The Whistling Fire

for Jigme Norbu (1965 – 2011)

I last saw you on Kirkwood Avenue. I told you that I would be spending a year studying abroad in Germany. I’ve been in Freiburg im Breisgau for almost a year now. You told me you were getting ready to start another one of your Walk for Tibet awareness campaigns. Ambassadorsforworldpeace.org was one of the last things you ever told me.

A week or so before our final meeting, I was at The Snow Lion sitting by myself at a table that would normally sit eight people. I was the only customer in the restaurant at the time, partly because it was a weekday and partly because you had just opened a few minutes prior. I waited for my food to arrive. I have always ordered the same thing, even when I worked there as a waiter, fried rice with chicken, beef and shrimp, served with a salad with a homemade yogurt sauce and a large Coke.

When you came into the restaurant, my food had already arrived and I was scarfing it down like if I were Goku from Dragonball. Your wife, Mrs. Norbu, as I have always called her, was sitting nearby at a table for two. You walked directly to her table and sat across from her and then you saw me; you waived and then we had a brief long distance three way conversation. You then got up and came over and sat across from me and we started to catch up since I had been away from Bloomington for five years.

I told you about my six months in the Middle East, mainly in Israel, but I did mention to you that two weeks after I left Dahab, Egypt, a bomb blew up at a restaurant that I used to frequent called Al Capone’s and that twenty-three people died as a result of that explosion on April, 24^th, 2006; you listened patiently and then after some silence, you started to tell me about your many Walk for Tibet experiences.

The following story is the one that stands out the most to me; while I was eating, you told me that you had walked for so long during your last Walk for Tibet journey, that all of your toenails fell off and that you continued to walk regardless of the pain. Walking fourteen hours in a day was not uncommon for you; but you were not a common man after all. You my friend, were a man of great dedication, who walked over 8,000 miles to bring awareness to the plight of Tibet, a land with its own people, its own culture and its own resilient spirit.

You were hit by a car and died while walking along a highway during your Walk for Tibet journey from St. Augustine to West Palm Beach, Florida; you died doing something you believed in because that’s how you wanted to live your life.

Just before the school zone was an electronic speed board flashing me at 33mph. Instant reflex was to compare that speed with my speedometer, which was about right, but what caught my eye was the time on my radio, 3:33 and the gas gauge way below “E”. I pulled into the first gas station in sight. After waiting behind 3 cars, I noticed the price, $3.33 a gallon. I clicked in the auto-fuel-cutoff lever and went inside for a pack of smokes.

I grabbed a pack of Tripoli Turkish blends from the Tobacco Bin, 33% less tar for $3.33, less tax. Shaking my head in amazement at the $33.33 gas bill on register # 3, I bought 3 Triple Play lottery tickets.

All these 3s kept spinning in my mind.

Superstition, blind luck, chance coincidence, a direct channel from the gods, whatever it was, I knew it had to be a sign, an omen, definitely not something to be disregarded.

The 3 major dramatic questions are:

“Why all these 3s?”

“What do they mean? “

and “What do I do now?”

With this in mind, I turned to my cyberspace soothsayer, Madame Sarah Oracle’s No Nonsense Lucky Number and Mystic Numerology web site and entered, “Tripoli 33comma3colon33dash3point33parenthesis333and33% in large fonts”. An instant winner banner popped up and I immediately obeyed the flashing “Click Here” hypertext to claim my valuable prize. I was given a confidential confirmation code, 3-33 and a telephone number with a 003 area code that took 3 times to get a connection.

The exotic voice of Princess Alexis enticed me as she confided that corrupt and evil guardsmen were holding her captive in the castle dungeon until she reveals the hidden hiding place of the missing royal treasure. Her assassinated father, the ever good and kind king of an undisclosed land in the far northwest region of deepest, darkest South Africa, whispered to her the secret location just before his death. She explained to me her plan to foil her abductors and help the poor villagers of her kingdom by sending the vast fortune for safekeeping to an honest American citizen, like me, to keep for her until she could manage to escape and join me in the United States. I was honored that she would find me worthy of such a trust. She also said that her lucky number was 3, just like mine. I was now completely convinced. I eagerly shared the password to my savings and checking accounts – anything to help my new friend, the brave and precious Princess Alexis.

I had an electronic account, but that was about it. I’d been living hand-to-mouth, always paycheck-to-paycheck, and my last payment had stopped 3 weeks earlier after 3 months of unemployment. So you can imagine how surprised I was that my balance was now $33,333.33!

I tried calling the princess back to let her know that the transaction had taken place, but I couldn’t get through.

I’ve also tried asking all my friends by email about what I can do, but by some coincidence an Internet infection has entered their electronic banking and bill payment systems on their computers along with all the contacts on their mailing lists. What a vicious virus! I sure hope I don’t get it.

I’m seeking your advice concerning what to do about these huge amounts of money appearing in my account, which for some reason grows larger everyday. My bank teller warns me that the FDIC only insures up to $100,000, that I should transfer money immediately. I’m running out of places to put it all. Maybe you can help me. All I need is your account number and password…

Wow, that was quick. Your information just arrived in my inbox. I’ll save you the trouble and forward it for you to my sweet and innocent Princess Alexis. Computers are so awesome. I do wish I knew more about how they work.

I know you’ll be surprised at the new balance in your bank account, just like I was. I hope to hear from you soon.

Maybe I bumped her elbow. It could’ve been something as simple as that: the catalyst. And when she turned around to see me, her response was habitual – not calculated. She saw my face and then looked down my body and back up again with disdain, then disgust, and then she finished with a small laugh of gleeful pity. The entire assessment and pronouncement lasted a full second – not more than two.

Could I have imagined the disdain – or has there been some past interaction between us to prompt her disrespect? No, I am anonymous – and I have spent a lifetime cataloguing glances such as these. I know the difference between a pullback that implies I’m taking too much space, and a step-aside that extends respect for someone who needs to walk past. I’ve been thinner too – and I know these glances suddenly disappear. (They are replaced by different glances, but that’s another story.) Those who don’t experience them often dismiss the social sanctions that take place in mere moments. Imaginations, paranoia. To those who know them, they are as real as the furniture.

To be fair, she had been drinking. To be fair, it was late at night and I was on her turf. That is, anyplace where the body is put into motion. I can sometimes get her respect in the classroom, or behind a desk, a place where my body is secondary to my mind. The hour and alcohol would only serve to drop the decorum she might use at, say, the post office. She would note my body shape and size, attire and demeanor at the post office too, but the schoolgirl glee at my perceived defeat is reserved for late night. For slight intoxication. For a place where she believes I am unarmed, unwelcome.

We had just left the dance floor and I think I bumped her arm. We’d been out dancing and the music was ending for the night. We were coming back to ourselves – the selves that are no longer ecstatically moving, bodies pulsing rhythm. We were coming back to the selves that have to find meaning in our own lives, make decisions about who we are, how we project ourselves onto the bright canvas of culture. The bracketed existence of dance floor anonymity was finished. And though I don’t know the woman who gave me “the look,” I know how much she needs me.

What causes one to offer disdain toward another and think it is warranted? The fact that it will be excused, or lauded, for starters. What causes a person to dismiss the humanity of another? A need to elevate oneself, for one example. And that’s why the slender girl on the dance floor needs me to be fat. She needs it, and while she thinks she doesn’t want me around, she wouldn’t know how to live without me. And her fear that she could be me, but isn’t, adds the gleeful chuckle of dismissal to the end of her affront. I give her life purpose.

By the bar, late at night – this is not the time for conversation, but I catch her eye and look for a moment with real compassion. This does not even take a second, maybe half a beat. I am so out of place in this interaction – not doing my job. And indeed, I know how to do my job – to avert my eyes and show her the shame that I feel. I felt it as a child, and still do at times when someone like her catches me unaware, the shame of forgetting that I am not credible, followed by the hot rage of unspoken justice. But not this time – and not usually anymore. I just look at her with compassion – so different from pity. I am not afraid I could be her. I know I could be her. And I know that my ability to practice kindness toward her will help us both – and probably others whom we haven’t even met.

I just stand and stare at her, thinking: I know how much you need me. Without me, you’d have to do something with your life in order to feel good about yourself. You couldn’t just gloat about not being me. You couldn’t use me as the ballast that keeps your head from floating away thinking of all of those on the dance floor who are prettier or thinner or shapelier than you. Without me, you’d have to make someone else your scapegoat, and it might not be so easy, if there weren’t obvious physical criteria involved. Barring replacing me, you’d have to focus on who you want to be within yourself – not just in comparison to others. I want to ask the kind of rhetorical questions that prompt reflection in a quiet moment: What must you think of yourself to elevate the size and shape of your body – perhaps what you do to make it so — to traits worthy of virtue? How little must you think of yourself to look at me that way and take pleasure in it?

Her glance also makes me know that she doesn’t know me at all. Does my demeanor say it: Maybe you didn’t know, but any fat woman you meet in a social setting – especially one who’s doing something that uses her body: working at a job, dancing, buying clothes, eating a meal – she has character and fortitude to spare for surviving a world that uses her as you’ve just done. Fat people may scapegoat others to find their self-worth, surely. If she thinks she’s so different than me, then she doesn’t know me at all.

I don’t say any of that, but for our similarities, I seem to know something she doesn’t see. She doesn’t actually need to DO anything in order to be worthy of respect and positive attention in the world – neither do I. It’s already done. We are already fine people, just as we are. Even as she puts me down, she does not deserve my put-down. How much lower can we agree to feel? No lower. No more.

I didn’t speak at all, standing on the edge of the dance floor, late at night. But if I could read her painful need in her quick behavior, perhaps she could read my truth in a simple stare as well. Perhaps she heard me say:

“Gentle, darling. No one deserves your derision. Not even you.”