Kent Nerburn

Last evening we had some friends over — a couple who teach history at the local university, and a man who, in some measure, is responsible for my decision to begin writing. He is 78 or 79, elfin in appearance, but with a penetrating look that speaks of depths of experience and understanding that I cannot begin to fathom. He was a child of the holocaust — an Austrian jew who, as a child, was taken by his mother to England to escape the spreading darkness of Nazism. He spent some time in the camps, as I remember, and ended up in the United States where he has worked in the union cause as an editor, and with the Ojibwe tribe here in northern Minnesota as the coordinator of housebuilding efforts during the halcyon days of government programs during the sixties.

The other friends who were at dinner teach history; he manifests it. He is an historical artifact in the best sense of the term: the passage of time is etched in his face and his memory, and is part of the warp and woof of his life experience. A person could do worse than studying his life as a way to understand America in the last fifty years. But, more than that, listening to him and trying to understand the world as he sees it is to gain an insight into our contemporary life that can be attained in no othe way.

Then, today, I was at the local recreation center where I huff and puff on various weight machines in an effort to hold off the ravages of my own encroaching age. A man was sitting next to me in the locker room and we struck up a conversation about the trials and travails of the various exercises we do. He was old and sagging, but, like our dinner guest, he had an immeasurable depth in his gaze. He happened to mention that swimming was his therapy. “I’ve been doing it for over eighty years,” he said. The math, though not exact, was easy: he had to be at least eighty five, maybe more. He was pleased to enter into a conversation with someone. Since it’s a university recreation center, most of the people using it are somewhere around twenty. A sagging, balding old man whose skin is stretched tight and mottled over his skull is not a person with whom most of them would strike up a conversation. But I, being closer to his age, was better able to see past the age to the man himself.

It’s a funny thing, aging. In the cases of both these men there is a wealth of knowledge and experience. But neither of them looks like Bertrand Russell or Arturo Toscanini. They just look like old men. And because of that, they are seen as elderly rather than wise.

I’m not about to make some romantic claim that all old people are fonts of wisdom. But it is true that a certain understanding comes with age. We have not been where they are, but, at least chronologically, they have been where we are. They understand something fundamental about me, just as I understand something fundamental about the strapping, headphoned twenty year olds with whom I share that exercise room.

The look that I saw in the eyes of both those older men in the past two days was a look of people who know they are societally irrelevant, but know that they understand something essential that the rest of us have yet to comprehend. They have simply accepted the fact that they are not likely to be sought out by the younger generations to share what it is that they have come to understand. Their time has come and passed, and few of the younger generations want more from them than reminiscences.

I was pleased to speak to both these men. I hope I did them honor in our conversations. I hope, too, that I was listening to them for what they can teach me about life, not merely for what they can reveal as witnesses to the past. They both rest strongly in my memory, more strongly than any other human interaction that I have had in the last two days. Their respective mortality is so close to the surface that it echoes in some deep and irreducible part of my own being.

And then, there are those eyes. “The lamp of the body,” as we are taught. But more, the reflection of the spirit. And it’s not what they see, it’s the depth they reveal. In both cases, I felt both judged and understood. It was disconcertingly calming. It somehow said, “It’s okay that you are who you are, because you are where you should be for your stage in life.” It was the kind of ratification that I hope to give my son as I see him moving through choppy waters — a look of understanding that says, “You are not alone.”

It’s so easy to dismiss these looks that come from our elders. We live so strongly within the boundaries of our own experience. If we long for anything, it is usually a time past, when we were younger and not yet shackled by some of the crazy decisions we have made. We seldom long for a future where our bodies are less, but our spirits and insight are more. Yet, that future is there. It’s in the eyes of those who have lived longer, seen more, and come closer to a resolved understanding of their place and purpose on this planet.

I feel better as a man, better as a human being, and filled with a new sense of challenge and responsibility for having had the encounters with those two old men. I feel observed, and, in a strange way, ratified. They have given me the gift of their witness. May I take that gift, learn from it, and find a way to pass it on to my son, to other young men, to all those who come behind me, thinking they are discovering a world that has never been seen before.

I just returned from the local clinic — some routine bloodwork. As I drove in our driveway I saw my son’s sling for his broken wrist draped across a chair. And, of course, our friend in the ICU is always on my mind. Three folks, three different circumstances. Just three out of a hundred I could search out in my immediate circle of acquaintances, all needing medical care, none able to pay for it on their own if they didn’t have insurance.

Something is wrong here. How much is it costing our poor, unconscious friend in that chamber of machines over in Fargo? A hundred thousand dollars? A half a million dollars? A jillion dollars? Who knows? And who beyond an occasional shiek or Enron executive could actually pay? Auto accidents and strokes do not happen only the wealthy, yet the costs of treatment are beyond comprehension. Then there are the college kids who can’t afford any health insurance and either must rely on the statistical likelihood of someone their age staying healthy, or they have to scam on some system meant for the truly indigent. Problem is, in the face of medical expenses, we are all rendered truly indigent.

I am constantly mystified by how we can be so out of alignment as a society that people are reduced to being more afraid of getting sick than of being sick. What happens to our politicians when they get elected that they forget the fundamental human values of caring for our brothers and sisters? Do they suddenly become ideologues or heartless human beings or mere totters of economic ciphers? Do a few expense account lunches with lobbyists make them think that laser-guided missiles are more important than health care for our children? Or do they truly believe the P.R. ooga booga about “socialized medicine” and “Canadian-style health care?” The fact is, we could solve this if we chose to. But, instead of saying, “We, as a society, can do this,” we say, “We, as a society, cannot afford to do this.” It seems to be the one place where optimism is supplanted by a dour, small-minded caution.

I find it tremendously upsetting that an entire generation has been taught that they are not their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. But who can blame them for believing this? They cannot even afford to keep themselves. But we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. It is our human responsibility to care for the young, the sick, and the elderly. And some of those responsibilities are so large we must hand them over to the broader community, which, in contemporary society, means the government.

I cannot build roads. I cannot repair bridges. I cannot build school buildings. I cannot provide medical care for the sick or care for the elderly. These responsibilities, must, by necessity, become part of a common responsibility. Wanting to keep all my own money and pay none for the common good is, at best, an unthinking response to the fear that my own money is not enough to take care of my own needs. At its worst, it is a selfish belief that I don’t have to share. An infantile response, if ever there was one.

As I walked out of the clinic, an old woman in her mid-eighties was right behind me, moving unsteadily in her walker. Her hands were knotted and covered with liver spots. Her ankles were swollen and her right hand shook with a palsied tremor. I could no more have walked through that door and let it slam shut on her than I could have kicked her walker and knocked her over. Yet slamming the door on people like her is exactly what our society is doing in the name of tax relief and high-minded bassoonings about self reliance.

I don’t care where you look for your spiritual guidance — Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Black Elk, Mohammed, or anywhere else. Somewhere in there is a belief that the strong help the weak, the rich help the poor, the fortunate lift up those who have fallen.

Maybe it’s time our elected leaders re-read the Beatitudes rather than running around waving some out-of date old flag that says, “Don’t tread on me.”

I’m stunned, humbled, and astonished by the response I’ve gotten to this new website format. It probably helps that I’m actually putting some materials on it for a change. But it’s more than that. It’s the outpouring of heartfelt comments from so many people so quickly. I’m not sure how I’m going to keep up, or how I can manage this while keeping the inner solitude necessary to inhabit the spaces in the imagination where a writer necessarily must live. It’s an occupational hazard: your inner life has to be stronger than your outer life, especially at the time of actual creation. You need to be able to inhabit a landscape of the imagination while walking the landscape of everyday life. All it takes is one screw-up on your car insurance bill, or a leaky faucet, and your inner world falls apart. And God help you if something of consequence happens — a sick child, an argument with your wife, the dog biting the mailman (all hypothetical at the present time, blessedly). I never imagined that the kind words of readers could also serve as a tug away from this inner landscape. But, it’s true. You tug on me even as you lift me up and strengthen me in my resolve to inhabit this landscape.

So, what to do? The first thing is simple housekeeping: a blanket statement to all of you that I am reading and taking to heart every comment you are sending, but I’m going to have to limit my personal responses. If I write to each of you personally, I can’t write to all of you generally. And it’s generalized writing — my books — that have served to call forth this outpouring of good feeling. Either I write books or I write letters of response to readers. So, if you send comments, know that they are read. But don’t wait at your cyber mailboxes for a personal response. Think, instead, that your kind words are putting wind in my sails and allowing me to move into uncharted waters, from which I will send back messages in terms of the books that I write. You are giving me courage and resolve. If the books I create from this point forward move you or enlarge your world, know that the courage your words gave me allowed those books to be created. And that’s the truth.

But there’s something more going on, as well. Though most of you are writing to me to say nice things about my work, what you are really doing is celebrating or praising a sensibility. I’m merely the galvanizing point for that sensibility. Now, this isn’t some “aw shucks, it tweren’t nothing, maam” kind of comment. I’m pleased and gratified, and not unaware, that it is my words that are doing that galvanizing. But it is not me, but the sensibility, that is important. Let me move back a step and explain. I currently have two distinct but loosely-linked main readerships. One is the Native American readership. We’ll leave for now the question of whether I have a right to be writing in this territory. Suffice to say, for current purposes, that one group of readers finds the Native American writings the most meaningful. Another prefers the homiletic books — the books that spiritualize daily affairs. Then there is a sort of literary diaspora out there of people who like Road Angels and the late, lamented, Haunting Reverence. But they are, for the most part, different breeds of cats.

What unites you all is a belief in a moral purpose to the universe, and a humble attitude toward the mystery at the center of life. How people approach this mystery may vary. But all my readers recognize it, honor it, and wish to live in its presence. Life, however, does deal us curve balls like screwed up car-insurance bills and telemarketers and spats with our spouses and kids goofing up in school — whatever the crisis of the day might be. And suddenly we are not in the presence of the mystery but in the presence of some small anger, frustration, or petty administrative obsession. My works tend to reassert the mystery and serve as a reminder that the goodness and miracle is there, even though we may not be living in its presence at the moment.

What I see as a worthy goal of this website is the possible forum for people to share their struggles to live in this sensibility. In all humility, it’s not me that’s important. It’s what I point you towards, and what I articulate that helps you keep your eye on the mystery at the heart of life. It’s the assertion of the spiritual shining through the everyday.

My hope is that you who find this website will use the “comments” section to articulate some of your own feelings about the struggles and mysteries of life that my books have illuminated in your life. And that each of you will read the comments as diligently as you read my entries, and that you will respond to and with the common sensibility that we all share.

Truly, I don’t write to draw attention to myself. One of my psychological mantras in life is “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” And, I assure you that the wizard here has no more magic than the wizard to which that comment refers. I want to draw attention to a sensibility, and to ratify it and strengthen it in each of you. It’s a sensibility of recognizing that the world is a place of light and shadow, but that we must live our lives, as best we can, as a witness to the light. What makes you as a readership unique is that you recognize that there are no easy answers. You are thoughtful seekers, not believers in some spiritual toolbox.

I want you to find each other through this website. It may not be a direct interpersonal connection. It may be nothing more than a constant ratification that there are others of like mind and heart out there. So, write to the sensibility; write to each other; write from your experience or write from your hopes. Let me, let this website, be a conduit. This is a chance for us to find each other. I’ll be reading and watching with as much interest as all the rest of you.

More soon, and, hopefully, less, as well.

The other day I received two very different notes from readers. One, a kind and thoughtful touch from a man who appreciated my candor in revealing the person beneath the veneer of “author;” the other, a heartfelt but vicious attack by a Nez Perce woman who raised the well-known, but never well-answered, issue of whether white people should write about Indians. I know I touched a nerve in her, and she touched a nerve in me.

I struggle with this issue constantly. I believe that imaginative sympathy combined with insight born of research or deep spiritual immersion can produce enough affinity for an author to at least brush against another’s self-understanding. But, at the same time, we each have a sacrosanct knowledge, perhaps personal, perhaps cultural, that is inviolable and unreachable by others.

I do not believe in spiritual appropriation, and we have taken most everything not nailed down from the various Indian peoples of this continent. But we are common creatures of a common species, and our capacity for joy, love, fear, and hope is what binds us together as humans. The challenge is to assert the commonality without trying to steal the uniqueness.

It is risky business, and we do not always get it right. But if we are not willing to take this risk, we cannot be creators. It is only by touching what is common that writers, musicians, painters, dancers, and all other makers are able to communicate beyond themselves. I guess the key is, indeed, personal authenticity, for the authentically human is where we all meet. And getting below the various veneers is the only way to achieve this meeting.

I thank the two readers for writing. The one enriched me, the other saddened me. As Dan said of me in Neither Wolf nor Dog, I’m a bit of a coward because I’m afraid of other people’s anger. It’s true. I take no pleasure in making others angry. It feels like a failure, not like a success, and I try to avoid it if possible.

But such is the writer’s, and creator’s life.

I could go on, but my family is starting to get up. My son in a cast for a broken wrist, my wife with people to meet and places to go, my failed Labrador with dog business (no swimming or fetching, please) to which to attend, and a couple of cats, one of whom appears to have emerged from his nocturnal activities with a broken tail.

I’ll go out to my writing cabin and move forward, hoping that the prose I create will touch some reader a year or two down the road. Hopefully, it will be a good touch. But maybe it will open a wound. I won’t know until it is published and read. Until then, all I’ve got is the gut feeling that something I write is either authentic or artificial. It’s a decent compass, and one I’ve learned to trust.

Keep in touch.

I spent Saturday and part of Sunday on a vigil at the bedside of a friend who was severely injured in an auto rollover accident (may there be a special hell for the people who produce and defend SUVs in the face of the overwhelming evidence that they are lethal machines). She may or may not make it, and, either way, in the wake of this horrible accident, two children, ages six and eight, are now for all times inhabited with the memory of an accident in which they were participants, and which resulted in their mother lying, lifeless and mangled, outside the car in which they were riding.

At such moments, one wants to rage against God, make bargains with death, whatever is involved. It makes me curse automakers, has me wandering into dark abstractions where a blithe, indifferent president is using bombs and weapons to reduce children in foreign countries to the same confused, terrified loneliness that is working its way into the heart of these two children so close to me. But none of that serves the larger good.

I know these feelings too well. I have been here before. I must indulge such feelings, even as I resist them. No good can come of generalizing, but no good can come of denial. Sometimes the world is a harsh place, and finding an appropriate response to that harshness is the task that confronts us all.

I muddled about in this dilemma in Calm Surrender as well as in Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, and was able, for the most part, to find spiritual gifts in the darkness. But it is not easy; it’s never easy.

These are the times that take the measure of one’s belief in good intentions and good thoughts as vehicles of healing and change. No room for Pollyanna optimism here. A horribly disfigured face, a dwelling that may no longer be able to house a strong spirit — such things do not respond well to twittering optimism and seven step approaches to elevated consciousness.

One can easily retreat to fatalism, quietism, a buddhic acceptance, or a casting of one’s self into the arms of a personal God. And all are options. But denial is not. Two young children are now folding and unfolding clothes, acting out giddy behaviors, and trying to find ways to disappear into the moment while being kept from their mother who is in a distant hospital in a distant city, and whose last image in their eyes is as a lifeless form lying bloody in a pile of shattered glass.

A fragile thing, life, and an indomitable thing, the human spirit. These children will heal, or at least anneal, and will go on to live adult lives, as we all do. With luck, good medicine, and the grace of God, they will do so in the caring presence of their mother. But, they may have to do it in the presence of only a memory, and a scream frozen in time.

I write this for no reason, and with no conclusion. Only the reminder to hug those close to you, to reach across the hard boundaries of embarrassed self-consciousness, and to tell those with whom you share your life that you love them and that their presence is a blessing.

We are too soon separated, too soon gone, and seldom at a time of our own choosing. Life must be celebrated when it can. Now is a good time to do so.

In the strange, fleeting way that is northern Minnesota, the first hints of fall are already in the air. This morning I saw my first leaf beginning to turn from summer green to autumn yellow. It is a bittersweet moment, because it portends a quiet, restful passage into fall, while reminding us that our summers here are short almost beyond understanding. You can’t even grasp the totality of the experience before intimations of change are in the air.

But, even so, we still sit on our screen porch late into the evening, listening to looncalls and watching moonlight dance upon the lake, always reminding us that it’s good to be alive.

I’ve been pushing forward on my Chief Joseph book. I have never undertaken so monumental a project. For almost two years now I have lived more in the presence of an historical event than in the real world I inhabit. The Nez Perce are my compatriots, the events of their exodus and exile my own personal narrative. My mind wanders to battlefields, specific overlooks, spots on the trail. My imaginative life is populated with images of Idaho canyons and Montana plains.

It is indeed a strange world the writer inhabits, where thought and imagination are more vibrant and vivid than daily affairs. Life becomes as much dream as reality, and dreams become continous with conscious thought.

I have decided to take a giant risk in this book. The only way I can give the story life and to do honor to the Nez Perce experience is for me to make myself a participant in the journey. Only by doing so can I create a ground level awareness of events in you, the reader. This would be fine if I were to leave it at that. But I am intent upon inhabiting a Nez Perce consciousness and affect to create a point of view. My way of entry is through inhabiting the English spoken by the Nez Perce who were interviewed after the event. Though English was their second language, and their skills of expression within it limited, the accounts they gave, not only of the journey, but of their treatment in the following decades, reveals the way they experienced and processed the events.
Thus, I’m involved in a daring kind of psychological re-creation based on a risky process of linguistic “reverse engineering.”

If this particular “blog” works, I’ll write more about this in the future. But, for now I’m going to sign off, because I may turn out to be incapable of posting this, and, thus, send it hurtling into the void. If you’re reading it, I avoided this fate. Let’s hope it shows up on your screens.