Dear Ed,
"The forest growing in the back of my car is not the point of this story, but I thought I ought to mention it" you said. Remember? I looked at you over my coffee, a hint of incredulity. "Look," you went on, "It's bound to come up sooner or later and I thought it best to just get the cards out on the table before somebody gets all mussied up here and shoots a gypsy. I'm not one for hemming and hawing, you see." I nodded in hesitant agreement. "So here it is, and you better listen because I only want to say this once." I put my coffee down and listened as hard as I could. "Okay, one, it's a forest; two, it's in the back seat of my car; three, it's absolutely humongous and defies the laws of physics and all spatial reasoning; four, it's filled with a variety of spritely creatures beyond human comprehension; and five, sometimes I sleep inside of it because – well, I don't know why, but I do sleep in there and I just knew that it'd come up sooner or later, so there it is. Other than that, my car is completely normal, just a regular four door: 60,000 miles, four cylinder engine, stick shift, broken tail light. It's no hot rod, but it get's me where I'm going. So, that's that. Now you know: let it sink in and then get the hell over it – because, like I said, it's not the point of the story."
"But," I started, "why is there a forest in your –"
"What did I just say? Get over it. It's there and it's not the point. Got it?" Taking a bite of your BLT, you continued, "The point of the story is that I have recently inherited a barn. That's what I would like to talk to you about, the barn. Of course, you're going to be more interested in the forest because it will come up more than once, but I'm asking you to put aside your natural curiosity and think about this barn instead."
"Well," I said, "tell me about the barn then."
You smiled. "Thanks. Okay, first off, it's my uncle's, or it was until he died, and it's pretty big. One of those two story ones – bigger than the house next to it even." A waitress refilled my coffee. " Second thing is, it's gotta be a hundred years old. At least. The wood is rotted in places and the roof is caving in. Third, it came with all sorts of farming equipment, equally as old and pretty much useless to me, but maybe worth something to someone. I don't know. Fourth – and this is where I need you to remember to focus on the barn okay? – it's in my car, in the forest, and I need to get it out." He looked at me as if expecting an objection. I had one but didn't offer it.
"And that is why I – and just keep your mouth shut for this one, okay? – why I hired a special team of doctors to operate on my head, to open it up just a little. You know, put a kind of hole in it." You waited again. I didn't give. "It's called trepanation, the process is, and it's actually not as crazy as it sounds. See I think, from what I have understood about it, it's an ancient and highly spiritual practice. Highly spiritual. Your guess is as good as mine on what that means. Still, the Incans did it! Maybe even the Mayans? But I'm no expert. So, it's ancient, and maybe it's mystical, whatever – I don't care really. And it doesn't even matter. What matters is, it's the only way to get this damn barn outta my car." You looked at me as if I was wondering to myself, how is a hole in the head going to help get a barn out of a car? which is exactly what I was thinking. You went on, "And so, to make this work, though, I also need you – now don't say anything yet – to first enter the woods, the ones in the backseat of my car which you will not bring up or question, you know just go on in there a little – no big thing – and then send the barn, piece by piece and plank by plank, out through the hole that the doctors cut in my skull – which will be connected to the sky of the forest through a force that you and I can never understand but that I'm asking you to just believe in for however long this takes because god knows I'd do it for you. A team of contractors will be there waiting outside my head to reassemble the old thing once you get the pieces out. Pieces of the barn that is." You gave me a knowing look. "No one can do this but you."
"So, the forest – "
You grimaced a little. "Listen, would you forget the woods already? I know you want to hear all about it. You think to yourself, how is it possible? That there's a place existing within the boundaries of a place smaller than the one it contains? Where you can throw things to the sky and they fall out of someone's head? Sure, anyone would want to ask these questions. I know I wanted to. But the thing is? I'm asking you politely not to. Please don't ask those questions. Instead? Focus on the barn. The barn is the point here." You put your hands on the table. "Well?" You whispered. "Will you do it?"
I looked at you. You had already finished your BLT. There was no OJ left in your cup. "Obviously," I said, "yes I will. I will do this for you. I will crawl into the back of your car and into an impossible wilderness in order to help you extract a family inheritance through the hole in your head. Yes." Your relief was clearly visible. "But – and there is a but – you have to answer me one question first. Or else I won't do it. I swear to God." You nodded. "Alright then: Why exactly do you not want this barn in your car?" I could have asked any number of other questions. Why me? Why now? How did the barn get in there in the first place? Why can't you just take it back out the way it went in? I could have asked these questions, but the answers, so far as I was concerned, were not important. Why me? Why now? Screw your reasons, I was there and the only other things I had planned for the week were, in order of importance, not working, pretending to work, and, less notably, working -- with a little break here and there to not pay the bills.
So, there was only one question I needed answered, only one thing that concerned what I just agreed to do, and the answer didn't come right away. You were silent for a few minutes, then looked out the window. You pawed your fork a little. "I don't know," you said finally. "I mean, I know I want the thing out, that's for sure – but as for why? Why do I want it out?" You pointed your fork at me almost accusingly. "Honestly, I really can't say. I guess, in a way though, it's kind of like being hungry. You know? I mean, put it this way: why do you get hungry? Because you haven't satisfied your need to eat. Right? Well, the same laws apply. I haven't satisfied my need to not have a barn in the woods in my car. I guess it's that simple. I suppose, perhaps, it's always that simple."
In my mind I knew that, no, it was never that simple. I'd been divorced three times and had four kids. My mother got cancer, died, and my father started painting. Once, even, a small commuter plane crashed in my front lawn. Other than that, life had been pretty uneventful. That's it really. I could count the milestones of my life on one hand, all those things that I'd done with myself or had done to me or who knows. And I will tell you, it is never that simple. You were holding something back.
Still – whether you had been honest or not – you nevertheless answered me, just as I had asked. And I wasn't going to pursue it any further. What could I have gained? Life throws basic premises at you, wild or mundane, and you either accept them or you don't. In this case—well? I did. Not that I believed it, though – and this is important – I simply accepted it. There're plenty of things I don't believe but do accept at face value. Honestly, I'd say I only actually believe, really believe, roughly 20% of what I hear and see on any given day, but I make no qualms about just passively accepting the rest.
And so, with nothing better to do, we prepared for the operation. Really, I had nothing much to get ready, so I left most of the business to you. And after just two days I found myself standing outside your car, perched on a grassy hill, braving the January morning cold with a backpack of food and clothes, a thermos of coffee, and a casual sense of unease about doing something completely impossible for almost no reason at all. "You look nervous," you said, the hole in your head larger than I thought it would be. Without waiting for me to respond, you said, "Bitch wouldn't even start this morning, choked up on me from the cold. Piece of junk, really." You sighed, took a look around, rubbing your hands together, then asked, "You wanna see it?" The grass crunched under your feet, frozen. "The forest?"
I nodded.
With what could have been construed as grace, you opened the passenger side door, gesturing that I get in. As I did, you slid around the car and hopped in yourself. It started to snow lightly on the windshield. You were right, too: it was a thoroughly normal vehicle. Some stickers were placed on the glove box, worn down to almost nothing. A woman's picture was stuck on the visor and a ring hung on a necklace around the rear view. Newspapers and coffee cups littered the floor, tapes and cigarette wrappers filling the door compartments. With all this normalcy, I began to second guess my believing you, Ed, about your forest and barn story, but only for a moment. The plain fact that there was an enormous forest expanding in all directions and beyond the confines of the car, just behind my seat, was all the confirmation I needed. It almost breathed, pulsating with moisture and heat, trees thick with sap and life – pushing branches along the cloth roof, leaves dangling around the overhead light. Despite my natural inclination, though, I did my best to focus my energy not on the extraordinary forest, but instead on the barn, my mission.
Ed, you glanced my way, tested the parking break, pursed your lips a little, then made a small shrug of your shoulders before slipping into the backseat, disappearing through the ferns. There was a moment of uncertainty, a silence, and then: "Hey, what are you doing out there? Get in here." I thought it over only for a second as a bird from across the field flew down and perched lightly on the hood, still gleaming with cold In contrast to the green foliage around me: forest, barn, car, hole in the head – none of it really made sense. Still, did it need to? I think it did, once, but not anymore really. When I first got married, I did it because it "made sense." We were a "perfect fit." It felt as if forces had coalesced to some pinnacle atop which our gowns and tuxes awaited, as if from the depths of some dumb eternity we both believed in. That lasted just over six months, it made so much sense. Now she's a dental surgeon married to an accountant and paints pictures of nude children with appliances for heads. The depths of eternity. And here was the bird in the Winter, hopping around, pecking the steel with its beak. Really, how much sense do birds make? Not much, so far as I'm concerned. Doesn't make them not birds, though, does it --- just like the total impossibility of this forest didn't make it any less there. Me, the bird, and the forest. And the barn. And that was that. Of course, though, just as I turned to face the forest, the heat of it on my face, I had to wonder whether or not I was just losing it. It was plausible, of course, I had to admit that. I didn't feel like, like I imagined it might, but it was still possible. As possible as the forest existing in a car at the very least. Really, people lose it everyday. If I had lost it, though, I lost it a long time ago. Nothing much I could do about it now, I thought. And in I went.
You were waiting for me just beyond the first row of trees – which opened up onto a lush glade. All traces of the car were gone. From the green canopy above, bright rays of sunlight streamed through. The chirps and buzzes of the forest hummed mildly in the background. "First off, I'd like to clear something up," you said, almost business like, picking up a stick. "Follow me." You lead me through some underbrush to a place where the canopy gave way to a bright blue sky. There were clouds, a great yellow sun, the silouhettes of birds, and quite unexpectedly, a huge hole which ripped straight through the blue into what could only be described as another humongous forest, leaves the size of buildings. "Now, check this out," you said, pointing toward the hole in the sky. "It's pretty neat, but useless so far as I fit into it here." And you tossed the stick you'd been carrying high into the air. Just as the stick was slowing to a stop, preparing for it's trip back to the earth below, it kind of gently floated on upward – until it began to slip right on out of the hole. At this same moment, you called to me, "Hey, look! See!" And I did see – you were pulling the stick right out of your forehead. "Ha!" you chuckled and said, "You try it." I picked up a rock and tossed it to the hole and then watched as it shot right out of your forehead, actually rolling right back over to me, bouncing off my shoe. "So," you went on, "you see why I can't do this myself, why I need you to get that barn through my headhole."
"So, the barn," I managed to say, "where is that? Let's get started, yes?"
"Right, right," you stated, nodding. "The barn. Well, it doesn't make much sense for me to make the trek over to it, really, what with me having to just head right on back out of here so I can receive the damn thing, right? So long as I'm in here that barn ain't coming out, right? Right, so I've drawn you up this map, a copy of the one I use to remember where and how to get around this place, and all you've got to do is just, you know, follow the little redline to the circle and then, bam, you'll be there. Got it?"
"Got it," I replied, and in almost one swift motion, you handed me the map, tipped your hat and scurried back through the thick foliage. And so, I checked my coordinates, put a finger to the wind, and made the first step. It only took me about three hours of breaking my way through underbrush and branches to reach a definitive conclusion: there was no barn. It took me even less time to realize I had no idea how to get back out of the car. And I spent the least amount of time debating how angry I was.
Very – I was very angry, Ed.
Yet, there I was, in the forest – no matter how angry I got. In anger, I ran about looking for the glade where I had first entered the forest, and in anger I climbed the tallest tree, groping and reaching for the hole in the sky, and in anger I tossed reproachful, hand-scrawled notes futilely into the air. And then, tired of plain and regular anger, I tried getting extremely angry, tried pushing my mood out through my head like a puddy and into my hands to be used as some sort of weapon to cut my way back home, shaking and grinding my teeth – but that only worked as well as one might expect.
After a day of it, I again second guessed myself: perhaps I was just bad with maps? Obviously, this must be the case, I thought. I resumed my search, hopeful. Smiling, I retraced my steps, and laughing I pushed onward, amused at my stupidity. Here the barn would be, just as the map illustrated, right here around this corner and up that hill you silly goose, but, no, it was never there. The results were always the same: no matter how I interpreted the map, no matter which way I held it or glared at it, no barn materialized. There was no barn.
My supplies ran out quickly, and for days I fought the notion of hunting or foraging for food. I was going to get out, obviously, get back to my home sooner or later, so why even bother? What a waste of time to sit around in these woods hunting and berry picking when I could be marching back toward the exit! Yet, my hunger out-stepped my delusion and I soon found myself recalling what little I had learned in six miserable days of Cub Scout camp.
Once that threshold was crossed, a new life enveloped me and time simply raced by. Before I knew it, I was dressed all in furs and adjusting my tree bark lean-to in preparation for a coming storm -- while freshly skinned rabbit meat dried on a nearby branch above a slow burning fire. I settled in pretty easily. Though I could still count the milestones of my life on one hand, my hands were often too busy for any kind of counting or nostalgia. My determination had not dwindled, though – you can be sure of that. With rigor, I made daily treks through the forest in search of an exit or even a tree tall enough to reach the sky hole – through which almost nothing was visible anymore. The hole, however, did reveal itself to have quite extraordinary patterns of motion. It traveled across the sky much like the moon, though on a path distinctly its own -- and one that I have charted meticulously. Occasionally it would swing along with the nighttime stars and then rest low in the morning sky, but always at considerable distance from my camp. With most other efforts of escape exhausted, I eventually made it my mission to move forward – in search of where the moonlike skyhole was low enough to intercept.
After a month's travel, while camped and bedded down for the night under an oak on the edge of a swift river, I heard the unmistakable sound of voices. Up until then, the traveling had been full of sights and curiosities, among them a dead bear, sheer rock faces of granite and quartz, and a flock of luminescent birds that swooped through the branches in the twilight, but nothing had taken me aback quite like these suddenly familiar sounds. Abandoning my blanket, I crawled on my belly through the leaves and peered over a mossy rock to see two men in heated discussion. Their argument intensified as I watched, and their intentions became clearer but no less odd. From what I gathered, the two of them intended to map the entirety of the forest. "The barn is here somewhere," they said, holding a map much the same as my own, wrinkled and wripped in all the same places. They had other maps, too I saw, but mine they held close to their chests. Had you given it to them as well?
That was twenty three years ago that I first encountered human voices, and I would have followed them were I not intent on my own mission of reaching the skyhole. Since then, I have met thousands of people, seen millions strung across fields and cities, people young and old, tired and ambitious, all of them searching for the barn. But I only stopped for one – a woman. Remarkably, she was in every way exactly my ex-wife, although she did not recognize me. I suppose, after seeing so many millions of people, it was only a matter of time and probability before I stumbled on her again or something like her. Of course I fell in love with her, like people do, like I had already done, but she wasn't real at all. A totally fake woman. That is she must have been: the whole forest, I realized, could not be real. The more I travelled it and the more I saw of it – it could not exist. It was impossible. We were in the back of a car, for God's sake – all these places, all these cities, where women baked barn shaped bread, where the buildings were topped with ladders holding men who reached and reached for the sky, where disciplined squadrons followed detailed maps to nowhere, where village mobs killed animals and children on barn alters and granite slabs, where people tried to crawl into the holes in their heads, where armies fought armies over where barns might be or would be or would never be, where people married, bathed, fell ill, watched television, rode horses, argued, died, played bingo, and listened to radios – all this in the backseat of a shitty four door sedan, parked or barreling down the highway. And just the same, I was in love inside of it with a vague approximation of my wife. For the most part, I accepted all this without protest.
Only once did I suggest my thoughts to her. "What do you mean the barn doesn't exist?" She retorted. "Look, it's on the map. Do you even have a map?" she asked, shocked. "And besides -- why would we be here in the first place if there was no barn, silly?" When she talked, I was always amazed that she had no memory of me at all – every mannerism was the same, gestures I had thought were meant for me but now I saw could have been for anyone, any stranger. "That's what we're here for! To find the barn!" She seemed to say this with affection and good intentions, not realizing that it was lost on me, that in fact, though I loved her, I was looking through her for someone else, another her in another place. I zoned out as she went on, "No one said it would be easy, darling, but it sure as hell's gonna be a lot harder if you go around pretendin it's not even here!" And in a way she was right – what else was there? For a while, I lived my life in the forest like anyone else. I joined barn search parties, worked in the skyhole mills, and ate dinner in the city. Only rarely did I reflect on the fact that the catalyst for all of it was ridiculous, unbelievable, and trivial: in a diner, a man named Ed and his family inheritance.
Suffice it to say that this woman who I loved, my wife – she did not share my passion for jumping through the hole in the sky. And I couldn't stay there forever. So she stayed and I went. I went and I went and then I went some more. I went so much that I thought, at one point, that I could went no farther. But, across the deserts, across the plains, and beyond the hills, I finally found the place where the sky meets the land and I grabbed the great blue rim, dragged myself through it, and fell to the other side of the hole. Yet, Ed, I didn't fall from your head as you had promised. Instead, I found myself in a new place. It was drier, the foliage thinner, but the people much the same. Above, in the sky there was another hole. I fixed my gaze and made my way toward it from day one. And I found that hole, too, crawled through it – again not from your head but into another place where the sky opened up above. Again I made chase, on and on like this through sky after sky. And I fell in love there, too, with a woman, with my wife, just as I had before, just as I always did, just as I always would -- with every passing place, through every causeway, to the extent that I soon knew when and where I would find her, how she would look, act and smell, how the wind would be that day, how much the same or how different from the last or next one she would be. She never knew me and I never knew her but I've always known her, and it seems I always will no matter whose head I'm not falling from.
Sometimes I asked myself – as I moved through sky after sky – would I know the world if I found it? Could I really tell the difference between one place and another? I still don't know the answers to those questions.
Yet, I have found myself here suddenly – this place where the sky is solid, where only the sun and the moon race above us, where there are no holes to chase, and I'm guessing I'm home, back where I started. I have found all the things I left behind. My house. My car. My records, my mugs. My chairs and my toothbrush. It's all here. Still, some things have changed: for example, when I found her, just as I always did, I found her not sitting in a coffe shop or in a bookstore as I so often had, and she wasn't wearing a long sweater or knit cap, no when I found her this time, I found her dead -- remarried and buried, no messages left for me, no trinkets to commemorate the lives we didn't share together. She is buried in the town we grew up in. My children have married. They are unhappy. These things have changed, these people are gone, yet I still have this place where we all are.
I won't tell you it's exactly the same here, Ed, as in the forest in your car and in your head. That'd be too easy, wouldn't it? First off, there are so many barns here. Barn after barn really. People can't get enough of them. Yet, I will say that I have traveled the impossible, been cast forward by absurd and trivial and almost fantastic catalysts, escaped the inescapable, and made it back triumphantly to a home equally impossible, born from just as inane and silly a premise, and plainly as inescapable. Yet, somehow, Ed, I feel there is still a way out, a route up or though, twisting itself across the sky or horizon. Frankly, in my mind, it's just a matter of finding the right hole. Right? And I'll find it, Ed. I will find it. I will find her. I will find you. It's really that simple
It's always that simple.
With Love,
Dolan
Dear Dolan,
Oh! I love your youthful energy! Yes! Find it! Find me! Find her! This is wonderful.
You stupid, stupid man.
You will find it, her, me. Of course you will. You have to. And when you find me, you will crawl into my head. And then, obviously, you will run backwards through the sky. You will go back the way you came. You will drop from place to place. You will leave cities. You will leave towns. You will do everything but arrive. You will find yourself in love with her, and she will know you as if she always had, and she will leave you again and again, just as you left her. Over and over, in every country, every glade, you will be deserted as you chart your way unwillingly away from everything. You will come to unknow people, you will be naked in the forest. You will be beckoned from the brush into a car in a field in January and you will come to lunch with me and when you leave you will drive away without any purpose at all and you will marry your wives and swallow your children and die in your mother's womb! Aren't you excited?
And then: be born again. Run across the plains again. Do it all again. Back and forth like a headless chicken. Like a chickenless head.
Or maybe you could just stop? Couldn't you? Pick a moment and stay there. Of all the places and times, choose one, find nothing, and be there forever. Just imagine yourself:
You are picking up a shirt from the floor of your bedroom. Your wife is about to walk through the door. She will say to you, "Do we have any baking soda? Or should I run to the corner store?" And you won't know the answer. The window is open. Your bed is half made. You are standing there wondering whether or not there is any baking soda. There is, but you don't know yet. In another moment, you will come to realize it, laughing at your wife for having bought more, but not in this moment. Here, you simply don't know. You smile. You sit down on the bed and shrug your shoulders. You think about closing the window but don't. It's sunny but maybe a little too windy. Rubbing a hand across the sheets, you forget what you were talking about. In another moment, she will hug you, but not this one. This is the moment right before.
Wouldn't it be nice? To stop moving? To stop going? To stop looking?
Ha, well you can't. And that's how simple it is.
With Love,
Ed
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