A Friend from Long Ago (#4)

A couple of weeks ago, I got a Facebook message out of the blue from my best friend from childhood, someone I hadn't seen in 20 years. "Charles" and I were almost inseparable from age six, then he moved away and we drifted apart. Sure, I visited him two or three times in his new city, but the 300 miles soon came between us and we lost touch. That's really no excuse, because we were both literate enough to write a letter and lick a stamp.

So last week I got this message on Facebook, and Charles said he'd searched for me and still recognized my face even with the addition of 20 years and a beard. Maybe that's what a friend is. Someone who knows me as the deeper me, the part that doesn't change from age 12 to 32.

When we were kids, Charles and I used to hang out with another friend, "Jerry." We played Ewoks out in the redwood trees behind Jerry's house, and it felt like we were in the movie - after all, the film was shot in a nearby redwood forest. Charles and I shared a very close bond, and often Jerry seemed a little like a third wheel. But as we grew and Charles moved away, Jerry became (and remains) my closest and dearest friend.

Charles and I have spent the past couple of weeks catching up little by little via e-mail. He told me a little about his wife and stepdaughter, about his career, and his dreams for the future. I told him about my wonderful job doing science outreach for children, about my recent failed relationship, and about my desire to have a family of my own.

I never really felt the years slip by, but I feel like I'm at a midpoint of my life, (developmentally, if not chronologically). Charles sent me scans of yearbook pages from first grade and third grade: as I look at my own scratchy six-year-old writing, I feel old. At that time, I hadn't lost any teeth yet, and I remember Charles (who was seven months older) telling me, "When you turn seven, you'll lose teeth, too." He seemed so much older and more experienced than I was!

One day when we were seven or eight years old, we went out and had "an adventure." We bush-whacked through the woods behind my house toward the banks of the Mad River. It was a slow and tourtuous path as we braved the thorny bushes, through pungent mud and buzzing insects. I don't think either of us knew where we were, but a feeling of purpose and a vague sense of direction kept us going until we triumphantly arrived at the the rocky, muddy river bank. We scampered along the rocks for maybe a quarter mile until we got to the road to walk back. Our whole route was probably not more than a half mile, but we felt like we'd really done something noteworthy.

A couple of years later, we were racing our bikes and I ran into him, crashing and breaking my left arm. He only had a few scrapes, and he came with me to the hospital while I got x-rayed and put in a cast.

So why does this matter to me now? I'd always wondered where Charles was, all these years. Something was missing, some important part of my life and past. Part of me was afraid that we wouldn't have much in common anymore. But now he chose to take the action of seeking me out. And even though on the surface, our lives seem to be different, we still have a lot in common on the inner levels. It feels good to be connected with him again, and somehow the friendship does not feel like it's been interrupted. Perhaps that's the measure of a true friend.

Art Heals a Broken Heart (#3)

Art always heals a broken heart. It doesn't take the pain away, but in the words of some great musician, "at least you get a good song out of it." I remember after a college girlfriend dumped me, I went out in the woods and played the sax - the vibrations carried my feelings of longing out to all the trees and birds. In a way, this was more beautiful than anything I was able to express in the relationship.

Every time my heart is broken, it spills out love. No destination, no recipient. Sometimes it reaches out to friends; sometimes it becomes a beautiful melody or a poem. I think heartbreak is our most profound emotion as human beings - everyone from Shakespeare to the Beatles wrote about it.

Time heals all, they say. Today it's been four months, and lately I've been feeling like I'm almost over it. One thing that helped me was finding this poem this week. It's from March 2004, when I watched a deep love melt away with the spring snow. It reminded me that I've been through this a few times before.

Tail End of Winter

Tail end of winter
sun baking away the last
patches of snow,
the yellow, mangled grass
still lying twisted, numb, lifeless.
Tail end of winter,
snow disappearing,
but I am still flat and frozen.

Tail end of winter,
and I remember that first fluffy white...
You reached out your window
to touch it, scoop it up,
stuff it down my shirt
shrieking, tackling,
melting into wrestling and kissing.

That powder had come too soon.
Not winter yet...
But we were warm
in that pinewood bed I'd helped you build
last summer.

Now that powder is ice,
hardened
from repeated warming and freezing.

It's not that we could read each other's minds,
but deep in your belly you felt my need,
and your sharp jabs of fear jarred me.
We always knew.
Even before I called you that night, I knew.
A cold blackness ate away my guts.
I called Granny right then to tell her
of the death I would hear later that night
lurking in your sweet words.

Tail end of winter -
In a week or two, the sun and rain
will nurse back the suffering grass.
Maybe the robins
will stand in the bare branches
whistling that song
to lift me from my stupor.

Tail end of winter.
I thought the snow was over -
But through a blinding storm of slippery white
I survive the trip home
to be jolted by your name in my mailbox.
I am too weak tonight -
exhausted, hungry, chilled to the bone.

But the next day...
Flakes still flutter down mostly alone.
My breath slows,
my hand almost steady as I tear in.
Your narrow black line on the page
lifts and falls.

Tail end of winter,
tail end of everything together.
Tail end of those conversations,
those memories,
tail end of the warm glow
when we held each other.
Tail end of the unknown future -
of those dreams of sharing dishes,
daughters and sons,
doctoral dissertations.

Now the sun melts it all,
the snow, dirt and sand
running together.
Sterile, frozen blocks of mud
becoming pungent squish
smelling of life.

The rain came last night.
Not enough.
Just a light pattering on the roof.
When the thunderstorm comes,
I'll run outside
to be washed
by those heavy drops.

For me, the deep medicine is in the last stanza. I'll run outside to be washed by those heavy drops. I intentionally used nature as a metaphor for my inner process, and the thunderstorm is the cleanse I so desperately wanted.

I still remember "that night" when I called. Wednesday, January 14, 2004. At about 3:00 pm, I was walking between buildings at work and got a huge intuitive hit that she was going to leave me. I had to sit on a rock for a moment to regain my equilibrium. At that moment (I found out later), she had a moment of panic while in the shower, and made her decision. I was never to see her again. My guts knew before I even talked to her.

I'll remember January 10, 2009 as well. I didn't write any poems this time, but maybe I didn't need to. Or maybe I haven't gotten around to it yet. So I will write one now:

Finishing

I step into my office
to find my canning jar
and my necklace inside the jar
and on the lid a yellow Post-It
that reads "Aaron" -

Your handwriting.
That same little optimistic lift off the final "n"
which always made me happy before

You've given back the last things
I left at your apartment,
as if to say
all small details are back in place,
all the books balanced
down to the penny.

We both know
only a few weeks ago,
there were no balance sheets.
We shrugged off huge sums, and
I would have given away
most of what I owned
for a life with you.

But now,
now it comes down to
a jar with a yellow note
that says "Aaron" in that familiar script
which no longer comforts me.

I wonder about
all the deep things
we'll never give back.

Well, it's not quite the release I got from the 2004 poem, but not bad for a 30 minute "Rough Sketch." Today it's been four months, and all I can do is be patient with myself and wait for the river's slow current to carry me around the next bend.

Let's Cut Down Trees and Launch Them Into Space to Save the Planet (#2)

Okay, now that I've got your attention, perhaps you'll realize that this suggestion is just as valid, and nonetheless just as absurd, as the timber industry's assertion that younger forests are better for the atmosphere than old growth forests. The difference is that the latter was crafted to profit from people's ignorance of the carbon cycle; the former was intended to stimulate better understanding and creative problem-solving through humor.

My idea for this week's article began a few days ago when my friend Ed, a Ph.D. chemist, suggested a good way to combat global climate change: cutting down massive amounts of trees and launching them into outer space. In principle this will work. His other suggestion was a bit more dubious: making large amounts of plastic and burying it in landfills. Regardless, I have to give Ed credit for thinking outside the box.

Any time a group (such as the six billion inhabitants of the earth) tries to solve a problem, it's a good idea to use a problem-solving model that starts with a generative phase before proceeding to a reductive phase. In the generative phase, we accept and write down all solutions offered, even joke solutions (such as "let's sell all the carbon to aliens"). The hope is that those suggestions will stimulate creativity. Only after completing the generative phase is it appropriate to proceed to the reductive phase and start crossing out the ideas that obviously won't work, and then examining the remaining ideas under a critical lens. A common mistake is to start criticizing and reducing the list before all the ideas have appeared, which can prevent some ideas from ever being born.

Indulge me in a quick real-life example. A power utility was plagued with power line breakages due to ice buildup, and they hired a problem-solving consultant to work with the firm's employees to brainstorm possible solutions. No one had any ideas. The consultant urged the employees to put forth any and all suggestions, no matter how outrageous they sounded. After long minutes of dead silence, the consultant called for a coffee break. One of the employees gestured with his coffee cup, laughing, and said, "Let's just send a bear up there to knock the ice down." The consultant overheard the joke and asked the man to repeat it when they reconvened, which he was reluctant to do. When the man was finally prodded to speak, the whole company broke into laugher and lively discussion. Someone joked, "How will we convince the bear to go up the power pole?" The response came, "Put a giant honey pot up there." "How do we get the honey pot up there?" Asked someone else. "Maybe we could lower it there with a helicopter." Sooner or later, someone realized that the downdraft from the helicopter's rotor might dislodge the ice. This turned out to be the solution that worked. Minus the bear and honey, of course.

The moral of this story: consider absurd suggestions as possible routes toward true solutions.

Back to the question of global climate change. As every sixth-grader in our country learns, when a plant does photosynthesis, it takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, releases the oxygen atoms back to the atmosphere, and keeps the carbon in its biomass. Scientists call this "carbon sequestration." In fact, most of a plant's biomass comes from carbon sequestered from the atmosphere. And what the timber industry says is true: younger forests do sequester more carbon per year than old-growth forests, because they grow faster. (This should be obvious: the faster a tree grows, or accumulates biomass, the more carbon it is removing from the atmosphere to create that biomass.) Does this mean we should combat global warming by chopping down old-growth forests and planting younger forests? Even though it would work, it's probably not the best idea. Old-growth forests have ecological and aesthetic value far in excess of their shortcomings in carbon sequestration. (Here's another example for comparison: standing dead trees, or snags, are slowly releasing their carbon, not sequestering any, but they are habitat to four times as many animals as live trees.)

The problem is, as soon as the plant or tree dies, it starts to decompose, releasing its carbon back to the atmosphere. In order to make the sequestration permanent, the tree must somehow be prevented from decomposing in our atmosphere. The formation of fossil fuels was a great way to prevent this: millions of years ago, the trees and plants were buried and compressed until they metamorphosed into coal and petroleum, keeping that carbon locked up under the earth. Obviously our burning of those fossil fuels is the main reason why the equilibrium has shifted toward more atmospheric carbon.

How else might we keep the sequestered carbon locked away? The timber industry would like us to do it by building using wood. This would work great, of course, and it happens to be something that the timber industry would benefit from. It needs to be done in a way that's sensitive to other ecological concerns such as habitat, erosion, biodiversity, and old growth preservation. Ed thinks we should launch the trees out into space. (I question whether we can get them into space without burning any fossil fuels, directly or indirectly.) I think he just likes the delicious irony of cutting down trees to save the planet.

But what about burying plastic? Well, really that's a zero-sum game again, and I don't think it will help. We make plastic from petroleum from the earth, with carbon sequestered by ancient plants; if the plastic ends up in the landfill, all we've done is put that same carbon back under the earth. We haven't actually sequestered any new carbon from the atmosphere. And in the process we probably burned a lot of fossil fuels.

What if we combined Ed's two ideas with something from Body World's inventor Gunther von Hagens: Plastination. The process is used to stop the decomposition of human flesh after death, by replacing the fluids in the tissue with a polymer that subsequently hardens into plastic. Perhaps we could do the same thing to wood, ensuring that it will never decompose, thus keeping all the carbon locked up not only in the wood, but also in the plastic. No space launch required. Just an expensive and labor-intensive mummification process. (I wonder if millions of people will line up to see the mummified wood.)

For that matter, animals (including humans) are huge carbon liberators. We take in large amounts of carbon by eating plants, and then we release that carbon back into the atmosphere by exhaling. Another solution would be to kill all the animals (including humans) on the planet and launch them into space. Or better yet, Plastinate them. Maybe the trees will line up to see us.

Now Dave Barry might have ended this article with just such a cute, pithy line. If you like his style, just stop reading.

Since you're still reading, I take it you either don't like Dave Barry or you don't follow instructions well.

I hope you all think more clearly if not more humorously about the carbon cycle. As Ed astutely points out, the real solution is to stop burning fossil fuels. It won't be enough just to burn less - we have to stop altogether. And we probably need to promote carbon sequestering if we're going to have a prayer of bringing the carbon equilibrium back to pre-industrial levels. Furthermore, all six billion of us need to ante up with our ideas about how to do that - no matter how crazy they sound. Maybe people will start talking about the carbon cycle, even joking about it. The jokes might take us to a solution that will work.