longing – Page 2

Longing for the good life

July 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey 15 Comments

“Excuse me,” I said, “can you help me with this? I have no idea what I’m doing.”

The twenty-something man—Kurt was on the nametag, with Can I Help You? under that—looked at me and smiled. When he did, the ring in his nose inched upward in a way that reminded me of winking. I fought the urge to reach out and pull on it.

“First time?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, things are tough all over, right?”

Since it’s just the two of us, he makes his way around the counter. The first shift at the factory would be over in fifteen minutes, which meant he had about twenty to get me taken care of before the afternoon rush. No problem. I’d be out of there by then.

“Here.” He pulled one of the slips from the kiosk and reached for a tiny green pencil with VA LOTTERY stamped on the side. “Here’s your ticket. You have five choices, just fill in the numbers you want.” He pointed to one of the boxes at the bottom—“Powerball goes here. Easy peasy.”

I thanked Kurt and he left me to brew more coffee and add another roll of quarters to the register drawer. If I’d asked him, he would have said he was getting ready for the rush. But I suspect that’s a lie, the truth being something a bit more esoteric—a person needs his privacy while choosing his lotto numbers.

That was the first time I’d ever played the lottery. And while Kurt was right when he said things were tough all over, that’s not why I played. It’s research for my next novel, a story in which the lottery plays an important role. And since I couldn’t very well write about something I didn’t know, off to the 7-11 I went.

But there was more than simple ignorance working against me. There was also disdain. I’ve never been a fan of the lottery. I’ve seen what it does to people. I frequent the 7-11 in town often, and each time I see the poorer folk of my fair town preyed upon by the false gods of riches and good fortune, plunking down dollar after dollar that would be better spent on bills and groceries. They say the Virginia lottery paves our roads and saves us money. That might be so. But all that makes me do is think about my smooth ride to and from work and how my comfort is surfaced by the unrealized dreams of others.

But I played anyway. Just to learn, just to write. Filled out one ticket and handed it to Kurt, who exchanged it for a receipt that went into my pocket. I left just as the afternoon rush pulled in.

The Powerball drawing was that night at 10:55 pm. I’ll be honest, I thought about my ticket more than a few times. Thought about it when the mailman shoved six bills into the box. When I remembered the grumblings of cutbacks at work. When I thought about just how better my family’s life could be with a few million dollars in the bank.

You don’t have to say it. The “Money isn’t everything” line , I mean. I know that. Believe it, too.

But still.

I sat there in front of the television and waited for the man in the cheap tuxedo and the woman in the sequined dress whom Kurt said would announce the winner. Sat there and watched as the big lotto machine whirred to life and all those numbered ping pong balls fluttered in the air. Sat there and dreamed of a life when finally—finally—I wouldn’t have to worry about electric bills and gas money and if the water heater was going kaput.

And you know what? It was a good life. It really was.

And also a life that evaporated in the twelve seconds it took for the machine to spit out the winning numbers.

I’d lost. Terribly. I’d lost as bad as a person could. Didn’t even get one number right.

Yet I still remember that world my longings built, one where want and worry were nonexistent and where I could exchange one set of problems for other, hopefully less intense ones. And I suppose that’s why so many people line up in front of Kurt each day. They don’t want to let that dream go, no matter how elusive and impossible—perhaps even immoral—they may be.

But then I ponder the fact that we all long for fairer lands, no matter how fair our surroundings here are. We’ll always want more or better or different. The learned among us call that a flaw.

Not me.

I think longing is a blessing. No matter how much its barbs and spurs prick, I welcome them.

Because we all long for fairer lands, and that is a holy longing. A beacon from God.

Guiding us home.

Where you belong

July 20, 2011 by Billy Coffey 15 Comments

Last January, satellite pictures of the Amazon rain forest revealed the presence of a hidden community living in three clearings in the Javari Valley, which lies near the Brazil/Peru border. Subsequent flight expeditions over the region confirmed about 200 people lived in the tiny village. Not a big deal, really. Despite notions to the contrary, the Amazon is home to many communities. What set this community apart, however, was that it had never been seen before. Scientists had stumbled upon a tribe of people unknown to the world.

I confess to a geeky side. News stories such as that one rock my world. Imagine that in an age of telescopes that can see into the farthest reaches of the universe and submarines that can reach the very depths of the ocean, there are still entire cultures that have somehow managed to remain hidden in the untrodden places of our fair planet. Cut off from civilization, blissfully ignorant of things like debt ceilings and Charlie Sheen and Jersey Shore. It’s a storyline straight out of Indiana Jones.

It’s enough to make me giddy.

It’s also enough to make me wonder what happiness they must enjoy. Imagine being able to live life unfettered by nasty things like time and career. You rise with the sun, venture into the jungle to either kill or dig up some breakfast, and eat it in a hammock surrounded by your family and friends. Repeat again for lunch and dinner. Maybe weave a basket or have a dance. Watch the kids play with critters and pets. Make sure the fire has plenty of wood. Go check the crops, then maybe visit your buddy who lives in the next hut to shoot the breeze and engage in a bit of gossip. Watch the sun go down. Go to bed. Do it all again the next day.

No taxes to pay or commutes to endure. No 401k to watch as it shrinks into oblivion. And who cares about gas prices when you’ve never even seen a car? No, the busy world you’ve never seen simply passes you by and leaves you alone. No muss, no fuss, just a hammock and the jungle around you.

I’ll be honest, I envy those people. They don’t know how good they have it.

Regardless of how much I long to chuck it all, fly to the Amazon, and apply for admission into the tribe, it won’t happen. The Brazilian government has a strict policy regarding uncontacted tribes. They are not to be bothered.

But just in case I would get that chance, I could see myself trekking down some forgotten jungle path and coming across the tribal chief, who would invite me to his hut for a little food and a lot of talk. And more than likely, he’d look at me and laugh.

“What are you doing here?” he’d ask. “What, you think WE have it good? Really? Tell you what, you try growing all your food in the jungle. Doesn’t always work, you know. And it’s not like you can just run down to the Food Lion for some chips and dip if the animals and the weather take your crops. Which happens, like, ALL the time.

“You can go hunting. Lots of animals in the jungle to eat. Of course, most of them will just as soon eat YOU. Try stepping on a snake or a spider or running across a panther. Tell me how that goes for you. And you better hope you don’t run into anyone from the tribe down the river, because they’ll just as soon kill you as let you pass.

“Can’t go to the hospital, either. We don’t have one here. We have a doctor of course, and he’s a real smart guy, but in the end the only thing he can do is pray to the gods and give you some plants to eat. Plants don’t cure everything, you know. And the gods…well, let’s just say they do their thing and we do ours. We don’t understand them, we just try to keep them happy.

“Sure, you can stay. You’ll probably live a few more years, most of us make it to 50 or so before we’re so worn out that we drop. That’s assuming you don’t get bitten or eaten or killed, though. Actually, why don’t you just run on back home where you belong.”

At which point I probably would.

And I would take with me this lesson: Life is tough. Doesn’t matter who you are or where you are. We’re all looking for something better, we’re all stressed, we’re all struggling for a little hope.

In a world that seems determined to point out our differences, those are similarities we will always share.

Longing for elsewhere

June 22, 2011 by Billy Coffey 10 Comments

What I pondered last Thursday morning:

I suspect the ocean is one of those precious things in life that one never tires of seeing; every time is as the first. Always the same sense of awed silence, always the deep exhalation of weights left behind to be picked once more later, once the ocean is still there but you are not. If the evolutionists are right, we all come from the sea. My yearly first glance at the ocean always makes me wonder they may be correct—I feel as though I’m home.

There’s little doubt the sea is in my blood, tucked somewhere in the folds of my DNA alongside a craving for sweet iced tea and an affinity for all things old. My parents have a copy of the Coffey family crest prominently displayed on their living room wall. Among all the colors and adornments are three dolphins in the center. Family lore states that the Coffeys of old were fishermen and sailors who left the Irish shores for the adventure of lands unknown. That would explain a lot in my case, though for me those faraway and mysterious places I long to explore lie not in the hidden corners of the world, but in the hidden corners of my own self.

It is freedom that the ocean symbolizes, at least to me. Possibility. A sense that despite how much we know, there is much more that waits. In a strange way that comforts me. There is a certain beauty in knowing you are small that cannot be found in adopting the lie that you are large. Humility may not be the most desirable of the virtues, but it is among the most valuable. And if the ocean gives me anything, it is that needed sense of knowing my place in the world.

I have no knowledge of what first drew my ancestors to the sea. As much as I’d like to believe it was pure wanderlust, I understand it may well have been a simple matter of economics. The first Coffeys arrived in Virginia around 1609 as indentured servants. I have a feeling we’ve always been a common lot, scraping and struggling and working to survive.

Still, the sea called them as it calls me these many centuries later. We have that in common. In the end, time is the only thing that separates us. Despite everything I have that my ancestors didn’t, I suspect I’m much the same as they once were. Same worries, same fears. Same dreams. The only difference between us is that they listened to that siren song over the waters and I have not.

But there are times—many of them—when I long to do just that. For the freedom, as I’ve said. And the possibility.

That’s what I was thinking last Thursday morning, all in the span of a few brief minutes as I stood on my balcony with a pair of binoculars and watched as a shrimp boat made for the distant horizon. I watched the rising sun cast its light against a white hull that bobbed in the currents. Thought of the men on deck—who they were, where they were going, the ones, if any, they were leaving behind. And despite the comforts of place and family that surrounded me, I quietly longed to join them. To break free. To sail away. Just as my forefathers.

As those thoughts clunked around in my head, the binoculars found one sailor on the stern of the boat. Though the distance between us was far, he appeared scruffy, grizzled. A veteran of the sea. A man you would want next to you when the sky and sea turned angry. In him I saw a ghost of a man I could have been in another life had I been born to mountains rather than water.

He was my mirror, this small speck of man through my lens—the me I never was.

As he stood there I saw that he was not looking outward toward the horizon, but inward toward land. To home. And though our eyes never met, I knew his thoughts.

I was weary of the earth and longed to escape to the freedom of the sea.

He was weary of the sea and longed to escape to the warmth of the land.

And I thought then that perhaps that is all of us in our secret hearts, you and I and all who have come before us—seldom content to be here, always longing to be elsewhere.