CHaos
Most of the time, when I’ve flown these past few years, it’s been about or around the East Coast. Boston to New York. New York to Florida. Florida to Boston. The thing about it is that these flights spend upwards of maybe 85% of their time above human-populated areas. Small towns, mostly, not so much the big cities, but still, you can see the signs of people everywhere. Roads. Fields. Buildings.
Flying home from LA, it’s not like that at all. Over much of California, Arizona, on and on, it’s just sort of… free, down there. Not forests, either, not wild, untamed nature, trees and rivers waiting to be clear-cut and strip-mined and hunted to extinction with guns and traps and poison and just not enough to eat anymore. No, these are dead-already places below me. Untouched by people, or maybe overtouched. I find myself obsessing over it. I keep pulling out my phone to take a picture for Priyanshi, and then I put it back to try to focus on my work– but sure enough, I’m pulling it out again a minute later.
I think about what it might be like to be down there myself. Mesas, canyons, features I don’t quite know the names of, deep wounds carved by water long gone. The rocks are still red and raw, stinging in the sunlight. It’s hard to get a sense of scale without any of the usual things down there to compare off of, but I’m sure that those ridges tower over me. There isn’t a single bit of regular geometry; everything is bendy-blurry chaos, messy, awful routes from anywhere to anywhere– and I’m sure that even that slightest sense of layout I can gather from up here would be lost completely among the rocks.
A plane flying overhead would never see me down there. No one aboard would even think to notice, even if they were staring straight at where I was. Just a dot, nothing.
But I can see Coyote.
He can see me. I can feel his eyes as I gaze out my tiny window. He stares up at me with a certain sadness, and I know, somehow, I know that this is the spot. It was down there among the red rocks, right where he is standing now, that he found the great Black God with His blanket laid out, covered in glittering stars. It is where he is standing now that the great Black God once stood, carefully placing those stars one by one up into the sky. A perfectly designed pattern, orderly and wise. It was the Black God’s plan that human beings should always be able to look into the sky and see the path plainly charted to their destiny. Guidance overhead for the people of the world when they came, that was Haashch’eezhini’s plan.
Coyote sat, and he watched the Black God at work. Coyote wanted to play. Coyote was so young, then, and impatient. More impatient than he is now, even, and Coyote wouldn’t be Coyote if he wasn’t impatient. This was before he’d had his son, and there was no one else alive yet in all of the world except for Haashch’eezhini, so he was impatient for Haashch’eezhini to finish with His work.
Maybe Coyote could join in. He asked if he could place the stars, too; “Oh, Haashch’eezhini,” he said. “Let me place some stars into the sky. I will help you with your pattern. I will make it even more beautiful.”
Haashch’eezhini was hesitant. This was before so many of Coyote’s other stories had happened yet, the foolishness and mischief, but He had heard all those stories around the fire so He knew how much trouble Coyote could make. Coyote, though, was persistent.
“Oh, please, Haashch’eezhini. Please let me place some stars!” he begged, and the thing is that it is very hard to say no to Coyote when he begs– those soft-shining eyes of his, the whine of his voice, the eager wagging of his tail, it’s almost impossible to say no. Coyote begged and begged. Finally, the Black God relented. Coyote would be allowed to place just one star up into the sky, a special red star, red like the rocks, just for himself; Coyote was tremendously excited! He scooped up the red star from atop the blanket with his paws, and he promised he would be very careful and thoughtful and that he we would place the red star in a beautiful spot, but he was so tremendously excited that he couldn’t contain himself long enough to think any sorts of thoughts about anything, and so he just leapt up and slapped his special star onto the stone arch of the night without any sort of reason for where. It didn’t even hold fast, it had been placed so recklessly, it began to slide along the sky, a little bit this direction, a little bit that direction.
Coyote was delighted! A special star that moved in a special way, and it was so beautiful, where he’d placed it, because he had been the one to place it there! He was immensely proud of himself, and proud of his star.
But Haashch’eezhini was very upset. The star had disrupted His pattern. It had been placed without any thought, and none of the stars were supposed to be moving like that. He began to shout at Coyote, tell him it was awful, how he’d placed his star, that he ought to be ashamed of himself– and He chased Coyote, run, run, run!– all the way to a single tree at the farthest horizon before coming back and doing His best to continue His task, work around the mistake.
Coyote sat below the tree, heartbroken.
He did feel ashamed of himself, just like the Black God had told him to. His star was ugly, and it was all wrong. It moved wrong. Its teeth were crooked, its neck and torso were too long, its legs were too short and its eyes were set too deep into its head, its nose was too big, its ears were too small, its jawline was awkward and pathetic and it could never do anything right at parties.
Coyote gazes up at me from down among the star-red rocks and he tells me with his eyes that he’s sorry for putting me up here in the sky the way he did. He tells me that he feels just the same as me, a lot of the time. All of the time, maybe.
It never stops hurting, really, but he isn’t mad about it the way he used to be. When Haashch’eezhini first told him how awful he was, he got so mad that he marched all the way back to where Haashch’eezhini was standing with His blanket, and he waited until the Black God was looking away, and then he went rushing in– he grabbed the blanket with his paws and with one mighty heave he hurled all the remaining stars up into the sky.
What a mess! Chaos!
Haashch’eezhini was furious!! Everything was ruined!– His beautiful design, His plans for the world and people. All the stars He’d been placing to guide humans to their destinies were now scattered randomly in bands and clumps and nonsense-shapes! Mesas and canyons and bluffs and dry riverbeds, branching and feathering and twisting and turning and stopping abruptly wherever they felt like it. Humans would have nothing, now, to guide them. Humans would be lost. Haashch’eezhini began to shout again, louder than before, and again He chased Coyote off to that single tree on the horizon, run, run, run, but now He did not stop there. He kept on chasing Coyote, run, run, run, around and around and around the tree, until Coyote turned sharply and scampered up into the branches– and that should tell you how frightened Coyote was; coyotes are not at all good tree-climbers.
Haashch’eezhini stood below the tree glaring up at Coyote, shaking his fist. “YOU HAVE RUINED EVERYTHING!” He bellowed in His God-Voice. “YOU ARE TO BE PUNISHED! YOU ARE TO BE CURSED FOREVER TO MISERY! FOREVER YOU SHALL BE ALONE AND UNHAPPY! FOREVER YOU SHALL BE HUNGRY, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU MAY EAT, YOUR BELLY SHALL NEVER FILL! YOU SHALL NEVER BE SATISFIED! NO JOY SHALL BE YOURS TO KEEP, ONLY TO GLANCE AT AS YOU PASS, OR TO DIP YOUR TOES IN, AND THEN LOSE FOREVER! YOU SHALL LOSE YOUR FAMILY! YOU SHALL–”
Suddenly, He stopped shouting, stopped shaking His fist– His great arms fell limp to His sides. Staring up at Coyote in the tree, He could see the sky between the branches. He hadn’t so much as glanced at it before losing His temper and chasing Coyote here.
It was beautiful.
He forgave Coyote. He told him how beautiful it was, what he had done. He took back all the curses.
Or no, He didn’t.
All stories about Coyote are true, but not this one– not this part of this one, at least. The true way that it always goes is this: most magazines don’t even read your submission before rejecting it, and when you do get published your dad pretends like it didn’t happen, “You are a shadow”– and your mom doesn’t even watch your latest short-film before telling you that it’s awful– she knows that it’s awful because you were the one to make it, and she’ll never watch it. “Why can’t you be normal like your sisters?”
You don’t even want her to watch it, anymore. Even if she did, it would be too late to take back all the curses.
Not even Haashch’eezhini could take back curses like that.
Coyote’s eyes and mine can’t find each other any more. The plane has carried me far away from him. The mad red rocks give way to hills, and then to mountains with snow, and trees down the side, and then, at last, the geometry I’m used to– squares and rectangles, roads and buildings laid out in perfectly planned patterns. Order and purpose everywhere. Design. Guidance– you can look down from an airplane and learn so much, know so much, understand so much. You can look down from an airplane and start to get a sense for our fingers tightening around the world, feel like everything is under control. There is a map we have laid out across the Earth to be seen from airplanes, or space, even, to tell us that things are managed. Our destiny is manifest. There are roads and bridges to remind us to pay our taxes, there are smokestacks in neat little rows to remind us to wear our masks and empty ballfields to remind us to keep apart from one another. There are lots of red traffic-lights to remind us to leave early for work. There’s a cell-tower to remind us to upgrade our wireless plan. There’s a golf-course to remind us to reserve a funeral plot for ourselves– you never want to leave those things for the last minute. There are green-beige fields and irrigation trenches to remind us to buy groceries after we land, on our way home. There are parking-lots after parking-lots after parking-lots after parking-lots after parking-lots after parking-lots to remind you to fill up the tank in your secondhand Toyota Supra while you’re at it. You’d hate to be caught out with an empty tank.
There are cranes and bulldozers to remind you to cash that check you got for the government seizing your land in Oregon, and malls to remind you to spend all that on things you want, and plenty of them, the check is a fair price for a hillside.
If you’re lucky, you can see your house as you pass overhead, to remind you that you have a family and a place you belong. You are loved. You matter. The things you do matter.
Back down in the twists and the turns of the wasteland, Coyote can’t see any of this. He has nothing to guide him. Coyote is all alone, all alone, and he is lost.
Write back to me with your thoughts at [email protected].