{"id":184069,"date":"2021-05-03T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=184069"},"modified":"2021-04-30T05:46:48","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T04:46:48","slug":"between-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/between-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Esopus Creek<\/p>\n

26 Apr 2021 – <\/em>The road led up the hill between houses until it came to the lake where it ran between the lake and the woods and the thought of people disappeared if he was lucky.\u00a0 He was sick of people, especially those he saw in masks because of their obsessive fear of death. They ran in packs. They seemed insane to him, as if germs might fly through the country air and infect them with a virus in a reversal of the way the insects were starting to fly low over the water and the fish would jump to devour them. He preferred the fish and the bugs and was glad no masked bandits were on the road to rob him of the morning\u2019s beauty.<\/p>\n

There was a young boy fishing, casting and reeling back in a rhythmic way. The boy yelled out as he reeled in his first catch of the season, a glittering rainbow trout that sparkled in the sun.<\/p>\n

Once he was twelve years-old and started out very early between the edge of night and the dawn of day.\u00a0 Alone, beautifully alone, with the dew thick upon the grass and the fog still clinging to the water in the creek.\u00a0 His family was at the farm.\u00a0 He awoke in the dark while his sisters and his mother slept and his father snored loudly. He tiptoed through the cabin and quietly shut the door behind him, almost catching his hair in the flypaper on the way out.\u00a0 He got his fishing gear from the porch.\u00a0 In an old Maxwell House coffee can were the night crawlers and the other worms he had dug the previous evening under the apple tree by the bull\u2019s pen.<\/p>\n

Now it was April and the ice on the lake was gone and the two geese he had seen last year had returned to their old nest.\u00a0 Last spring he had watched them very closely for more than a month as the goose sat patiently on her eggs and the gander sailed the waters on alert for predators.\u00a0 Some days he would see them swimming together near the nest.\u00a0 This worried him.\u00a0 He wondered if leaving the eggs unprotected for even a short time would give a predator an opening to attack.\u00a0 When the goslings never appeared, he assumed a predator had seized them.<\/p>\n

The worms in the can were big and juicy.\u00a0 When he moved the dirt, they gyrated to the surface and tickled his fingers.\u00a0 He felt sorry for them. They seemed so alive and would soon be dead. \u00a0Maybe he should set them free. The dirt where he dug them behind the old shed between its back wall and the thick wooden slats of the sad bull\u2019s pen was dark and wet and redolent of fallen apples.\u00a0 The huge ring-nosed bull had heard the grating of his spade and had come over to the fence.\u00a0 It was dark there in the enclosed space and he got the chills as the bull snorted at him through the empty spaces.\u00a0 A strange vibration passed between them.<\/p>\n

The boy showed him the trout as he unhooked it.\u00a0 He grasped it with two hands and gently bent and released it into the shallow water where it hesitated, as if shocked, and then swam away.\u00a0 The boy turned to the man and they gave each other high fives. Something passed between them. They laughed and the man walked on wondering why people liked to kill and capture free creatures.<\/p>\n

He thought: Is it possible not to remember to forget but just to live forward in a forgetfulness that is a constantly emerging present?<\/p>\n

The road turned sharply there and a man in a mask approached him.\u00a0 On an impulse, he asked the man why he was wearing a mask when he was outside on a gorgeous morning.\u00a0 The man said, \u201cTo protect myself from the virus.\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t you wearing one?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I don\u2019t think pigs can fly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The other man gasped and his eyes flared in fear and he rushed away.<\/p>\n

He walked on and saw the gander standing on the beach, looking around like a proud sentry.\u00a0 The goose was on her nest.\u00a0 Maybe, he thought, they, at least, had learned something.<\/p>\n

Then it was raining lightly.\u00a0 The only sounds were the birds and the rain and he opened his mouth for the rain and his ears for the birds and his heart for the day. \u00a0He walked down the gravel path up past the barn to the road and crossed the bridge across the creek to get to the side where the fishing was really good because the river twisted and turned over there to create little peninsulas that protected deep pools where the fish lay in wait.\u00a0 It was also where the Hermit of the Esopus was said to live. His name was Billy Bush and he wondered if he was a fictional character. He had never seen him.<\/p>\n

Maybe he was asking the wrong question.\u00a0 He felt in a flash that he knew the answer but couldn\u2019t say what the true question was.\u00a0 But it didn\u2019t seem to matter now.\u00a0 He felt as he walked ahead he was heading back to find his future in the present.<\/p>\n

Back in time and the city, his parents had appeared on a television show called, \u201cDo You Trust Your Wife?\u201d\u00a0 The host of the show was Johnny Carson.\u00a0 This was his first gig before he would become famous as the long-running host of \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d and an iconic figure in TV lore.\u00a0 This is true, but he wasn\u2019t sure back then whether the hermit was as real as Carson because he saw Carson and they talked but the hermit seemed like a legendary figure.\u00a0 Carson asked him to stand up in the audience and he asked him if he felt weird being the only boy as the middle child with seven sisters.\u00a0 He said, \u201cNo.\u201d\u00a0 Carson persisted, \u201cI guess you feel like the baloney between the bread.\u201d The boy hated baloney and he was silent. A man held up big cue cards that said applause. Carson looked like a giant cardboard cutout. The audience clapped and the show went on as it always does.<\/p>\n

A year later they changed the name of the show to \u201cWho Do You Trust?\u201d.\u00a0 Not a bad title for the first Cold War era, but that guy in the mask probably thinks I was conspiring to infect him, that I was a Russian agent. \u00a0Maybe pigs do fly now.\u00a0 Everything seems to have changed between people.\u00a0 How can you trust someone whose face you can\u2019t see?\u00a0 To face the faces that you faced was once upon a time the way things were.\u00a0 You had a chance to tell if the words that passed between you were true or not, but now the masquerade is complete. Deep darkness has descended.\u00a0\u00a0 Do we have to wait for death to see face to face?<\/p>\n

He passed the goose on her nest near the swampy end of the lake.\u00a0 Although he couldn\u2019t see her face clearly, he imagined she looked expectant, feeling urgent for the future.\u00a0 He wondered what it might be for both of them. What was he looking for in the days ahead, what did he desire, where was he going?\u00a0 He thought of the guy in the mask and all the people everywhere enchained by fear.\u00a0 Why was it so hard for them to see that the prison gates were closing around them and the living-dead elites were devouring their futures?<\/p>\n

The path down to the river twisted through dense woods.\u00a0 He could tell people had traveled it but not heavily.\u00a0 The sun had risen behind him and the mist on the water had given way to glitter on the fast-running water and the wet rocks throughout it.\u00a0 When he reached the water\u2019s edge, he felt relived.\u00a0 Now he could fish but had this strange sensation that he didn\u2019t want to, now that he had reached his destination. It\u2019s funny how when you think you want something and you are about to get it you have second thoughts.\u00a0 Maybe not thoughts. \u00a0He sat down on an old log and stared at the water.\u00a0 The sound of the water moving fast over the rocks and the sun hitting the water spray put him into a cataleptic state in which he lost himself. He was jolted by a voice.\u00a0 He jumped.\u00a0 A man with a grayish-white beard and bright blue eyes under a worn fisherman\u2019 cap stood to his left.<\/p>\n

The man said, \u201cI\u2019m surprised to see you here.\u00a0 No one comes here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy was frightened.\u00a0 He stammered, \u201cOh, I was about to fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great spot,\u201d the man said.\u00a0 \u201cI come here to read and meditate.\u201d<\/p>\n

An awkward silence came between them.\u00a0 The boy had an impulse to jump up and run.\u00a0 Then the thought: Could this be the Hermit of the Esopus?\u00a0 He\u2019s real?<\/p>\n

Then: Am I dreaming?<\/p>\n

The man said, \u201cMy name is William Bush.\u00a0 What\u2019s yours?\u201d<\/p>\n

Without thinking, the boy also gave his formal name, \u201cEdward Curtin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople call me Billy,\u201d the man said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard they even think I\u2019m a hermit and I live in these woods by the river.\u201d\u00a0 He laughed.<\/p>\n

Past the swamp, the road curved up a steep hill that led to the local college that had previously been a Jesuit seminary.\u00a0 In the woods to his left were the crumbling remains of wooden stations of the cross that the young men once followed. He thought of his father and where he was now.\u00a0 He said, \u201cGood morning, Dad.\u00a0 I miss you.\u201d\u00a0 The bond between them had always been powerful and when his father died it became even stronger in a sad way.\u00a0 It was such a beautiful morning that he started to cry.\u00a0 Three deer were grazing in the clearing halfway up the hill.\u00a0 A doe and two fawns.\u00a0 They looked up, then looked down, ignoring him as they resumed eating. His father made the best pancakes.\u00a0 Then there were the father and son Communion Breakfasts with the buns.\u00a0 He was hungry now.\u00a0 There was no end to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do people call you?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cEddy,\u201d the boy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you spell it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cE-d-d-y,\u201d the boy answered.<\/p>\n

Billy Bush chuckled and pointed to a spot in the river where the fast water hit a big rock and turned back to create a whirlpool.\u00a0 \u201cThere you are,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s an eddy. Eddys always run contrary to the main current, so you\u2019re in good company.\u201d\u00a0 The man laughed, which made the boy laugh. \u00a0Then the man told him that he was not really a hermit but lived in the old farmhouse up the hill near Brown\u2019s sheep farm but that he found it amusing that people created this legend about him and so he played along.\u00a0 He said he had once been a philosophy professor who came from the city to his sister\u2019s country house to be alone and think and write while his family stayed in the city.\u00a0 Since he was only here off and on and loved to wander through the woods down along the river people had for some reason come to create a legend about him.\u00a0 \u201cI have found,\u201d he said, \u201cthat people are so afraid of being alone that they create weird stories like the one about me being the Hermit of the Esopus to scare themselves to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t like going onto the college campus because it reminded him of being trapped in school and so at the top of the hill he turned and started down. He remembered when he was a boy how down he would feel when his mother would send him to the front door to greet his father on the threshold when he came home from work to see if his father had stopped for a drink. He hated being put between them.\u00a0 He felt guilty for having done her bidding. The deer were gone and he wondered what they did all day.\u00a0 He wondered what people did all day and why.\u00a0 He wondered how they spent their lives and where they thought they were going in their masks.\u00a0 He wondered what they thought was at the end of the road.\u00a0 He wondered why they drank and why they didn\u2019t.\u00a0 He wondered so many things he wondered why he was always wondering them.<\/p>\n

The goose was still on her nest.\u00a0 The gander was nowhere in sight.\u00a0 He stopped at the beach that extended out into the lake and took a gander.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 He wondered where he was, what did he do all day except stand watch for death to come flying trough the air. The boy who was fishing was gone.\u00a0 Four masked people dressed in black approached him. He said, \u201cGood morning.\u201d\u00a0 They looked away in silence as if he didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Billy Bush said he had to go.\u00a0 He asked the boy if he liked to read.\u00a0 The boy said, \u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0 He took a book out of his back pocket and handed it to the boy and said, \u201cIt\u2019s a good one and some of it may be difficult for you now but it will grow on you.\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned a lot from the author.\u00a0 He once said to wonder is to begin to understand, and that\u2019s why I come to the river.\u00a0 It always surprises me.\u00a0 But please do me a favor, don\u2019t tell anyone you met me and I told you I wasn\u2019t this legendary hermit people want to believe in. They love their illusions. \u00a0Let\u2019s keep it between us. Okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy said, \u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0 He took the book.\u00a0 Billy Bush left.\u00a0 The boy sat\u00a0 where he was, looking and listening to the river flow. \u00a0Sometime later he got up and left without fishing.\u00a0 He told no one about the hermit.<\/p>\n

When he arrived home from his walk, the man went to his bookcase and pulled out the old, battered paperback book Billy Bush had given him years ago.\u00a0 He had never read it for some reason.\u00a0 He had never even opened it as if to do so was to spoil his encounter with the hermit. To break the spell.\u00a0 Now seemed like the right time.\u00a0 He opened the book whose title was What Is Philosophy?<\/em> by Jos\u00e9 Ortega y Gassett, the Spanish philosopher.\u00a0 In the front was a signature: William J. Bush, S.J.\u00a0 He flipped through it.\u00a0 It was unmarked except for a few lines near the end.\u00a0 He read them:<\/p>\n

The future is always the leader\u2026. We live forward into our future, supported by the present, with the past, always faithful, off to the edge, a little sad, a little frail, as the moon, lighting a path through the night, goes with us step by step, shedding its pale friendship on our shoulders\u2026. the vast majority of human beings\u2026. are preoccupied with becoming un-preoccupied.\u00a0 Under their apparent indifference throbs a secret fear of having to solve for themselves the problems posed by their acts and emotions \u2013 a humble desire to be like everybody else, to renounce the responsibility of their own destiny, and dissolve it among the multitude.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He said to Billy Bush, \u201cThank you, it took me a while, but between us, that sure explains the masked desperadoes running in packs. But I won\u2019t tell them, for as you told me long ago, they prefer their illusions.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: Behind the Curtain<\/a> – email: edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Apr 2021 – He was sick of people, especially those he saw in masks because of their obsessive fear of death\u2026 He said to Billy Bush, \u201cThank you, it took me a while, but between us, that sure explains the masked desperadoes running in packs. But I won\u2019t tell them, for as you told me long ago, they prefer their illusions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1829,1868,2153,1975,1864],"class_list":["post-184069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-facemasks","tag-masks","tag-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}