CELTIC WIND

This was a wind a man could call a wind -

Oh, I could tell them my name - I have a name; but I won't.  If I had a Celtic name I would; but I don't.  If I knew a Celtic name, even just one, I'd take it as mine; but I know of none.  So I'll sit here, in this wind, and think about where I was when they said everything was winding down, and would soon end.  They were sincere; I suppose so.  How could they know really?  Would they even want to know?  I didn't believe them; but I wanted to be ready.  You should always be ready.  Maybe I was too ready.  For it all to end.

I should never have allowed my little girl to be named Marajocala; but they said it was the right name for her and I would be deficient as a parent if I didn't name her that.  And you don't want to be deficient at anything, especially at something like that.  She came to appreciate that name, how it sounded, how it was spelled, and how much it looked like her.  She was with me watching the last insect die after it laid eggs; but they never became larva.  Instead of eating the leaf they were on, it ate them, then died too.

The article was long, filled with big words; but I managed to memorize it, even as the paper was slowly disintegrating in my hands.  Just regular paper, I suppose; it looked like regular paper; but it felt different.  Maybe the paper making process did something to it.

It was a defensive posture that made me incapable of playing the piano.  I know that now.  I couldn't separate one hand's response from the other's.  I couldn't do two things at once, two different things.  Both hands had to always be ready for any attack, however impossible.  If I could only have played that piano, perhaps I wouldn't be here now.  I'd be where the glitter was, all a part of everything that almost happened, did happen for a time.  Till the wind came.  It would have separated my hands from being separate from each other anyway.  But for a time I could have played, made something beautiful, something people would like when they heard it.  Even one song.  Except I was born defensive, always ready for anything.  Now there's nothing.  I could play now; there's nothing left to be defensive against.

I've always believed it's music alone that can keep you living after, even long after, there's no longer any life left around you.  But I never had music within me; so I won't live as long as I might have otherwise.  Life went; it went.  There was life, once much life, then less, but still some, till one day there was none.  The wind is life though, so life hasn't gone entirely.  The wind moves things, stirs things, carries things around; it re-arranges what there is, so it must be living.

We used plastic cutlery for our last meal, and stone plates - not plates of stone, but stones.  We served it on an old metal table left sitting in the street.  Little pieces of bread.  Apple skins.  Dried beans.  A tiny pat of butter.  All with one tiny cup of cold coffee which we passed around.  We gave thanks.  We kind of laughed at giving thanks for the final meal any of us would ever have; but it felt good so we did.  When it was over we each got up and went our separate ways.  A wind was blowing, we couldn't tell from what direction though.  Winds never come from anywhere in particular any more.

The night before, we sang two songs, all of us gathered around.  Some of us sang beautifully, others, like me, off key.  We sang "When A Child Is Born."  And we sang "If I Only Had Time."  We knew some would continue singing after we parted; some couldn't.  Those who could would live longer.  It's always been the way.

There was, for just a moment, a green arising from a solitary tree; and it met a blue, the last blue of the last sky.  A blue as there once was, touching a green as it too once was.  And a stretch of sea away; for that one moment still the blue gray of seas long gone.  Then it all was over; and would never ever come again, not on this place.  Never again.  Soon all would go empty and turn black.  And a wind, a Celtic Wind, would blow one final breeze before it too went away.

I can still picture the last dog.  It was little, black, furry, with a feathery tail and a strange look in its eyes, and very white teeth.  It turned; and walked away and in just a moment was gone forever; but it came back one more time.  The last of each thing was all in a day, the same day, a single day.  Millions, billions of years in the making; a single day, in a single moment, gone.

I never planned to be last.  But someone had to watch over the going, just to see it.  I didn't wave or anything like that.  I just stood on the hill, in the wind, watching everything coming apart.  No one was crying, just moving along, to the place that had become the end.  Slowly, like a procession.  The last people, streaming along, to the last place, with someone watching so it wouldn't go unnoticed.  The beginning, whenever the beginning was, and wherever it was, no one was watching.  Some said "Don't watch.  Leave it be."  But someone needed to be there, to watch, and in watching to protect the going.  The going was more precious than all else; it needed protecting as nothing else ever did.  The wind picked up, as if their going somehow released something holding it back, to let it be.  It blew their going clear of where they had gone, leaving no trace behind.  The hill started to give way; then it stopped, leaving me standing next to a broken tree branch with a ruptured robin's next.  And in it a single robin blue egg that would never hatch, but would stay there till another time.

My son-in-law was crying that last night.  "I swore I would protect them, Marajocala and my son.  I swore it.  I meant it; so much I meant it.  But I can't.  I just can't.  No one can, I know.  But I swore.  Why did no one say this was going to happen?  Why?  Why?"

I couldn't answer, how could anyone when there was no answer?  Some of us could see a glimmer of what was coming; we tired to warn, to tell them they must stop before it was too late.  But we knew they wouldn't listen.  Those - those - have never listened.  It's we who must listen; they who speak.  It's always been that way.  Those who are chosen, or choose, to speak are never asked to listen, never have to listen, only to speak.  And they spoke, and those of us who knew they were wrong were not allowed to tell them.  It's the way it's always been; and it had to come here, one last rock, one final gust of wind, one last person to watch over it.  There could be no other way, no other end.  Existence is absolute perfection.  This breeze, this Celtic Wind that covers this rock where I stand, the last of them all - this breeze brings all the ages together in one final point of time.  It isn't my time, I simply stand here watching, as one last one must.  Someone must.

"Me and Lady Jane Gray."  "Why?" I asked.  Marajocala thought a moment.  "It's hard to put into words," she said.  "We'll both die young, she because someone decided for her she should be a queen.  Me because someone somewhere sometime decided the world would be better with lots of things.  When you break it down they're the same thing: being a queen, living in a world filled with things no one can ever use simply because they're there.  Only now we'll all die, not just the queen for a day.  Her world closed in around her, mine cast me off.  It's as if I'll go floating into space.  With my husband and my child."

"And your father," I said.

"No," she said.  "You'll be the one left behind to be last.  To watch as it all goes."

"How did you know?" I asked.

"How could anyone not know?" she said.  "The last person has to be the one who thinks the world will cease to be when he closes his eyes for good.  It has to be you.  And when your turn comes, wherever you're standing, whatever rock you're on, the world will slip into oblivion in the blink of your eye.  The last blink of the last eye.  Who else could it be?"

The sky was finally blue, the last sky, as people lay down one by one that last day.  Everything that should never have been in the sky fell out, to much cheering.  People had come to see the earth itself as a part of their family, and they rejoiced in its being freed from the plague that was killing it as they themselves had been killed, for they knew a piece of their time would remain.

It was a silvery metallic ground they laid down upon to die.  They would have cared more for a new green soft earthen bed; but that was barely a memory, a dream, a story told of a land that once existed till it existed no more, an older reality some had pictures of.  They would take out the pictures to show their children then begin crying and couldn't bear to have their children look upon what was but was no more.  On that last day they once again for the last time took out their pictures, and gently laid them upon the silvery leaden ground, for their children to lie down upon, as on a soft blanket spread over the ground.

"We changed our sky you know," a man looked up to say.  "We wanted to block out what we had done to our world.  To hide it all from ourselves.  We almost did, too.  Now our new sky lies beneath us and our real sky shrouds us.  But it's a good shroud.  A warm blue shroud.  It won't make us die happy; but it will let us die human.  If we deserve to."

I couldn't bear to look into the sky; it was too sad.  I could only look at it through their eyes.  Some had blue eyes, and the blue became bluer from what they saw.  Even the brown eyes lightened with the return of the sky on that last day.

A wind began blowing.  It covered the rock I was standing on.  I had moved beyond where they lay, to a rock waves were beating against, a greenish rock made bluish by the sky, as the water too became blue again, as it had not been for a very long time.

We stopped hearing rain on our roofs a long time ago.  It felt as if the sky had forgotten how to rain.  Always gray, always looking like it would rain, it never did.  Our roofs seemed bare, forlorn, waiting for something they needed to be themselves.  When I think of the disappeared rain, I think of the promise.  So much good man had the chance to do; but it all petered out, it frittered away, leaving the ground he walked on parched and empty.  And for nothing.  All that's left is nothing.  A tiny wind, that miraculously still blows against the last rock left where an endless vista once stood, a rock as dry as a bone, a rock no longer able to glisten even in the sun finally filtering through.  All because the rain stopped beating against our roofs.  Rain was always re-birth; the absence of rain is death; but not just the loss of water.  The loss of sound as much signaled the end of rain, the sound of water against our roofs, verifying the good we sought to do.  Before we gave good away in trying to force the rain to our will, not knowing in winning that quest we lost ourselves.  Perhaps in time, now that there's again a sky, the rain too may return; but with only the parched ground to beat against it will never be heard again.  No roofs, no forests, no glistening rocks, no hills to run down, no streams to fill.  Nothing to water.

A piece of wood washed by: where did it come from? how could it even still be?  I wanted to reach down and take hold of it; I could have.  But I didn't.  How could I profane something from the last tree on earth with human hands?  I watched it wash away till it disappeared, leaving only this rock behind.  If only I could see the tree it splintered from; but no, human eyes long ago lost the right to view something so sacred.  I would turn away should the last tree suddenly appear out of nowhere.  A thing so sacred should not be seen by human eyes ever again.

I watched, from far off, as some kids stoned the last cat to death.  I could not get to it; a deep valley lay between.  I could do nothing but watch, and wonder why.  With death so near all of us, why would they not cease all meanness, why would they continue doing things they should not have done ever, but never now, so near the end.  They should instead lift the cat and let it see everything it could see for one last time.  The last thing it ever sees should never be its own death; one final rock striking it, the last bit of its life.  All I could do was watch.  It took me a day to cross the valley and reach the cat.  I slowly uncovered it and held its eyes open an instant so it could see something half living, the sky, what was left of the sky, what was left of its eyes looking up at it; sight had gone with life, but its eyes were opened an instant so death could disappear forever for it.  It watched; I saw for it, a half alive sky above it.  Then its eyes closed for good.

I made my way across; down the mountain, through the valley, then up the other side.  I went to the place where the people had come to live out their days.  I spoke to the parents, told them what their children had done to the last animal on the planet.  They nodded that it was sad; but then they said they understood.  These children were the last kids.

"They're kids, and they'll never get the chance to do the things kids have a right to expect.  They'll never have fun as we did when we were kids.  We watched them tear the wings off three flies, the last flies.  'Let them be kids one last time,' we said.  Flies only live a day, a single day.  Let them be kids."

I couldn't bear to tell them that one day was an eternity to those three flies.  All I could do was turn, and go back down the mountain, through the valley, then up the other side.  And kneel down, and pray for three souls released before their time.  Before I did, I went and found where the three flies were thrown.  I picked them up and carried them to where the cat lay; and carefully laid them beside the cat.  Now three and one were four, together, to watch over the end of everything, just days away.

There was a little black dog, the same dog I had seen before, the last of her kind.  She had watched all the others leave, and when they left they never returned.  She knew they would never return.  She laid down, as they had done; and she was gone.  This was on a day in April, the fourteenth, another very short day made long by the ending of one of the last species.  Before she lay down, she sneezed, and from her flew the last virus.  I held a vigil all night.  I asked my neighbors to come stand with me; but they went to their homes instead.  So I stood alone, holding a single candle watching it slowly burn down.  When the sun came up I dug a small grave to bury the little black dog; but I decided not to bury her, just to leave her lying quietly on the hillside.  Nothing would ever carry her off; she would remain there forever, her lifeless form waiting for the others to return.  All along people thought only they had souls, only they reflected their creator's image, only they would be carried to another place when they left this place.  Looking down at this little black dog lying in wait for her brothers and her sisters to return, I could only smile at people's childish beliefs.  And shake my head that their beliefs had stayed things of children.  And wonder if their beliefs had grown whether we might have avoided everything we had done to bring us to where we are now.

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take.  Daddy, why don't you ever say my good night prayer with me?"

"It's a prayer for you," I told my Marajocala.

"Don't you pray to god too?"

I smiled, looking down.  "I pray to what god should have been," I said.

Marajocala laughed.  "You're funny, daddy," she said.  Then she thought a minute.  "Can god be someone else?" she asked.

"No," I told her.  "God can only be what he is, just like all of us.  He can no more be what he should be than we can.  We should never be where we are; but we couldn't not be here, even if we had tried, we would still be here."

"You don't like where we are, daddy?"

"No, I don't."

"I don't like it either.  I wish we could be back home."

"That was a nice place to be, wasn't it?"

"Oh yes, daddy, it was," she said.  "It was so nice.  And I miss Cavi.  She was such a cute little thing - well, no, not a thing, but a kind of person.  Is it okay to think of a Guinea Pig as a person?"

"It would be wrong not to," I told her.  If only, I thought: if only we had always thought of the others as persons and not just animals.  This one called Jesus said we should become as little children; but if we did the one called God would be offended.  Because he didn't create animals to be our equals.  But he should have.  And maybe then we wouldn't be where we are now.  These were silly childish thoughts; but that's why they're more profound than the most sacred scriptures or the deepest philosophies.  If only.  If only we could have been other than we were, we wouldn't be here now.  It's as hard to blame them as it is not to.

"Do you think they knew it would come to this?" I heard someone ask.  "Or they were just trying to keep it from happening?"  I thought about that question.  Of course we'll never know now; but we should try to know, though it makes no difference.  Did they know?  Did they see it coming way back when it might have been possible to stop it?  And did they do nothing?  Or was everything they did, thinking to stop it happening, the very things that would bring it about?  Were we all doomed all along, right from the start?  And maybe if we had done everything different, we would still be here, now anyway, watching everything coming apart, piece by piece?

Seven people were standing, crying, though no one cried on the way here.  "Our tears will keep us from seeing it.  You shouldn't know when the end is upon you.  Let it come and engulf you, without you knowing.  Then you can pretend it might not have happened at all but just by some chance did.  You shouldn't know your world is going to end.  That's the one thing you should never know."

How can I say it's wrong to think like that?  Wrong to think right up to the very end it'll continue?  But I can't think that way.  I can only think someone has to be there when it ends, to see it end.  It shouldn't end all alone, all by itself.  It's a world.  It shouldn't be left all alone.  Nothing should be left all alone at its end.  Someone has to be there.  Just someone.  Anyone.

Three people were laughing.  "We'll go out with a smile on our faces," I heard them say.  "That way it'll feel like we had some say about it, a hand in it, that we were part of it, not apart from it, like it's something we're sharing with the world." 

That isn't wrong either.  How can it be?  But I can't feel that way.  I won't be there to be a part of it, only to watch it.  The world will end at four in the afternoon on a cloudy day.  And that will be that.

I didn't know the world ending would be like closing a spigot.  I thought it would come with an apocalyptic swarm; but it didn't.  It was a running flow coming to a trickle then stopping altogether.  Everything just stopped, all at once.  A great wind wound down to a breeze; a Celtic Wind, a strong wind I thought would carry me away when it hit.  But when it hit, it barely fluffed my hair; then it stopped.  Of all that went when the world ended, I grieved most for the wind.  Somehow I thought the wind would start it all up again, making a whole new world; but it didn't.  It too died.  Now it's all gone - it's as the little ones say: all gone.