Late at night, when the clock ticks and tocks, and the sound of the windchimes that adorn the front porch ring only for me...those are dangerous times. But almost always, if I face those memories and their inevitable reflection, I reach for the keyboard with desperation--like a drowning man I grab for that thing--the only thing that will save me from the dark cold waters. In such desperation and release, the following words created themselves in the dark...
NEVER LOOK AWAY
I have seen both Heaven and Hell on earth, in all its splendor and rot. I have taken life and given up my own in heart-breaking pain and weakness. And I have stood on ground never trod by humankind...have looked over vistas no one has ever seen before...or since. Finally stopping when there was no higher to climb, I have wept frozen tears at the beauty that lay at my feet.
I have been caught up in the lazy inhumanity of evil, and walked amidst the burned corpses of those executed on the tarmac of Entebbe. And I swam at midnight in the Indian Ocean and watched my strokes each cast a spell as the phosphorescent plankton trailed arcs of green radiance.
Like a cat yawning in the August heat, I've seen hideous death casually creep over the land and leave mountains of bloated corpses flood the rivers. And I've seen a thousand impossible sunsets, and stared into thousands of magical campfires as Aurora moved like green ghost dancers in the northern sky over ancient rivers.
I saw legions of men crucified on the way into Kampala, as those who succumbed earlier, lay rotting in pools of black blood on the side of the road. And I saw the endless herds of wildebeest and antelope on the Serengeti, snake and ripple from horizon to horizon as giraffe ran amidst them in their slow-motion gait.
I saw the infant breathe her last in a Hell-on-earth shanty town, as the merciful flames delivered her from the feeding rats to her mother, dead some days before. And as the baby mewed its last sound, calls to worship floated over the breath-taking sunset as shark-fin dhows slid on silver waters.
And as I saw all this...I never looked away.
I have seen thousands of souls redeemed in the waters of the Ganges as upstream at Varanasi, the untouchable mountain ascetics ate the flesh of unburned corpses floating from the crematorium. And as the holy cannibals feasted, the water ran red with the fire of the puja performed by mountain priests along the ghats of the holy river.
I never looked away.
I've seen rivers flowing uphill along Incan highways north of Ingapirca, and heard and saw the ancient Incan ghosts moan and wail as they were put to death every night at the peradones ruins out from Achupayus. I saw the miracle of the river north of Banos as it found its momentum toward the Amazon where the nights were full of Ayahuasca visions from which few of us came back the same. We ran with the jaguars in the forest and flew with the condors on dark thermals that breathed on black mountains. And through the sacred Incan dreams...I never looked away.
Ugandan soldiers in Kampala tried to beat me to death with their rifle butts, and all I could see was their bare feet surround me, and their big guns coming down on my body again and again. I kept my eyes wide open throughout the beating. I laughed through bloody lips as I realized how poor was the Ugandan army as not one of the soldiers had a bullet between them. I laughed and laughed through the blood, knowing I would not be shot.
To look away would allow the horror to creep toward me--claim me where I cowered. I never looked away. Like a terrible black beast, the fear and horror stalks me--waiting for me to...look away...and claim me in my fear. And so, I never looked away.
My father taught me to never look away. "Face what you have to face," he said to me so many years ago. "Never look away. Never."
Sage advice from a simple man. And as he lay suffering and dying--a shell of who he had been...I never looked away from the horror that smothered him. I never looked away from my father. Never once. No matter how bad it got. I never looked away from him.
Never look away...there is no escape from true evil. There is no comfort found in shutting one's eyes. To do so always feeds the fear. Best to stare the Devil right in the eye, and smell its foul breath.
And when the beauty you see threatens to strip away the normalcy of your life forever, the grandeur gifted to us demands that we see the pitiable life we almost settled for, and trade it for a life without boundaries...without the safety of normal things.
And through it all—the grandeur and squalor, we must never look away.
