To a God Unknown Book

"In a dry year all signs fail."

There is little doubt that the migrants to the Salinas Valley of central California around the turn of the 20th century thought they had arrived in Paradise - like the Spanish and native settlers before them. This is why Joseph and his brothers quit their inhospitable Vermont. The climate was perfect. The resources and beauty abundant. The soil was fecund and waiting for seed. And the available technology was just right to exploit it all.

But the beautiful land has a history, mostly unrecorded; and it has ghosts. The ghosts include the present inhabitants, not only those of the past; some are even imported. The most recent ghosts are only vaguely aware of the history of the beautiful land. They live in a sort of hopeful fantasy of better things to come.

The fantasy calms the fears generated by the history. But not entirely. Certain mysteries - in the land and in other people - don't conform to the demands of the fantasy. These are annoying aberrations which pick away at one's consciousness. Both the land and people behave irrationally.

The problem with fantasy is that it becomes toxic like an infected wound if it isn't expressed and shared. Unfulfilled visions become resentments. Inarticulate dreams develop into emotional cancers. The more they are disappointed the deeper the fantasies are buried in the unconscious whence they manipulate mercilessly as if their existence is at stake - which it is.

The personal symbology of fantasy is complex. The smell of sage is too intimate to be communicated, even if one were aware of its effect. The goat-like shape of a mountain crest with glowing eyes at sunset is somehow vitally important, but inexpressibly so. Walking through a mountain pass feels like a fundamental change in one's existence; but it would sound mad to discuss it. Then there's the meaning of a father's blessing - an even deeper mystery.

Symbology slips into religion, or at least something like it, without warning. Hidden meanings emerge from nowhere. A boulder in a remote clearing creates fear; an unexpected encounter with a bull could signal forthcoming disaster; even one's husband can be confused with Christ. People can end up worshipping things because of their symbolic power alone.

When a person becomes a symbol of himself to himself, he is transformed. He is no longer strictly human; he becomes either divine or demonic, perhaps both. He may not realize the change, but others do if it confirms their own hidden fantasies. Some call it charisma, this capacity to tap the fantasies of others. But it is as likely a personality defect as it is a talent.

This is how a husbandman like Joseph sees himself - as divinely responsible for his stock, his land, his family and fully competent to lead. He is in charge. He decides. But of course he isn't and he doesn't. His fantasy is dependent upon the cooperation of things over which he has no control whatsoever - the weather, a mis-placed foot, other people, circumstances.

Perhaps there is a force, an awareness, a world-brain (as Joseph muses), that knows, perhaps even regrets, how life, which it has helped to emerge, is extinguished. If so, it is that which is responsible for turning Paradise into Hell. And it is that which has no sentimental fantasies - about life or death. Hell, it seems, is merely Paradise without the fantasies.