In a movie
theater….
OK, you
know the facts as well as I. How can you not? It’s all over the news, all of
the radio, all over the TV. Twelve people are dead. Fifty injured. The gunman
is 24, and is supposed to have acted alone.
Questions
arise. The first being, of course, why?
Well, we’ll
probably know, or think we know. We’ll get the profile, the backstory, the
teachers interviewed, the neighbors quizzed. We’ll see the anguished mom as she
races to Colorado to be with her son. We’ll do the whole damn thing.
My take?
The kid had
never been alone at night in a forest.
There’s
something about it, you know. I used to do it at the Acres—leave the comfortable
back bedroom and trot up the hill. Open the shack, blow up the air mattress,
and climb into the top bunk.
The first
thing is darkness—a darkness so absolute that the old cliché is true. You
cannot see the hand in front of your face.
Right.
That’s why you have the flashlight.
Second is
the sound. At first, it’s the sound of wind high up through the trees. It’s a
constant whoosh, varying in intensity, but still constant. You shine the
flashlight upward, and see trees swaying.
The forest
is communicating. Quite literally—through branches, through roots, through
fungi in the soil.
In fact,
the forest is the macro extension of the human brain. The dendrites that form
our nervous system? The word is derived from the Greek word for tree.
And so our
brain is a forest. And the forest is a brain.
Another
sound—the telltale sound of a mouse. You shine the flashlight at the counter,
and she’s there. She stares at you. You at her. You give her permission. She
goes to the wood box, and retrieves her smallest young. Takes it in her mouth
and goes outside. Returns, repeats the procedure. Five times.
On her last
trip, she looks back.
It’s not
thanks, but acknowledgement.
The eyes
are adjusted now. In fall and winter you see stars, more than you’ll ever see
in the city. You remember an old friend who climbed to her roof after the
hurricane had shut plunged the entire island of Puerto Rico into darkness. She
spent hours on her back, at last seeing the stars.
You doze,
but not for long. Something is moving, and then snorting. Then a crash through
the woods.
Deer.
And yes,
they do snort.
I tell you
all this because I have seen it, felt it. The experience can be unsettling.
What’s out there? Is there something moving, something approaching….
…something
I can’t see?
You’re alone.
Go outside? Flash on the flashlight?
I’ve done
that. And the woods appears normal. It’s just your fear.
Something
swoops onto the tree. You remember—the flying squirrel.
I used to
describe this to my students, in the days when I was working, had a job. I told
them about Franny, who turned off the refrigerator before she went to sleep —it was too loud. And my
students?
Most of
them slept with the TV on. In fact, most of the TVs were on even as we spoke.
They were never turned off.
The
question is whether they should ever be turned on. Neurologically, the right
side of the brain is stimulated by the cathode ray tube, plasma screens,
computer screens. It’s why Internet pornography is so addictive. It’s why
volunteers, even if paid to do so, cannot give up television. It’s why your eye
is drawn to a TV, if one is on in a room.
Easy to
bash television. There’s a 32-inch TV fifteen feet from where I sit. My iPad is
charging—I will play electronic Sudoku for perhaps an hour throughout the day.
My worry?
This 24 year old kid—which he neurologically is—grew up as skewed as he is
because the only reality he saw was provided by screens constantly jolting his
dendrites into an alpha state.
He’s never
seen the mouse, the young pup in her mouth, the tail hanging down.
His only
reality is a movie house at midnight, smoke bombs, and killing.
