Momentum 1.0: "The Will to Live"

THE WILL TO LIVE

BY BILL MOHR

A very cold February rain. Mudslides lather
the coastline road. Gorman's under eight inches
of snow. The geniuses who designed Evacuation Routes
must've married the schoolteacher I met during a 19-
82 air-raid drill: children kneeled and hunched
their foreheads to the floor. "Why are they
doing this?" "We have to hope the missiles will miss
and land halfway between L.A. and Hawaii."
All my life I've felt like a piece of charcoal
waiting for the Pentagon to light the barbecue.
Don't be passive, I tell myself. Stop writing
escapist literature. Make a plan -- hustle over
to Marina del Rey and steal a boat. Prove the Will
to Live is stronger than the Desire to Eradicate.
Who cares if this power cruiser belongs
to a "self-made" millionaire? Craig, Brent, Patsy, Cathay,
John, Susan, Jim, Nancy, Bryce, Samantha, Hank, Phoebe,
Holly, Harry, Bob, Jack, Steve, Carl, w're not thieves.
We're simply imitating the heroic Vietnamese refugees.
Imagine the bombs are launched, but we escape,
steering as best we can towards some uninhabited
landscape. Children cry. I remember, and repeat,
a bedtime story about Myrtle the Whale:
one Christmas Eve, Santa Claus' reindeer were exhausted,
slowly losing altitude until the sleigh was skimming
the long Pacific swells. Deep underneath,
Myrtle could hear the deer's yelps of panic
as their hooves began tripping on water.
Myrtle breeeched, stretched out, let them
sprawl on her and rest until they could ascend
again. From above, her sprouts of breath glowed
like a wreath of bulbs in a Christmas tree
as Myrtle guided them to the Coast. Next year
Santa's loaded down with gifts for all. Halfway
to Hawaii he flies over a whaling boat. A harpooner's
aiming at Myrtle. Santa hovers between them.
"Hey, who do you think you're aiming at?"
"Get out of the way, Santa. I don't have
any quarrel with you." "I'm not going to let you
kill this whale." "Who's going to stop me.
This is the first whale I've seen in a week."
"You have a choice," says Santa. "If you kill
this whale, I'm turning around and returning
all these presents to the North Pole. Then I'll stick
a note at every house saying I was too sad
to deliver gifts because you murdered Myrtle."
The whaler ponders the anger of the world's
children and takes the harpoon out. In other stories,
Myrtle's friend, Georgina, helped her stop
bad people from stealing the Statue of Liberty,
but I don't remember the details, just as I wouldn't
recognize the girl who heard these stories
so many years ago. A few days after we've left L.A.,
I'm vomiting four times a day. Why did I expect
it to turn out any different? The ripening of consciousness, its pulsing roots shadowed in the rind that peels
around our portion of existence, magnificent
in its minuteness, was my only hunger. Every religion
missed it. All that miltaristic propaganda
about Jesus coming back, and centuries of Moslems
killing infidels, and each other, not to mention
communistic hatred of the invisible world --
liars, liars, perverse and gratuitous liars.
But since I was raised Catholic, I still want
a priest around to make a final confession.
The only one I trusted when I was growing up
in San Diego had half his lungs removed
because of cancer a few years after ordination.
His life was very painful; three hours of sleep
a night, and yet he rearely complained. He spent
his tiny wages buying groceries for families.
The last time I saw him he was sitting in his VW,
humming along with Madame Butterfly. The same car
hitchhikers stole after strangling him in a motel room.
They were never caught. And what I whisper now
is between God and myself. This work is no place
for such a wail of anger, sorrow, and need.