Tag: wonder

Picture Perfect

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

Jared seldom thought about life. But he did on that gray, overcast day.

As he walked through the neighborhood, wrapped in a thick coat, he thought of how he’d lost his job a month before.

What gives value to life? he wondered. He zipped his coat all the way up.

Happy days? Days when all pain is forgotten?

Or is it actually the pain? The pain that makes you remember the happy times?

Is life truly valued, Jared wondered, when you walk through a gray but momentary place like this–where you can grasp the pain if you’d like, then release it?

The feeling he had now: the impression that he could, in a quiet moment, appreciate the changing weather of life–even the clouds–was that wisdom?

Thoughtfully, he continued down the sidewalk under the threatening sky back to the place that was his home. To remember the feeling, he took a photo of his house with his phone.

By default the filter on his phone made gray skies blue and dim colors unnaturally bright. Picture perfect.

. . .

Twenty years later Jared looked at his old photographs. He came to one of his house. The sky was blue, the colors were bright. It seemed a happy day. Picture perfect.

He tried to recall something–a feeling, maybe.

He couldn’t.

Above Or Under

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

“Have you considered that trees grow underground?”

“Funny. I saw a documentary about the baobab tree in East Africa–how its trunk and branches resemble roots.”

“Have you considered that clouds are deep springs?”

“I suppose that’s one way to see things.”

“And bridges are in fact narrow tunnels, built to penetrate spaces that are otherwise impassable?”

“Your point?”

“If what I say is true, you and I, where we stand, might be underground.”

“Seriously!”

“Which, of course, explains why the stars are buried beyond our reach. And why the world we inhabit seems unfathomable.”

“You almost convince me.”

One Penny

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

Another day of work. Another day putting up another wall, wiping away sweat. Rummaging through his toolbox searching for drywall screws, Leo turned up a copper washer.

He regarded the shining thing.

What’s this for? Leo wondered.

The copper suggested plumbing. But he wasn’t sure.

Why had he kept this thing in his toolbox?

Very strangely, the thin washer reminded him of his childhood: the penny placed on railroad tracks that was squashed by a passing train.

Funny that he still remembered.

He had been three or four years old. He had stood near railroad tracks behind his great grandparents’ mountain cabin. Several times a day a huge freight train would rumble past.

Leo couldn’t recall the faces of his great grandparents or the cabin or anything else from that long ago time. All he could remember was the thrill of that moment when, encouraged by his father, he placed an ordinary penny on the rail. Then the sudden mighty roar of the freight train thundering dangerously past.

He remembered leaning over to pick up the transformed coin.

The penny’s one cent value had been obliterated. The copper, squashed paper thin. had become perfectly smooth and shiny. It had turned pure. A child’s penny had become infinitely more valuable.

So many years later, why did Leo still remember that penny and that train?

One was a small thing of little worth. The other, a juggernaut, almost here, quickly gone, was like the swift, inexorable passage of time.

Where was his penny now?

Leo stared at the shining copper washer in his hand.

Chuckling, he dropped it back into his toolbox.

Mirrors

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

“My mirrors make people go crazy,” laughed the bartender.

Stools at the bar looked upon a row of bottles and a large framed mirror. Reflected in the mirror was an identical mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I recognized the optical phenomenon. How reflections of my own face echoed infinitely and diminished.

I set my glass down and searched the distance.

I saw my face, repeated, strung out like drops of rain falling toward a silver lake. My endless faces fell away, receded, shrank, seemed to vanish. I was able to count eleven faces until I became a microscopic blur. No–I could barely see one face that squinted.

The face nearest me was also squinting.

I laughed.

I turned to the bartender.

“What if my eyes were as powerful as that new space telescope?” I wondered. “The one that can see all the way to the edge of the Universe.”

“Why go crazy looking? It’s the same you.”

Dale’s Tree

~ Richard Schulte ~ 2 Comments

Dale had planted a tree in a park. He had been a young boy on that Arbor Day.

Dale wanted to show his great grandson the tree he had planted.

The two walked through the park but Dale recognized nothing. All that he saw was strange.

Searching for his long-ago tree, Dale hopelessly regarded the immense oaks. They rose high above him, a confusion of furrowed trunks that cast spidery shadows. These trees, thought Dale, were very old. How could they possibly be so old?

Dale moved slowly and despaired he would never find the tree he had planted.

Sudden laughter made him spin around.

His great grandson had climbed up onto a nearby branch and was smiling down at him. “Is this your tree?”

“Well, maybe!”

A Christmas Secret

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

The office where I work has a Christmas party every year. Several dozen families gather in a hotel ballroom to dine and dance, rub elbows and laugh. The children play games and get to visit Santa. And we have our annual gift exchange.

The gift exchange is always very popular. It’s one of those deals where employees bring wrapped presents to the event and place them anonymously under a Christmas tree. After dinner is finished, everyone comes together and names are pulled out of a hat. Everyone receives a surprise.

When I started this job I was beyond poor. I was seriously in debt. I owed my landlord rent. I had no extra money to buy a nice gift for the exchange.

That first year an idea occurred to me. The rocks and minerals I collected as a child included some beautiful, costly specimens. Most I had received as Christmas presents. I searched my closet, took the rocks out of their crumpled cardboard box and wondered.

I turned one interesting rock over in my hands. It was a rough conglomeration of gray and white and black and lilac, the size of a paperweight. Memories came back to me. Feldspar, quartzite, black tourmaline, lepidolite. The lilac-gray lepidolite glittered ever so slightly when held near a light. I marveled at the earthy beauty.

How do you gift wrap a rock? I did my best.

When the Christmas exchange began, I noticed many of the mystery gifts were shaped like bottles. Funny how they were selected first.

My name was pulled and I chose a rectangular box. A tug at the wrapping revealed expensive cutlery. Nice.

The name of my supervisor was drawn at the very end. The last gift under the Christmas tree was my rock.

“What’s this?” my supervisor asked in his usual unkind way. “It feels like a rock.” He tore off the wrapping. “It is a rock! Who’s the idiot?“

I turned away.

When it came time to leave the party, I tossed my paper plate into the trash. And there in the trashcan was my rock.

. . .

In the far corner of the ballroom, a young boy was sitting alone. I had seen the boy at other company events but had forgotten his name. It was the child of my supervisor. He always seemed sad.

I cautiously made my way to the corner where the boy sat. “Did you get a present?” I asked, knowing the answer.

The boy shook his head.

“Can you keep a secret?” I asked.

He nodded.

“There’s an extra Christmas present that you can have, but you have to keep it a secret. You can’t tell anybody. Okay?”

The boy nodded again, looking up at me uncertainly.

I placed the rock in his open hand and his eyes grew wide. “Woah! That’s awesome!” he whispered.

The Snipe Hunt

~ Richard Schulte ~ 2 Comments

Fifty eight adventurers sat at folding tables in a building made of pine logs. It was summer. They were eating hamburgers.

“You have two choices,” explained a camp counselor while everyone guzzled. “After dinner you can either go with me on a snipe hunt, or you can follow Janine down to the lake. She’ll show you how to make paper sky lanterns. Does anyone want to go on the snipe hunt?”

Many hands shot up.

“You should probably know,” the counselor explained, “snipes aren’t real. There are no snipes. All we’ll do is hike up the hill behind the cabins and poke around in the dark. We won’t actually find anything.”

Blake continued to hold his hand up. Nobody else did.

. . .

Blake followed the counselor up the steep desert hill. Both carried flashlights. After nightfall the blazing heat had rapidly vanished. The air was already chilly.

Two small wavering circles of light fell upon cacti and broken rock. The counselor stopped to beat on a thorny bush beside the trail with his hiking stick. “Keep a sharp lookout!” he urged with enthusiasm. “It’s a well known fact that snipes hide around here!”

Blake moved past the counselor and plunged ahead into the night’s darkness. The rough trail, at times difficult to follow, cut back and forth up the rocky hill and the climb was slow.

“Don’t forget to hit the bushes with your stick,” the counselor prompted.

Blake ignored him. He continued up the trail. As he climbed away from the cabins and their dwindling light, the black sky deepened. Sprinkled stars appeared.

It would be ridiculous, Blake understood, to search for things that aren’t real. But there was strange mystery in the deepening night–there was freedom, the limitless air, the unknown–

He climbed eagerly. He wanted to see what starlight falling from unreachable distances might touch.

The night became colder. His flashlight wavered right and left. All signs of the trail had disappeared.

“Don’t get too far ahead of me!” the counselor shouted. “Don’t become lost!”

Then, Blake, turning to peer into even more darkness, saw them. A handful of sky lanterns. Small lights slowly rising among the stars.

They rose like tiny distant suns. As he stood, he watched them drift away, becoming fainter.

One after another they winked out.

Nothing was left above but those unreachable stars.

“Beautiful, weren’t they?” the counselor said coming up beside him. “It was worth climbing up here just to see that. But it’s getting late. We should turn back.”

“Why?”

Blake ignored the counselor and started climbing the steep hill again, more restless than before. The night breeze was increasing, becoming colder. The wavering circle of light offered by his flashlight discovered more of the same cacti and rocks. The counselor quietly followed.

What can a person up here actually find? Blake wondered. More prickly cacti, more of the same broken rock, and perhaps, eventually, the summit of this one barren desert hill, and a night sky with far horizons filled with even more stars. Things nobody else will see.

Perhaps it was the sharpening wind, or his adjusting eyes, but as he climbed toward the stars the night became more alive. He heard rustlings, saw shapes and shadows swaying slightly, moving on the ground around him. Certainly not snipes. But there was a thrilling, unexplainable something up here. Probably only the wind.

Blake was sure he could see the hill’s top. He was almost there. The stars were all around.

In the gentle starlight, he switched off his flashlight and looked all around with wonder.

But he could go higher.

Looking up, he thought he could see a thing moving on the dark hill’s summit. Something very small and glimmering.

He climbed toward it.

“I found a snipe!” shouted Blake.

The counselor came up, his light off, too.

And there it was.

A fragile living thing.

Sent by wishful hands toward the stars, a paper sky lantern had returned to Earth. It had tangled in a low cactus, where, extinguished, it shivered in the cold wind and faintly reflected starlight.

The Deal

~ Richard Schulte ~ 2 Comments

Sophie reached down to pluck a flower.

A bee landed on the back of her hand. It moved awkwardly over a knuckle and onto a finger.

Sophie froze. “A bee!” she screamed.

The bee walked slowly to the end of the finger.

“Go away!” Sophie screamed.

“Why?” asked the bee.

“Because you’re a bee! You’re dangerous and you might sting me!”

“I promise I won’t sting you if you accept my offer,” said the bee.

“What do you want?”

“If you do not pluck that flower, I will make this finger magic.”

“Deal!” said Sophie.

The bee turned around several times on the fingertip. “Now if you touch that flower very gently,” the bee explained, “you will give it a second life.”

The pollinating bee vibrated its delicate wings and departed.

Sophie looked closely at the end of her finger.

The Highest Seat

~ Richard Schulte ~ 3 Comments

I had a friend named Nick. We used to have long conversations in the city park while sitting on a bench: I on one end, he on the other.

Nick would sit there with his eyes closed, listening through headphones to what he called the music of the spheres. I never heard his music, so I couldn’t tell you what he meant.

While he was listening to his music, I’d sit on the other end of the bench people watching. Watching random joggers and walkers. He and I were quite different.

When Nick opened his eyes and they met mine we talked.

Nick loved to talk about astronomy. For many years he’d worked as projectionist at the city park’s planetarium, operating a unique device called a star projector. From the projector’s starball shined points of light. Thin rays of light formed constellations on the planetarium’s black dome-shaped screen. The starball slowly revolved like the Earth.

Space was his obsession. Nick knew the orbit of every planet and every moon. He could name hundreds of stars. He knew everything there was to know about comets, and Saturn’s rings, and Jupiter’s spot–I forget what it’s called–and far galaxies at the very edge of the Universe. He knew the date and time of every eclipse. All he ever talked about was space.

He’d been retired from that job as projectionist for years and now he sat in the park and listened with eyes closed to his music of the spheres. A few times I caught him on that bench after dark. He was staring up at the twinkling stars.

He used to tell me that the best seat in a planetarium is the highest one–right up near the domed ceiling. It’s the seat nearest the stars. But people seldom climb those steep stairs. People like the easy seats.

He finally retired from that projectionist job when the planetarium began to show nothing but documentary films on its giant, curved screen. You know, those movies that take you soaring above skyscrapers or for a ride on a roller coaster. The world around and under you seems so solid that you get motion sickness. He hated those films. I didn’t understand why.

He once told me he’d been born too early. He wanted to go flying through space. Among the stars.

After he passed away, I still would sit on that same park bench.

Whenever I walked past the old planetarium-turned-theater I wondered what the stars might have been like in there.

One day I saw the theater was showing a documentary film about outer space. I decided to buy a ticket. To see what the experience might be like.

I made my way into the dark theater. I found some ascending steps. It was so dark that I had to feel my way with groping hands. Nick was right. The higher seats were mostly empty.

Up, up those steep steps I climbed through the darkness until I reached the last seat. The highest one. The one nearest the screen. Still standing, I tilted my head back to examine the black, arching screen. It seemed so vast, like space. It appeared almost close enough to touch.

Suddenly the movie started. Stars appeared.

When I looked down, ready to sit in that highest seat, I discovered a faintly glimmering thing. A brass plaque.

Bending down to look closely, I could barely read: In remembrance of Nicolas, projectionist. His light made every star.

To Last Forever

~ Richard Schulte ~ 4 Comments

You have fifteen minutes to make something that will last forever. That was the classroom exercise on Wednesday.

The teacher had reminded her students that even the pyramids were crumbling.

Wagner looked at the objects spilled on the classroom floor. There were hammers, brushes, a box of nails, plywood in different dimensions, cans of paint. And fourteen minutes.

Wagner wondered what he could make in those few minutes that would last forever. Forever was a long time.

Perhaps a masterpiece that ended up in a museum. But he wasn’t a famous artist, and he had a strong hunch he never would be. Now thirteen minutes.

Or he could create an artifact to be discovered by an archaeologist in the distant future. But wood rots. Twelve minutes.

Thinking about world history, Wagner realized that in thousands of years museums disappear, too. Eleven minutes.

Like the pyramids, everything in the world eventually crumbles. Ten minutes.

Forever has no end. Nine minutes.

What is forever?

He tried to visualize the immensity of forever.

One moment in forever is almost nothing. It is a drop in the ocean that is the cosmos. An infinitesimal drop, in an infinite ocean that unifies all things. With ripples that expand outward without end. Only five minutes left.

You have fifteen minutes to make something that will last forever. Wagner figured there must be a solution to the problem. His teacher had a purpose. Three minutes.

He looked across the classroom at his teacher, who stood in a corner smiling at her students. Most of the students were busy painting or hammering. Wagner wasn’t. Two minutes.

Wagner saw in his teacher’s eyes that there was a solution. Her eyes turned toward him and she nodded. One minute.

You have fifteen minutes to make something that will last forever. Suddenly Wagner knew the answer.

He walked up to his teacher and reached out his hand with gratitude. They made the connection.

“This is the answer,” he said.