BRATTLEBORO — Homeless/Anything Helps/God Bless is printed in charcoal on a torn piece of cardboard.
I am getting off Interstate 91 at Exit 1 this October afternoon. Clouds scuttle across the sky. The bare branches of the trees reach up like thin arms. The owner of the sign bends over to light a cigarette.
He jots down something with a pencil on a scrap of white paper. He does not look at the cars that stop at the red light. He is not angry or anxious. He is waiting, a character in Beckett.
He is interested to see what will happen next. Conditions will change; he does not need to study meditation to know that. Minute by minute, he balances.
Life is a tightrope.
I recall an icy December afternoon when my car slid into a ditch. I had a broken leg and had to walk two miles of slippery dirt road to get home. Several times, I stopped in the middle of the road and called out, Help. My neighbors stared out of their windows and then shut the blinds.
* * *
Let's step backwards. It is earlier the same day. I stand in front of my classroom, where my students are divided into groups discussing aspects of Into the Wilderness by Al Gore.
I asked them to define illusion and to explain what the words an interior shift mean. How can we shift our attitude toward nature?
A black student hands in a paper; he is the only black student in my class, so that is why I mention it.
For weeks, I have been cajoling and exhorting and pleading with my students to write the truth. I have asked them to respond to the printed word, to argue for it or against it, to tear it apart, to question it instead of vomiting back the author's words like robots.
I have told them that facts never tell the whole story.
If facts told the whole story, life might be simple. But we deal with facts and emotions.
* * *
We are studying how to write. The topic for the semester is climate change: how it is caused by human activity, how climate change causes extreme weather conditions and pollutes the air and the oceans, the lakes and the streams.
We are reading The Atlas of Climate Change, a large volume that gives us the new statistics about floods, glaciers melting, hurricanes, droughts, sea levels rising, tornadoes hitting unusual places like Tucson, Ariz., and cyclones striking Chicago.
We have examined our connection with nature. We have debated whether humans are part of nature or separate from it. We have absorbed the facts, and there are a multitude of them that prove right now that the damage to the air and oceans might be irreversible because carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for 200 years.
We admit that humans are one species among many, even though we have analytical abilities and occupy the top of the food chain. We know we need pure air and water to survive.
We understand that we are an endangered species and have discussed what we can do as individuals and as part of groups to save the planet.
Something is missing, and I can't figure out what it is.
* * *
I drive back to Brattleboro. I woke up at 5 a.m., and I am tired and cannot wait to get home. Instead of driving under the speed limit, which would reduce my carbon dioxide emissions, I hit 70 miles per hour.
Cars whiz past. A huge white cumulous cloud hangs above me; its edges trail the sky like soft feathers. I remember the flotilla of yellow leaves carried by the tide on the Connecticut River when I walked across the bridge to New Hampshire.
Do humans think we are different? Or are we carried by a tide we cannot comprehend to an unknown destination?
When I was filling up the gas tank this morning, I heard singing. The notes were sweet. A flock of starlings, hidden entirely by a mass of crimson leaves, congregated in a maple tree. Indeed it was a Singing Tree.
There was the heavy smell of spilled gasoline and crushed cigarettes. The sign above me read Your engine craves clean.
The sign made no sense. There is no such thing as clean gasoline; cars do not crave. Words can deceive, put a spin on anything. You just have to know your audience. Politicians use a different speech at each stop when they campaign.
I tell my students that they must reveal the truth or writing has no meaning. I confess how hard it is for me to translate my thoughts into words on a page. It can be terrifying, like telling the truth when you have lied for years. What is the truth?
* * *
I pick up the essay the black student handed me earlier. Bravo.
Finally, I hear his voice. He knows all the statistics about climate change and how we might, according to Jared Diamond, learn lessons from past civilizations that failed, like the Mayans. He knows the Mayan population starved and finally revolted, destroying the palaces of the Kings.
He can recite the facts, but that is not, as I said, the whole story for any of us. The world to him means dog eat dog. He says we compete to survive and to be the top dog with the most goods and the most cash.
His paper is filled with sentence fragments, but it makes no difference. His ideas are clear.
He describes a mother in West Hartford who lives in a bad neighborhood with gangs and drug dealers and he says sure she has heard of climate change and she might know one or two things she could do, but the truth is her teenage son is out too late tonight and she is worried he might be shot so why the hell should she give a damn about something as big as climate change?
Some assume nature will remain a lovely backdrop on the stage of our lives and continue to offer us unlimited supplies of oil and gas to run our cars, businesses, homes, and factories.
I must admit that many days I feel I am not the teacher in the class but a student.
* * *
I remember the homeless man with the sign at Exit 1. He is not the first I have seen, and there seem to be more of them than I have ever seen. Had I never noticed? Have economic conditions changed that much? Is the dollar becoming worthless as it rolls off the press? Will I hold my job?
I flip on Vermont Public Radio. The reporter is interviewing a filmmaker who went across the United States and interviewed families being evicted from their homes. The report included the background sounds.
I hear a woman screaming over and over again: “What has happened to America?”