in your life story, we don’t care. Just so it ties in with pride and the supernatural. Those areas are the big ones. They have to be explored.”
“Put in your life story,” she shrugged. “What is that? My life story?”
She looked around her house at all the things, knickknacks, antique furniture, memories. She stopped to gaze at a picture of her family. She saw the eyes and smiles of her true friends – her beloved husband, Bill, who had died 10 years earlier, and their two children, Hank, now an Indianapolis physician, and her estranged daughter Emily. All four were smiling quite broadly. Beth instantly remembered the occasion. They were in Denmark where Bill was doing research as a college professor. That day, eight-year-old Hank had won a hockey gam.They were all being treated to a feast of Danish licorice at a favorite candy shop.
“Hah!” thought Beth. “Oh, God. Look at us. We’re smiling. All of us. Even Emily. Even Emily.”